"Hop-picking is going on, and people sleep in the garden, and breathe in at the key-hole of the house door. I have been amazed, before this year, by the number of miserable lean wretches, hardly able to crawl, who come hop-picking. I find it is a superstition that the dust of the newly-picked hop, falling freshly into the throat, is a cure for consumption. So the poor creatures drag themselves along the roads, and sleep under wet hedges, and get cured soon and finally." On the whole it is said to be a very indifferent season, but many plantations look promising. "If," as a grower remarks to us in the train, "we could have a little more of this fine weather! There has been too much rain, and too little sun this year." The apples also are a poor crop. [Illustration: Hop-picking in Kent] On a second visit to this pleasant neighbourhood, we see at Mear's Barr Farm, near Rainham, the whole process of hop-picking. True, it is not executed by that ragamuffinly crowd of strangers which Dickens had in his "mind's eye" when he wrote the words just quoted, and which usually takes possession of most of the hop-growing districts of Kent during the picking season, but by an assemblage of native villagers, mostly women, girls, and boys,--neat, clean, and homely,--together with a few men who do the heavier part of the work. They are of all ages, from the tottering old grandmother, careworn wife, and buxom maiden, to the child in perambulator and baby in arms; and in the bright sunlight, amid the groves of festooning green columns, form a most orderly, varied, and picturesque gathering--a regular picnic in fact, judging from the cheerful look on most of the faces, and the merry laugh that is occasionally heard. Mr. Fred Scott, tenant of the farm, of which Lord Hothfield is owner, is kind enough to go over the hop-garden with us, and describe all the details. When the hops are ripe (_i. e._ when the seeds are hard) and ready to be gathered, the pickers swarm on the ground, and a man divides the "bine" at the bottom of the "pole" by means of a bill-hook--not cutting it too close for fear of bleeding--leaving the root to sprout next year, and then draws out the pole, to which is attached the long, creeping bine, trailing over at top. If the pole sticks too fast in the ground, he eases it by means of a lever, or "hop-dog" (a long, stout wooden implement, having a toothed iron projection). "Mind my dog don't bite you, sir," says one of the men facetiously, as we step over this rough-looking tool. Women then carry the poles to, and lay them across, the "bin," a receptacle formed by four upright poles stuck in the ground and placed at an angle, supporting a framework from which depends the "bin-cloth," made of jute or hemp, holding from ten to twenty bushels of green hops, weighing about 1-1/2 lbs. per bushel when dry.