HOPS--INSECT ATTACKS--HOP FAIRS.
"Oft expectation fails, and most oft there
Where most it promises; and oft it hits
Where hope is coldest and despair most fits."
--_All's Well that Ends Well_.
In a very rare black-letter book on hop culture, _A Perfite Platforme
of a Hoppe Garden_, published in the year 1578 and therefore over 340
years old, the author, Reynolde Scot, has the following quaint remarks
on one of the disorders to which the hop plant is liable:
"The hoppe that liketh not his entertainment, namely his seat, his
ground, his keeper, or the manner of his setting, comith up thick and
rough in leaves, very like unto a nettle; and will be much bitten with
a little black flye, who, also, will not do harme unto good hoppes,
who if she leave the leaf as full of holes as a nettle, yet she
seldome proceedeth to the utter destruction of the Hoppe; where the
garden standeth bleake, the heat of summer will reform this matter."
Thomas Tusser, who lived 1515 to 1580, in his _Five Hundred Points of
Good Husbandry_, included many seasonable verses on Hop-growing, among
which the following are worth quoting:
MAY.
Get into thy hop-yard for now it is time
To teach Robin Hop on his pole how to climb,
To follow the sun, as his property is,
And weed him and trim him if aught go amiss.
JUNE.
Whom fancy perswadeth among other crops,
To have for his spending sufficient of hops:
Must willingly follow of choices to chuse
Such lessons approved, as skilfull do use.
Ground gravelly, sandy, and mixed with clay,
Is naughty for hops, any manner of way;
Or if it be mingled with rubbish and stone,
For dryness and barrenness let it alone.
Chuse soil for the hop of the rottenest mould,
Well dunged and wrought as a garden plot should:
Not far from the water (but not overflown),
This lesson well noted is meet to be known.
The sun in the south, or else southly and west,
Is joy to the hop, as welcomed ghest:
But wind in the north, or else northerly east,
To hop is as ill, as a fray in a feast.
Meet plot for a hop-yard, once found as is told,
Make thereof account, as of jewell of gold:
Now dig it and leave it the sun for to burn,
And afterward fence it to serve for that turn.
The hop for his profit, I thus do exalt,
It strengtheneth drink and it favoureth malt,
And being well brewed, long kept it will last,
And drawing abide, if ye draw not too fast.
In Worcestershire and Herefordshire hop-gardens are always called
hop-yards, which seems to be only a local and more ancient form of the
same word, and from the same root. The termination occurs also in
"orchard"--from the Anglo-Saxon _ortgeard_ (a wort-yard)
--"olive-yard," and "vineyard."
The quotation from the _Perfitie Platforme of a Hoppe Garden_ refers
to "a little black flye," now called "the flea" (Worcestershire plural
"flen"), really a beetle like the "turnip fly," and it is the first
pest that attacks the hop every year.
"First the flea, then the fly,
Then the lice, and then they die,"
is a couplet repeated in all the hop districts to-day, but the damage
done by the flea is not to be compared to that caused by the next
pest, the fly. The latter is one of the numerous species of aphis
which begins its attack in the winged state, and after producing
wingless green lice in abundance--which further increase by the
process known as "gemmation"--reappears with wings in the final
generation of the lice, and hibernates in readiness for its visitation
in the spring next year.
So long as the hop plant maintains its health the aphis is
comparatively harmless, for the plant is then able to elaborate to the
full the bitter principle which is its natural protection. On a really
hot day in July it is sometimes possible to detect the distinctive
scent of the hop quite plainly in walking through the plantation, long
before any hops appear, and when this is noticeable very little of the
aphis blight can be found. There is however nearly always a small
sprinkling lying in wait, and a few days of unsuitable weather will
reduce the vitality of the plant so that the blight immediately begins
to increase.
There is little doubt that all the distinctive principles of plants or
trees have been evolved, and are in perfect health elaborated, as a
protection from their most destructive insect or fungoid enemies; just
as physical protective equipment, such as thorns, prickles, and
stinging apparatus, is produced by other plants or trees as safeguards
against more powerful foes. If it were not so, plants that are even
now seriously damaged and kept in check by such pests would long ago
have become extinct.
Pursuing this theory it seems likely that the solanin of the potato is
its natural protection against the disease caused by the fungus
_Phytophthora infestans_. The idea is suggested by the invariably
increasing liability to the potato disease experienced as new sorts
become old. The new kinds of potatoes are produced from the seed--not
the tubers--of the old varieties, and the seed, when fully vitalized
and capable of germination, may be assumed to contain the maximum
potentiality for transmission of the active principle to the tubers
immediately descended from it. During the early years of their
existence these revitalized tubers contain so much solanin that they
are not only injurious, but more or less poisonous, to man, and it is
only after they have been cultivated, and have produced further
generations of tubers _from_ tubers, that they become eatable, showing
that in the tuber condition the plant gradually loses its efficient
protection.
