546 
Management of Hops. 
not very inferior to any hop I ever saw growing in a plantation. 
I am aware that from seed a new variety of hop is produced, and 
perchance a good one, and from which a small number of plants 
may be taken and pro])agated, but it must be by the usual me- 
thod of cutting from the parent stock that the variety can be ex- 
tended, so that by cuttings only can a plantation be raised to any 
extent. If it is wished to raise a plantation quick, if the planter 
has already bedded some last year's cuttings, or bedded sets can be 
purchased, by planting them the plant will come to bear sooner, 
and will sometimes produce 3 or 4 cwt. per acre the first season 
after planting, but not so many as cuttings of the same year which 
were planted at first where they were to remain, for moving them 
from the beds checks their growth, having to strike their roots 
afresh in their new destination ; and although they may produce 
more hops the first and second years after planting than the cuttings 
which are planted to remain, the third year the latter will have 
quite caught the others, and oftentimes produce more hops that 
year than those planted in the same year with bedded sets; so 
that, unless a planter has some object in view to induce him, or 
has a quantity of bedded sets by him, the best and cheapest way 
is to plant cut sets where they are to remain ; 5 cut sets is a suffi- 
cient number to raise a hill, and what is most generally planted : 
1200 hills to an acre would require 6000 sets per acre, which, 
at Q)d. per hundred, a general price, would be 30s. per acre ; it 
requires 3 bedded sets to a hill, or, mixing the weaker with the 
Stronger ones, 3600 per acre, which, at the general price of 
2*. 6rf. per hundred, is Al. \Qs. per acre; or if the planter raises 
them in beds himself, there is a considerable expense attending it, 
although some saving would be made. Whether the planter pur- 
chases his sets or cuts them himself from his own grounds, it should 
be from a good healthy stock, and where the variety is true that 
is intended to be planted ; also care should be taken that the 
cuttings from the male plant are kept distinct from the others, or 
they are likely to be very irregularly distributed over the ground, 
instead of having them, as they should be, at distances of 10 or 12 
hills from each other, so as to have 1 male-planted hill to 100 or 
at most 150 hop-growing hills. 
A great difference of opinion exists among experienced planters 
as to the utility of the seedy or male plant, some eradicating them 
from their plantations as entirely useless. It is not, I pre- 
sume, expected that the writer of this essay should enter into a 
scientific description of the nature and operation of the male 
plant, but from practical experience I am positive as to its bene- 
ficial effects. Nearly forty years since I took a farm on which 
there was only one hop-ground of about ten acres, in which there 
was not a single male plant ; they were Canterbury hops — they 
