Management of Hops. 
545 
appearance when dried ; but the smell and flavour is not good, and 
some brewers object to them; they, however, generally make as 
much money in the market as grape, and sometimes a little more. 
As they are later in the year before they require picking, it is 
well to have a small proportion of them on that account for latter 
picking. I have grown a few of them the last ten years, and they 
liave grown a larger average crop than any other sorts I have 
grown. I had my sets from Mr. Colegate, a son of the gentleman 
who raised them ; they were cut sets, but never since they have 
been planted have I had occasion to replant or even repair a single 
hill ; they are the most sure growers of any variety, but they are 
remarkably bad climbers, requiring to be ladder-tied continually 
until the bine reaches the top of the pole. 
These five varieties are the principal grown in Kent and Sus- 
sex, but there are others which are not so distinct as these, but 
partaking a little of the nature of one or the other, and inferior : 
there are the Wildings, Golden Tips, Ruflers, Flemish, and 
others ; but as any of these are now but little planted, and as little 
to be recommended, I will not trouble the reader with any more 
minute description of them, but will now go back to where I 
digressed to describe the varieties of hops, and the soils adapted 
to them, and endeavour to show the best method of planting. 
Hops are propagated by cuttings from the grounds already in 
plant, taken at the usual time of dressing them in the spring of 
the year, and either planted where they are to remain the same 
year, or planted in beds and removed to their destination another 
year; the first are called cut sets, the last bedded sets: by one 
of these two plans are all the hop-grounds in Kent and Sussex, 
and I believe elsewhere, raised. 
Mr. Lance, in his work called ' The Hop Farmer,' goes into a 
scientific description of the manner of raising the hop-plant from 
the seed, intimating it to be the best plan of raising a hop planta- 
tion. Without at all doubting the correctness of the description 
there given, from the time of planting or sowing the seed until its 
development, I am entirely at a loss how a plantation of any extent 
can be directly raised from seed ; for it is well known, although Mr. 
Lance does not exactly state it, that the seed of the hop, however 
well impregnated with male farina, does not produce to a cer- 
tainty the same variety of hop as that from which it was taken ; 
from a quantity of seed sown there would be several varieties, and 
but very few plants of that variety from which the seed was taken. 
I once grew a great many plants from seeds of the Golding hop ; 
there was nearly an equal number of male and female plants, but 
there was not one female plant that produced a hop at all like a 
Golding hop, nor was there a single plant amongst them all that 
produced a hop that I would have raised a plantation of, or was 
