Management of Hops. 
5G5 
what some appcir ; in some years they shortly disappear, leaving 
but few of their progeny behind, and no injury is sustained by 
them ; whereas in other years the young leaves, in the course of a 
week or two after their first appearance, are quite filled with 
them, leaving lice and nits on every leaf, subsisting on the juices 
and sap of the plant, which for a time, if growing weathei-, con- 
tinues to flourish. After a while the flies that have blackened 
the leaves with their numbers begin gradually to die and disap- 
pear, a few fresh ones appear to come, and in their turn die, but 
leave behind them a numerous })rogeny of lice and nits, which 
continue to increase after every fly is gone, until every leaf is 
filled with them, when they begin to crawl on the bine up to the 
head, extracting every particle of juice, shedding tlieir excre- 
ments, which, mixing with the juices of the bine and the morning 
dew, and falling on the leaves below, form that shining sticky 
moisture called honeydew. The head at length, from want of 
sap, droops and apparently dies ; the lice by this time, having 
gone through their various stages, for want of moisture in the 
bine, die also ; the leaves with the honeydew dry up and turn 
a rusty black, and after a while drop oft"; and but few, if any, of 
the bines recover to produce hops ; and all this is done in 6 or 8 
weeks : this is what I would term a rapid blight. When the fly 
is not so numerous at the first, or the weather cold and not so 
congenial to their Increase, the blight will be slower, but not the 
less fatal ; sometimes the planter is buoyed up by appearances 
until the last. There is sometimes when in burr an appearance 
of a tolerable crop — then their strength fails — they can do no 
more, and the produce is worthless. There are instances of great 
recoveries from blight, as in 1807, 1834, and, in some parts, in 
1846, when the weather and every other circumstance was favour- 
able. Various methods have at times been tried, both as pre- 
ventives and cures, but not one that I ever saw could be 
depended on. High manuring and good cultivation will assist a 
recovery; but it will sometimes, from producing more sap, cause 
the aphis to continue longer, and consequently less time is- left 
for recovery. A hop-ground that has been blighted with the 
Aphis one year is never blighted with it the next ; I never knew 
a single instance of it. These aphides have their enemies in the 
fly - golding, or ladybird, and its progeny the neger, which 
have done more in preventing a blight than any human means 
could ever do. It would be unnecessary for me to say anything 
more, if I could, than what in my practice has come under my 
observation as a hop-planter. But why Mr. Lance, in his ' Hop 
Farmer,' calls it a barometer of poverty, I am at a loss to guess ; 
as the most highly managed and fertile hop-grounds are as much 
subject to it as the worst. 
