There are, every year, some 50,000 hop-pickers, picking from 35,000 to 40,000 acres of hop-gardens. Of these the larger proportion is contributed by the villagers; but the railways convey about 20,000 from London by the “hopper specials” at very low rates, and many, who cannot afford even those very cheap fares, tramp down. The special trains would make the patrons of the Continental expresses stare. They set out at midnight, or thereabouts, and are filled with a motley crowd, bringing mattresses, blankets, frying-pans, kettles, and a host of small domestic requirements for a fortnight or three weeks. They book to whatever station they fancy as the likeliest point whence to seek a job; for while some hop-pickers, during a steady succession of years, know where they will be welcome, many of them go on sheer speculation, and tramp from village to village until they find vacancies. In later years, and in bad or wet seasons, the number of the unsuccessful claiming admission at the casual wards, especially at Maidstone, has seriously embarrassed the workhouse authorities and those good folk who not only missionise the hoppers with Bible and Prayer Book, but feed and clothe their bodies in this world as well as showing anxiety for their souls in the next. Hop-picking is for many poor Londoners the only holiday they get throughout the year. It is that best of holidays, change of work and of scene. Its chief merits are that it requires no skill, and that the whole family can take part in it, except the baby, who is at any rate brought into the hop-garden to look on, and left to amuse himself or to sleep under an umbrella, while grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, uncles and aunts, and brothers and sisters are all busily filling the bins and earning, according to their degrees of “slippiness,” a shilling to two shillings the day. Each hop-grower is his own dryer: hence the kilns, the strangely cowled “oast-houses” attached to every hop-garden. To these the hops are taken, to be dried. Most oast-houses are circular, that form being considered to distribute the heat more evenly than the square. The interior is instructive, and would not be at all unwelcome on one of those wet and chilly days that are not unknown to the English summer, were it not for the universal practice of mixing sulphur with the coke fires, which, to a stranger, results in an inconvenient hoarseness and sore throat. The reason for the sulphur is that the fumes it throws off give a yellowish colour to the dried hops, a tint conventionally required by the factors, although it makes them neither better nor worse.