There is no certainty about hops, and a hop-grower will readily admit that his trade is little better than gambling. Knowledge, capital, industry are all insufficient to arm him against fate in the shape of red spider, mould, fly, or bad markets, and he is commonly content if he can secure one good crop at average prices in three years. It is a costly cultivation, coming, with rent, rates, taxes, materials, and labour, to an average of £25 per acre. Only land “just so” will serve. A little too heavy, a little too light, or not being drained to perfection, will spell failure, and a hop-garden must be drained, with pipes or tiles, at least as well as a house. The hop-grower’s year begins in March, when the “hills,” or stools, are uncovered and dressed by pruning. Then the poles are set up: from two to four to each “hill.” The “hills” being six feet apart, it is a simple calculation to arrive at the number of poles to the acre. There are 3,600, forming a considerable item in the grower’s accounts. Made of ash, alder, chestnut, larch, or oak, of from ten to twelve years’ growth, the great and constant demand for them has given their characteristic appearance to large tracts of land in Kent and Sussex, where the young woodlands are as much a feature as the hop-gardens and the oast-houses themselves. Poles are from thirteen to fourteen feet long, and cost from twelve shillings to a guinea a hundred, larch being the most lasting. To preserve them as long as possible, they are often dipped in creosote. Early in May the hop-gardens begin to give employment to the women. The young shoots are tied with rushes to the poles, and constantly thinned out, and the poles themselves tied together with a maze of interlacing string for the support of the climbing bine. All through the summer the alleys between the plants must be kept well weeded, and only when August ends does the grower begin to see his reward in sight; but then rain may bring the “mould,” or the “fly” may come, and all his toil be wasted. Only one thing will cure the “fly,” and that is something utterly beyond control—the coming of the “ladybird.” Most people know the ladybird or “lady-cow,” as it is sometimes called: the little winged insect with the hard shell of a post-office red, subject of the old rustic rhyme, in which, placing it on the tip of the finger, it would be addressed in this wise: Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home: Your house is all burnt, and your children all gone. Little pop-pop sits on the cold stone, Crying for mammy, and mammy don’t come. I heard that rhyme very early, and shall never quite lose the forlorn sense of tragedy in it.