In the case of the hop the most effective remedy is a solution of
quassia and soft soap. The caustic potash in the soap neutralizes the
oily integument of the lice and dries them up, but the quassia
supplies a bitter principle not unlike that of the hop, though without
its grateful aroma, which acts as a protection in the absence of the
bitter of the hop itself. So closely does the hop bitter resemble that
of quassia, that in seasons of hop failure it is said to be employed
as a substitute in brewing, and at one time its use for that purpose
was prohibited by law.
As a further proof that the bitter principle of the hop is distasteful
to the aphis, it is noticeable that when the fly first arrives it
always attacks the topmost shoots of the bine where the leaves have
not developed, and where the active principle is likely to be weakest.
The same position is selected by the aphis of the rose, the bean, and
every plant or tree subject to aphis attack--it is the undeveloped and
therefore unprotected part which is chosen.
It is remarkable that when a destructive blight is
proceeding--generally in a wet and cold time--and a sudden change
occurs to really hot dry weather, the hop plant often recovers its
tone automatically, shakes off the disease, and the blight dies away,
a fact which strengthens the assumption that in normal weather the
plant can protect itself. Again, the blight is always most persistent
under the shade of trees or tall hedges, or where the bine is over
luxuriant, when owing to the exclusion of light and air the plant is
unable to elaborate its natural safeguard.
Fertilizers not well balanced as to their constituents, and containing
an excess of nitrogen, act as stimulants without supplying the
minerals necessary for perfect health. The effect is the same as that
produced in man by an excess of alcohol and a deficiency of nourishing
food, the health of the subject suffers in both cases, leaving a
predisposition to disease.
Reasoning by analogy, these causes affecting the success or failure of
plants give us the clue to the remedies for bacterial disease in man.
Disease is the consequence and penalty of life under unnatural or
unfavourable conditions, which should first receive attention and
improvement. When in spite of improved conditions disease persists,
specifics must be sought. The conditions which produce disease in the
vegetable world are fought by the active principle of each plant, and
inasmuch as the germ diseases of man are probably, though distantly,
related to those which affect vegetable life, the specific protections
of plants should be exploited for the treatment of human complaints.
This, of course, has for long been a practice, but possibly more
success might be achieved by careful research to identify each
distinct bacterial disease in man with its co-related distinct disease
in plants, so as to utilize as a remedy for the former the natural
protection which the latter indicates.
Our artificially evolved domesticated plants are more subject to
disease than their wild prototypes, because they are not natural
survivals of the fittest. They are survivals only by virtue of the art
of man, inducing special properties pleasing to man's senses, and
therefore profitable for sale; but in the development of some such
special excellence, ability to elaborate protective defence is
generally neglected, and the special excellence produced may possibly
be antagonistic to the really sound constitution of the plant. It is
thus that cultivated plants are more in need of watchful care and
attention than their wild relations, and that, in the development of
quality, a sacrifice of quantity may be involved.
The observant hop grower notices constant changes in the appearance of
his plants from day to day under varying weather influences and other
conditions: a retarded and unhappy expression in a cold, wet and rough
time; an eager and hopeful expansiveness under genial conditions; a
dark, plethoric and rampant growth where too much nitrogen is
available, and a brilliant and healthily-restrained normality when
properly balanced nourishment is provided.
There should be sympathy between the grower and his plants, such as is
described by Blackmore in his _Christowell_; though in the following
passage with consummate art he puts the words into the mouth of the
sympathetic daughter of the amateur vine-grower, and gives the plant
the credit of the first advance:
"'For people to talk about "sensitive plants,"' she says, 'does seem
such sad nonsense, when every plant that lives is sensitive. Just look
at this holly-leafed baby vine, with every point cut like a prickle,
yet much too tender and good to prick me. It follows every motion of
my hand; it crisps its little veinings up whenever I come near it; and
it feels in every fibre that I am looking at it.'"
Blackmore was much more than a writer of fiction; I think he had a
deeper insight into the spirit of Nature and country character than
perhaps any writer of modern times; he combined the accuracy of the
scholar with the practical knowledge of the farmer and gardener; the
logic of the philosopher with the fancy and expression of the poet. I
regard the appreciation of his _Lorna Doone_--a book in which one can
smell the violets--as the test of a real country lover; I mean a
country lover who, besides the gift of acute observation, has the
deeper gift of imaginative perception. If only the book could have
been illustrated by the pencil of Randolph Caldecott, such a union of
sympathy between author and artist would have produced a work
unparalleled in rural literature.
Like all insects the aphis has its special insect enemies, among which
the lady-bird ("lady-cow" in Worcestershire) is the most important. It
lays its eggs in clusters on the hop-leaf, and in a few days the larvæ
(called "niggers") are hatched, aggressive-looking creatures with
insatiable appetites. It is amusing to watch them hunting over the
lower side of the leaf like a sporting dog in a turnip field, and
devouring the lice in quantities. I knew an old hop grower in
Hampshire who had a standing offer of a guinea a quart for lady-birds,
but it is scarcely necessary to add that the reward was never claimed.
