346 Cultivation mid Management of Hops. 
years many new plans for poling hops have been devised, the 
primary notions of which came from America, where poles and 
labour are dear, and inventive genius is particularly fertile. 
According to one of these plans, for which a patent was taken 
out in this country by Mr. Collins, one pole is put to each hill, 
and stout string or cocoa-nut fibre yarn is stretched horizontally 
at a distance of from 8 to 10 feet from the ground from pole to 
pole. The appearance is very picturesque, as may be imagined 
from the slight sketch (Illustration No. 2) given here ; but the 
Fig. 2. — American mode of training Hops on String. 
system is not by any means satisfactory, and has been dis- 
continued by many planters who gave it a fair trial. I have 
tried it for three years upon 3 acres planted with the Jones 
Hop, whose habit renders it more suited to such methods of 
training than any other sort of hop ; I found that the expense of 
tying the bine to the horizontal strings was very great, the bine 
never took kindly to the string, so that the tyers were perpetually 
required throughout the summer, and that the produce was each 
year considerably less per acre than in another part of the ground 
poled in the usual manner, though in every other respect treated 
the same as the string piece. It is right to state that Mr. Gunner, 
of Alton, has had several acres trained in this way for some years, 
and is quite satisfied with the result. This gentleman writes as 
to the extra expense of tying. " It is really nothing when you 
think how much is saved in poles, how good the quality of the 
hop is, how little liable to damage from wind, and how strong 
your plant will always be, for I believe if the string training is 
properly carried out there would be no such thing as weak bine." 
Training on wires, variously fixed, is practised in America, in 
Germany,* and in France. In many districts of these countries 
poles are dearer than in England. At Spalt a grower states that 
they cost as much as a franc each, but then they are from 20 to 
24 feet in length. Mr. Farmar of Kyrewood, Tenbury, has patented 
* The Austrian Central Agricultural Society have offered prizes for a satisfac- 
tory solution of the question as to the relative superiority of wire and poles. 
