“Yes, and it can be converted into many other things. Boiled with water it becomes paste. After entering into the composition of beer it can be turned into vinegar by being left exposed to the air and allowed to sour. But we will not now dwell on these various changes. Let us return to the subject of beer. In order to impart to that beverage the bitter taste and the aroma peculiar to it, we use hops. Barley is the fundamental ingredient of the drink, hops are the flavoring. “The hop-plant is a long, slender vine unable to hold itself up without supporting poles, around which it twines to the height of perhaps ten meters. Its leaves are lobed somewhat like those of the grape, and its fruit takes the shape of cones or catkins similar to those of the pine-tree, but much smaller and composed of thin scales coated with a sort of bitter resin. It is these cones that are used in making beer. Hops are extensively cultivated in Alsace and in Germany. The chief enemies of the hop-vine are two worms, one of which nibbles the roots and the other the inside of the stem or vine. “The epialidæ are distinguished from all other moths by their very short antennæ. Their larvæ live in the ground and feed on roots. The most important member of this family is the hop-moth, of which the male has white wings touched with silver and edged with a reddish border, and the female has fore wings of bright yellow with tawny edges and two tawny oblique stripes. The grub is whitish, covered with little yellow tubercles overgrown with black hair. It does great damage to hop plantations by gnawing the roots. To destroy it the hop-grower is advised to spray the base of the vine with water in which hog-manure has been left to steep—an application that is said to kill the worms. “Within the stem of the plant lives the grub of the pyralis that I show you here. The moth has dark-yellow fore wings edged with a scalloped stripe of a lighter shade and marked with a number of red spots. The hind wings are white with purple spots and yellowish edges.” “Alongside of that moth there are two more in your box,” Emile pointed out. “They are the madder-moth and the woad-moth. Madder used to be cultivated for its root, which yields a red dye, the most beautiful and lasting of all red dyes.” “Isn’t Mother Ambroisine’s Sunday kerchief dyed with madder?”