Hall has ascertained experimentally that if the bine is cut close to the ground at a time when the whole plant is unripe there are removed in the bine and leaves considerable quantities of nitrogen, potash and phosphoric acid which would have returned to the roots if the bine had not been cut until ripe. The plant, therefore, would retain a substantial store of these constituents for the following year’s growth if the bine were left. Chemical analyses have shown that about 30 ℔ of nitrogen per acre may be saved by allowing the bines to remain uncut, this representing practically one-third of the total amount of nitrogen in the hops, leaf and bine together. There are also from 25 ℔ to 30 ℔ of potash in the growth, of which nine-tenths would return to the roots, with about half the phosphoric acid and a very small proportion of the lime. It has been demonstrated that by the practice of cutting the bines when the hops are picked the succeeding crop is lessened to the extent of about one-tenth. As to stripping off the leaves and lower branches of the plant, it was found that this operation once reduced the crop 10% and once 20%, but that in the year 1899 it did not affect the crop at all. The inference appears to be that when there is a good crop it is not reduced by stripping, but that when there is less vigour in the plant it suffers the more. Hence, it would seem advisable to study the plant itself in connexion with this matter, and to strip a little later, or somewhat less, than usual when the bine is not healthy.
Drying.—After being picked, the hops are taken in pokes—long sacks holding ten bushels—to the oasts to be dried. The oasts are circular or square kilns, or groups of kilns, wherein the green hops are laid upon floors covered with horsehair, under which are enclosed or open stoves or furnaces. The heat from these is evenly distributed among the hops above by draughts below and round them. This is the usual simple arrangement, but patent processes are adopted here and there, though they are by no means general. The hops are from nine to ten hours drying, after which they are taken off the kiln and allowed to cool somewhat, and are then packed tightly into “pockets” 6 ft. long and 2 ft. wide, weighing 112 cwt., by means of a hop-pressing machine, which has cogs and wheels worked by hand. Of late years more care has been bestowed by some of the leading growers upon the drying of hops, so as to preserve their qualities and volatile essences, and to meet the altered requirements of brewers, who must have bright, well-managed hops for the production of light clear beers for quick draught. The use, for example, of exhaust fans, recently introduced, greatly facilitates drying by drawing a large volume of air through the hops; and as the temperature may at the same time be kept low, the risk of getting overfired samples is considerably reduced, though not entirely obviated. The adoption of the roller floor is another great advance in the process of hop-drying, for this, used in conjunction with a raised platform for the men to stand on when turning, prevents any damage from the feet of the workmen, and reduces the loss of resin to a minimum. The best results are obtained when exhaust fans and the roller floor are associated together. In such cases the roller floor, which empties its load automatically, pours the hop cones into the receiving sheets in usually as whole and unbroken a condition as that in which they went on to the kiln.
Pests of the Hop Crop.—In recent years the difficulties attendant upon hop cultivation have been aggravated, and the expenses increased, by regularly recurring attacks of aphis blight—due to the insect Aphis (Phorodon) humuli—which render it necessary to spray or syringe every hop plant, every branch and leaf, with insecticidal solutions three or four times, and sometimes more often, in each season. Quassia and soft-soap solutions are usually employed; they contain from 4 ℔ to 8 ℔ of soft soap, and the extract of from 8 ℔ to 10 ℔ of quassia chips to 100 gallons of water. The soft soap serves as a vehicle to retain the bitterness of the quassia upon the bines and leaves, making them repulsive to the aphides, which are thus starved out. Another pest, the red spider, Tetranychus telarius—really one of the “spinning mites”—is most destructive in very hot summers. Congregating on the under surfaces of the leaves, the red spiders exhaust the sap and cause the leaves to fall, producing the effect known in Germany as “fire-blast.” The hop-wash of soft soap and quassia, so effective against aphis attack, is of little avail in the case of red spider. Some success, however, has attended the use of a solution containing 8 ℔ to 10 ℔ of soft soap to 100 gallons of water, with three pints of paraffin added. It is necessary to apply the washes with great force, in order to break through the webs with which the spiders protect themselves. Hop-washing is done by means of large garden engines worked by hand, but more frequently with horse engines. Resort is sometimes had to steam engines, which force the spraying solution along pipes laid between the rows of hops.
