218 
I Top Cultivation. 
the present writer recorded in 1870 (vol. vi., 2nd series) Recent 
Improvements in the Cultivation and Management of Hops in its 
pages, and again in 1890 (vol. i., 3rd series) gave a short 
sketch of the progress of this industry entitled Fifty Years of 
Hop Farming. He also wrote an article on Hop Cultivation for 
the Journal of the Bath and West of England Society in 1881, 
and reprinted in 1880 a series of articles written for the 
Country Bracers’ Gazette entitled Hops from the Set to the 
Skylights. Beyond these papers there is not much literature of 
a practical nature upon the subject. The Hop Farmer , by 
J. Lance, published in 1838, gives full particulars of hop 
growing and hop drying, but these naturally are not up to date. 
A Treatise on the Cultivation and Management of Hops was 
written by Mr. H. M. Mainwaring in 1855 : this chiefly relates 
to methods in use in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. 
Mr. P. L. Simmonds wrote Hops, their Cultivation, Commerce, 
and Uses in Various Countries, in 1877, which deals more with 
commercial than cultural points. 
History. 
Hops have been grown in England since the beginning of 
the fifteenth century. Hasted, the historian .of Kent, states 
that a petition was presented to Parliament in 1442 against the 
hop plant, which was termed a “ wicked weed.” 1 Hops are 
first mentioned in the English laws in 1552, the fifth year of 
the reign of Edward VL, when some privileges were given 
to “ hop grounds.” There was a hop plantation in the village of 
Bourne near Canterbury, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as 
may be proved by old records, and in the year 1603 a code of 
penalties was enacted against the importation of spoiled and 
adulterated hops; from this it may be inferred that the 
English hop grounds did not produce enough hops for the home 
requirements, and that foreign importers, as sometimes in these 
days, sent rubbish to the English markets. 
Hop gardens, humularia, for yielding hops for making beer, 
existed in Germany as early as the ninth century, according to 
old documents in the Freisingen collection written in the time 
of Ludovicus Germanicus. 2 Hops were used in the Netherlands 
for brewing beer in the commencement of the fourteenth 
century, and the technical knowledge, or at all events improved 
1 The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent. By E. 
Hasted, Esq., F.R.S. 
2 Beckmann’s History of Inventions, vol. ii. p. 380, 
