Cultivation and 31anagement of Hops. 
351 
not be a custom " more honoured in the breach than the 
observance." 
In July and August, the space round the hill which was dug 
in May is chopped round with that most excellent tool, which 
" Talpa " would fully appreciate, known in Kent as the " Can- 
terbury Hoe." This operation breaks the hard crust and 
Fig. G, — The Canterbury Hoe. 
admits the air, at the same time displacing the weeds. No 
leaves should on any account be stripped from the bine ; 
whether blight or mould appears, the leaves should be left on. 
It was an old custom to strip the leaves off the bine 4 or 5 or 
even 6 feet up the poles, thus in the first place bleeding the 
plant according to tFie most obsolete Sangrado doctrines, and 
limiting its capacity to receive and assimilate those gases from 
the air which are congenial,* and to exhale those which are un- 
congenial to its nature, or are in excess of its requirements. By 
lessening the leaf area of the plant, the wonderful action of 
light upon it in the decomposition of carbonic acid is propor- 
tionately diminished, t and it is a question whether the growth of 
mould fungi may not be thus encouraged, by causing an 
abnormal or diseased condition, or in other words by the reten- 
tion of an excess of carbonic acid. 
Manures. — Rags, shoddy, farmyard manure from oilcake-fed 
animals, sprats and other fish, rape-dust, guano, superphosphate, 
fur-waste, bone-dust, and blood-manure, are the manures most 
suited for hops, according to the nature of the soil, as science or 
experience dictates. There are many others, and the list has 
much increased in the last quarter of a century. Rags, sprats, 
and farmyard manure were the chief manures before then ; but 
* "If the experiments on the functions of the leaves be duly considered, it seems 
difficult to avoid the conclusion that the greatest addition to the materials for the 
formation of the solid tissues of plants is made through their agency." — (Dr. 
Carpenter's 'Principles of Physiology, par. 558.) 
t " This fixation of carbon by the decomposition of carbonic acid is the most 
essentially dependent of all the processes of the vegetable economy upon the 
influence of light."— (Dr. Carpenter's ' Principles of Physiology.') 