Mould or mildew is frequently the source of much loss to hop-planters. It is due to the action of the fungus Podosphaera castagnei, and the mischief is more especially that done to the cones. The only trustworthy remedy is sulphur, employed usually in the form of flowers of sulphur, from 40 ℔ to 60 ℔ per acre being applied at each sulphuring. The powder is distributed by means of a machine drawn by a horse between the rows. The sulphur is fed from a hopper into a blast-pipe, whence it is driven by a fan actuated by the travelling wheels, and falls as a dense, wide-spreading cloud upon the hop-bines. The first sulphuring takes place when the plants are fairly up the poles, and is repeated three or four weeks later; and even again if indications of mildew are present. It may be added that sulphur is also successfully employed in the form of an alkaline sulphide, such as solution of “liver of sulphur,” a variety of potassium sulphide. (W. Fr.)
HOPE, ANTHONY, the pen-name of Anthony Hope
Hawkins (1863– ), British novelist, who was born on the
9th of February 1863, the second son of the Rev. E. C. Hawkins,
Vicar of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, London. He was educated at
Marlborough and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was president
of the Union Society, and graduated with first classes in Moderations
and Final Schools. He was called to the bar at the Middle
Temple in 1877. He soon began contributing stories and sketches
to the St James’s Gazette, and in 1890 published his first novel,
A Man of Mark. This was followed by Father Stafford (1891),
Mr Witt’s Widow (1892), Change of Air and Sport Royal and
Other Stories (1893). By this time he had attracted by his
vivacious talent the attention of editors and readers; but it
was not till the following year that he attained a great popular
success with the publication (May 1894) of The Prisoner of
Zenda. This was followed a few weeks later by The Dolly Dialogues
(previously published in separate instalments in the
Westminster Gazette). Both books became parents of a numerous
progeny. The Prisoner of Zenda, owing something to the Prince
Otto of R. L. Stevenson, established a fashion for what was
christened, after its fictitious locality, “Ruritanian romance”;
while the Dolly Dialogues, inspired possibly by “Gyp” and other
French dialogue writers, was the forerunner of a whole school
of epigrammatic drawing-room comedy. The Prisoner of Zenda,
with Mr Alexander as “Rupert Rassendyll,” enjoyed a further
success in a dramatized form at the St James’s Theatre, which
did still more to popularize the author’s fame. In 1894 also
appeared The God in the Car, a novel suggested by the
ambiguous influence on English society of Cecil Rhodes’s career;
and Half a Hero, a complementary study of Australian politics.
The same year saw further the publication of The Indiscretion
of the Duchess, in the style of the Dolly Dialogues, and of another
collection of stories named (after the first) The Secret of Wardale
Court. In 1895 Mr Hawkins published Count Antonio, and
contributed to Dialogues of the Day, edited by Mr Oswald Crawfurd.
Comedies of Courtship and The Heart of the Princess
Osra followed in 1896; Phroso in 1897; Simon Dale and
Rupert of Hentzau (sequel of the Prisoner of Zenda) 1898; and
The King’s Mirror, a Ruritanian romance with an infusion of
serious psychological interest, 1899. The author was advancing
from his light comedy and gallant romantic inventions to the
graver kind of fiction of which The God in the Car had been an
earlier essay. Quisante, published in 1900, was a study of
English society face to face with a political genius of an alien
type. Tristram of Blent (1901) embodied an ethical study of
family pride. The Intrusions of Peggy reflected the effects on
society of recent financial fashions. In 1904 he published
Double Harness, and in 1905 A Servant of the Public, two novels
of modern society, containing somewhat cynical pictures of the
condition of marriage. With increasing gravity the novelist
sacrificed some of the charm of his earlier irresponsible gaiety
and buoyancy; but his art retained its wit and urbanity while
