222 
Hop Cultivation. 
It must not be concluded that hops can be well or profitably 
grown on any of the soils that have been indicated as suited for 
their production in Kent and Sussex ; for it happens frequently 
that the land in some parts of a parish will grow them well, 
while in other parts they prove a failure. On one side of a river 
the land occasionally is far more fitted for hop growing than 
that on its opposite side. Even in adjoining fields this one will 
produce good hops while that one will not. So much depends 
upon the situation, and the composition of the soil, and espe- 
cially upon its substratification, because the hop plant likes a 
permeable subsoil. 1 It is supposed by many that hops will do 
well in any part of hop-growing districts, but the fact is that 
there is a very small extent of land thoroughly suitable for hops 
beyond that which is now in cultivation. In most of the 
parishes the present plantation has been determined by selection, 
and the survival of the fittest. When the least depression has 
occurred, the unsuitable land has been promptly grubbed. 
Next in importance to Sussex come Herefordshire with 
6,797 acres, and Worcestershire with 3,369 acres. Both these 
counties show an increase in their hop acreages since 1871, and 
a considerable increase since 1850. Here again it is found from 
an examination of old lists, that the hop-growing parishes 
detailed therein are almost identical with those in which hops 
are now grown. The hop grounds, or “ yards,” of Herefordshire 
and Worcestershire are situated upon the eastern side of the 
former county, extending as far as Leominster, Ross, and Here- 
ford ; and upon the western side of the latter county, mainly 
upon the better marls of the New Red Sandstone, and soils 
formed of the debris of Cornstones of the Old Red Sandstone 
formation, and the rich and extensive alluvial deposits by the 
courses of the rivers Wye, Lug, Teme, and Severn, and other 
rivers and streams. 2 A small part of the Worcestershire hop 
plantation in the direction of Pershore is upon clays of the 
Lias formation, but hops do not thrive so well as upon the 
Triassic and Keuper systems in the w’est of the county. 
In Hampshire and Surrey there has been but little increase 
or change in the extent of the hop land during the last thirty 
or forty years. The 2,775 acres in Hampshire are situated 
1 Marshall, in his Economy of the Southern Counties (1798), says : “ Hops 
require not only an absorbent but a calcareous base. No art has been dis- 
covered to induce lands with non-calcareous subsoils to endure in this crop.” 
‘ Dr. Nash in his exhaustive History of Worcestershire (1781) describes 
the Teme as watering “ fine meadows, a rich country, and one particularly 
famous for its many hop yards.” 