The hop is dioecious (producing male and female blossoms on separate
plants), but very rarely both can be found on the same stem--the plant
thus becoming monoecious. In 1893, a very hot dry year, several
specimens were found, including one in Kent, one in Surrey, one in
Herefordshire, and one in my own hopyards at Aldington. It is curious
that the same unusual season should have produced the same abnormality
in places so far apart, practically representing all the hop districts
of the country.
"Till James's Day be past and gone,
You might grow hops or you might grow none."
St. James's Day is July 25, and so uncertain was the crop in the days
before insecticides were in use, that the saying fairly represents the
specially speculative nature of the crop in former times. As an
instance of the effects of varying years I had the uncommon experience
of picking two crops in twelve months: the first in a very late season
when the picking did not commence till after Worcester hop-fair day,
September 19th, and the second the following year when picking was
unusually early, and was completed before the fair day. At Farnham,
where many of the tradespeople indulged in a little annual flutter as
small hop growers, in addition to a more regular source of income from
their respective trades, it was said that the first question on
meeting each other was not, "How are you?" but "How are _they_?"
Hop-picking is always somewhat reminiscent of the Saturnalia; with
hundreds of strangers from distant villages and a few gipsies and
tramps, it is not possible to enforce strict discipline, for it is
very necessary to keep the people in good-humour. On the final day of
the picking they expect to be allowed to indulge in a good deal of
horse-play, the great joke being suddenly to upset an unpopular
individual into a crib among the hops. Shrieks of laughter greet the
disappearance of the unlucky one, of whom nothing is to be seen except
a struggling leg protruding from the crib.
The last operation in the hop garden is stacking the poles, and
burning the bine, a most inflammable material which makes a prodigious
blaze. As the men watch the leaping flames the same remark is made
year after year--"fire is a good servant, but a bad master." These
fires seem a great waste of good fibrous matter, as in former times
the bine was utilized for making coarse sacking and brown paper.
During the war I suggested to the National Salvage Council that, owing
to the scarcity of both these articles, it might be worth while to
attempt the resuscitation of the manufacture. The suggestion was
followed by experiments which produced quite a useful brown paper of
which I received a sample, but the cost of treatment was unfortunately
prohibitive from the commercial point of view.
Worcester hop fair is the start of the trade, and the market is held
behind the Hop-Pole Hotel, where there are spacious stores and offices
for the merchants. When the crop is bountiful the stores are filled to
overflowing, and the ancient Guildhall built in 1721 has to be
requisitioned. On either side of the doorway stand the statues of
Carolus I. and Carolus II., who must have watched the entrance and the
exit of innumerable pockets. Worcester is distinguished as the
Faithful City, for like the County it had small use for Cromwell and
his Roundheads; and to this day, on the date of the restoration of
Charles II.--"the twenty-ninth of May, oak apple day"--a spray of oak
or an oak-apple is in some villages worn as a badge of loyalty, the
penalty for non-observance being a stroke on the hands with a
stinging-nettle.
It was a great relief to get away from my 300 pickers and ride the
eighteen miles to Worcester on my bicycle, through the lovely river
scenery of the Vale of Evesham, the hedges drooping beneath the weight
of brilliant berries, the orchards loaded with apples, the clean
bright stubbles, and the cattle in the lush aftermath; then, after a
visit to the busy hop-market and a stroll among the curio shops in New
Street, to return by a different road as the shadows were lengthening
beside the copses and the hedgerow timber trees.
In former times the October fair at Weyhill, near Andover, was the
market for the Hampshire and Farnham hops; it was the custom for the
growers to send them by road, and load back with cheese brought to the
fair by the Wiltshire farmers. I heard of a Hampshire grower, who in a
year of great scarcity had spent some time trying to sell several
pockets to an anxious but reluctant buyer, unwilling to give the price
asked--£20 a hundredweight. They continued the deal in the evening at
the inn at Andover, where both were staying, and said "Good-night"
without having concluded the bargain. The grower was in bed and almost
asleep when he heard a knock at his door, and a voice, "Give you £18,"
which he refused. Next morning trade was dull and the buyer would not
repeat his offer, and at the end of the week the grower sent his hops
home again. Prices continued to fall, until two years later he sold
the same lot at 5s. a hundredweight to a cunning speculator, who took
them out to sea, after claiming a return of the duty (about £1 a
hundredweight originally paid by the grower), which the Excise
refunded on _exported_ hops. The hops went overboard of course, and
the buyer netted the difference between the price he paid and the
amount received for the refunded duty.
At these old fairs the showmen and gipsies take large sums in the
"pleasure" departments for admission to their exhibitions--swings,
roundabouts, shooting-galleries, and coco-nut shies. In Evesham
Post-Office a gipsy woman once asked me to write a letter; she handed
me an order for £10, and instructed me to send it to a London firm for
£5 worth of best coco-nuts and £5 worth of seconds. They were for use
on the shies; it struck me as a large supply, and the economical
division of the qualities as ingenious.