147 
Some Minor Farm Crops. 
sown in drills a yard apart. The male plants were removed 
and the remaining crop allowed to stand until September when 
it was cut and threshed after the manner described. 
Retting and Fibre Separation. 
Of the several ways of separating the fibre from the hemp 
stems none yield such high class fibre as the method known 
as watering or retting. This is a process of slow decom- 
position which allows the bast fibres to be separated from the 
stem by submerging the hemp in water for several days in 
a manner almost identical with that described in the case 
of flax. Although it must be said that no hemp is retted in 
England at the present time, it was of such common occurrence 
in the past, and the methods adopted in hemp growing 
countries at the present day are so similar to those practised 
formerly in this country, that it will not be out of place to 
describe briefly the manner in which this operation was 
carried out. Retting proceeds best if the water is soft and 
when it is stagnant, although hemp may be successfully retted 
in slowly moving streams. As soon as the male stems were 
made up into bundles, or the female stems had been threshed, 
they were removed to the retting pit — a deep hole, sometimes 
six feet deep and measuring some twelve feet square. 
The bundles of stems were floated on the water and arranged 
parallel with one another, and across them a second layer of 
bundles was arranged, and so on, until a bed of hemp had 
been built up, which, when suitably weighted at the top, 
almost completely filled the pond. Sometimes stout posts 
were driven into the bottom of the pond and to these planks 
and beams of wood were tied so as to keep the hemp completely 
submerged ; or a covering of sods w T as put over the top and 
upon these a substantial weight of stones arranged so as to 
achieve the same result. After seven or eight days had elapsed 
a bundle was withdrawn and, if the outside covering containing 
the bast fibres could be detached readily from the interior of 
the stem, watering had proceeded far enough. This being the 
case the weights and covering were removed from the hemp 
bed, the bundles rinsed in the water, and the clean stalks stood 
upon end in open stooks to dry. 
Hemp was not always retted in this direct manner : some- 
times the decomposition process carried forward in the retting 
pit was arrested at an earlier stage, and the bundles of stems 
were removed to some convenient grass land where they were 
opened and the stems spread in regular rows over the 
ground after the manner of dew retting flax. This so-called 
grassing of hemp lasted several weeks, and during this time 
