326 
Fifty Years of Hop Farming. 
Selection of Sorts. 
It has been patent to hop planters for some time, and espe- 
cially within the past five years, that it does not pay to cultivate 
inferior and ordinary kinds of hops. Quality is more than ever 
demanded by brewers, who will have " coloury " samples with 
aroma and condition. If they cannot find these of English 
growth, they will take them from other countries. They give, 
however, the preference to English hops, as possessing, when 
produced in perfection, the desired combination of colour, active, 
" fixed," bitter principle, and strength, far above the hops of 
other climes. 
In East Kent and Mid Kent, whose soil and surroundings 
suit the Golding hop, 1 this sort is largely cultivated, having when 
well grown a brewing value unsurpassed by any other kind. 
It has small filbert-shaped cones of a bright straw colour when 
ripe, which grow in bunches of three or four cones. This and 
the Bramling, a Golding variety of earlier habit, have in a 
degree superseded the Grapes, Jones, Colegates, and other 
common sorts grown to a considerable extent in these Kentish 
districts until the last ten years. During the palmy days of 
hop-growing, from 1860 to 1876, very prolific and early kinds of 
hops of most ordinary attributes were planted, such as Meophams, 
Prolifics, and Henhams. These are being fast eliminated from 
the best Kentish growths. Even the Grape, whose large cones 
grow in clusters, found frequently in many Mid-Kent planta- 
tions, has given place to Goldings and Brandings and Fuggles. 
The last-named is somewhat coarser and of a less delicate nature 
than Goldings, yet with a good deal of Golding quality. 
The Weald of Kent cannot produce Goldings profitably. 
Here early, heavy cropping varieties were planted when the 
times were good. There is a genei'al tendency now again to 
displace these, as they are a drug in a well-supplied market. 
Grapes and Jones and Fuggles are chiefly relied on. The 
coarse, late, badly flavoured Colegate, so common here forty or 
fifty years ago, is fast being rooted out. A new variety, known 
as "Bates' Brewers," has been planted just lately. Sets were 
taken from a hill in a hop ground in a Weald of Kent parish, 
noticed as yielding hops of a peculiar habit and quality-, and 
different from other plants in the ground. 2 
1 Marshall, in his Rural Economy of the Southern Counties, says of fchii 
hop that " Mr. Golding, in the Mailing quarter of this district, observing in 
his grounds a hill of extraordinary quality and productiveness, marked it, 
propagated from it, and furnished his neighbours with cuttings from its 
produce." 
3 Most of the best varieties of hops have been selected in this manner, U 
not produced from seed, 
