The hops used in beer-brewing are the female flowers of the hop plant known to botanists as the _Humulus lupulus_ of Linnæus. At first sight it may seem strange that hops and wolves should have anything in common, but it has been explained that the word _lupulus_ comes from the name by which the Romans called the hop plant—_Lupus Salictarius_—the idea being that the hop was as destructive among the willows (where it grew) as a wolf among sheep. Though hops are now staple articles of a large commerce, and largely cultivated in England, America, Belgium, France, and our colonies, some few hundred years ago their valuable qualities were little known in this country. How, when, and where the flowers of the hop plant were first used to give to beer its delicious flavour and keeping qualities, is not {66} accurately known. Pliny, in his _Natural History_, states that the Germans preserved ale with hops, and there is a Rabbinical tradition, referring to still earlier times, to the effect that the Jews, during their captivity in Babylon, found the use of hopped ale a protection against their old enemy, leprosy. In a letter of donations, the great King Pepin uses the word “Humuloria,” meaning hop gardens. Mesne, an Arabian physician, who wrote about the year 845, also mentions hops; and Basil Valentine, an alchemist of the 14th century, specifically refers to the use of the hop in beer. Dr. Thudichum, in his pamphlet, _Alcoholic Drinks_, tells us that in early days of beer production wild hops only were used, as is the practice at the present day in Styria, but that in some foreign countries the plant has been largely cultivated for nearly a thousand years. It is a well-known fact that in the eighth and ninth centuries, hop gardens, called Humuloria or Humuleta, existed in France and Germany.