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.