352 
Cultivation and Management of Hops. 
farmyard manure was the manure par excellence in the opinion of 
the grandfathers of present planters. 
Great mixens lay reeking and rotting as close as possible to 
the farmhouse door, draining out their valuable essences into the 
adjacent horse-pond with every shower, all through the summer 
and autumn, until the winter frosts hardened the land sufficiently 
for carting. Then the manure was laid in lumps on the land, 
not spread, perhaps, for weeks. Now, however, most farmers 
know better. The scientific papers on this subject which have 
appeared from time to time in this Journal, and especially the 
exhaustive one by Professor Voelcker,* have changed all this ; 
farmyard manure is now generally made in the late autumn and 
winter, and, if the weather permits, used directlv, or it is put 
on in the spring, when the hops are poled, with the dung-dolly — 
a low narrow 4-wheel cart, drawn by one horse in the alleys. The 
nidgett mixes it with the soil, rains wash the more soluble parts 
gradually down to the roots, and the innumerable fibres moving 
about just below the surface of the ground with almost intuitive 
sagacity, in search of aliment, seize upon and weave themselves 
into the coarser structures and extract their properties. It was a 
common practice to put lumps of wet unctuous manure into 
trenches hoed out close round each hill, in seeming ignorance of 
the fact that the rootlets and fibres are spread all over the ground, 
and that the requisite changes in the crude natural vile corpus 
of the manure, necessary to render it fit pabulum for the plant, 
are arresied by burying it from the air and light. Rape-dust^ 
or finely crushed rape-cake, is a fine manure, on account of its 
abundance of nitrogen, for forcing bine and stimulating the 
plant ; it is more lasting than guano, and its effects may be seen 
for two seasons. " Fur waste " is another recent and most valu- 
able manure, whose market value has been doubled within the 
last few years. Planters generally manure more highly and much 
more rationally and systematically than they did a generation 
since, both as regards the selection and the mode of application 
of manures. Their choice of manures has very much extended, 
and the cost has also largely increased ; so that it is difficult to 
thoroughly manure an acre of hop-land under from 5/. lOs. 
to 11. IQs. A machine like a large chaff-cutter, worked by three 
men and a boy, has been brought into general use lately for 
cutting hop-bines into short lengths of about three-quarters of 
a foot. The bine thus cut is either spread on the land green as 
it is, or taken into the yards, where it quickly absorbs manurial 
* See ' Farmyard Manure, the Drainings of Dung-Heaps, and the Absorbent 
Properties of the Soil.' — ' Journal of the Koyal Agncultural Society of England/ 
vol. xviil. part 1. 
