346 
Fifty Years of Hop Farming. 
Average Annual Cost of an Acre of Hop-Land. 
£ s. d. 
Manure (winter and summer) . . . , G 15 0 
Digging and dressing . . . . ,16 0 
Poling, tying, earthing, and ladder-tying . 1 15 0 
Nidgeting, digging, and hoeing hills . .326 
Stacking, stripping, making bines, &c. . . 0 17 6 
Annual supply of poles 3 0 0 
Expense of picking, drying, packing, carriage, 
sampling, sale, &c, of an average crop of 
7 cwt. per acre 10 10 0 
Rent, rates, tithes, taxes, repair of oast, &c, 
interest on capital 6 5 0 
Sulphuring , , , , . , .10 0 
34 11 0 
Washing, say . . .' . . . . 1 10 0 
£36 1 0 
The Supply and Consumption of Hops. 
Taking the last twenty years, it is considered by good 
authorities that the total quantity of English and foreign hops 
available in this country, after those exported have been 
deducted, has amounted to about 13,000,000 cwt. 
It is computed that, allowing 10 lbs. of hops for every 
quarter of malt and sugar estimated as malt' 1 used by brewers, 
during the first ten years of this period, and 9 lbs. per quarter 
for the latter period, about 12,500,000 cwt. of hops have been 
consumed in Great Britain in the last twenty years, showing an 
excess of 500,000 cwt. 
If, however, the supply and consumption of hops for the 
last two years are considered independently, it will be found that 
the consumption has exceeded the supply ; which tallies with the 
statement previously made, that the stocks of hops iii this 
country were never much lower thau at present : and this must 
be accepted as a good augury for coming seasons. 
There has been a considerable surplus in some years, but this 
has probably consisted of brown, blighted, or mouldy samples, 
or of common hops which ought not to have been picked, and of 
low-class Belgians and Germans. In 1882, when hops were very 
scarce, dear, and of poor quality, substitutes, such as quassia, 2 
1 It is calculated that 210 lbs. of sugar arc supposed to be equivalent to a 
quarter of malt. From 1870 to 1880 the annual average quantity of sugar 
and other saccharine substitutes for malt was 770,000,000 lbs. From 1880 to 
1889 it was over 1,488, 21 1,499 lbs. A large increase is shown in the last five years. 
2 It has been said that quassia is largely used as a substitute for hops 
because its price occasionally increases so much and so suddenly; but this is 
due to the great demand for it as an inscctifuge for washing hop plants, apple- 
trees, and other fruit-trees. 
