If hops only grew in the Far East we should think wonders
of so powerful a plant. At hop-picking a girl can earn about 10_s_. a
week, so that it is not such a highly paid employment as might be
supposed from the talk there is about it. The advantages are sideways, so
to say; a whole family can work at the same time, and the sum-total
becomes considerable. Hopping happily comes on just after corn harvest,
so that the labourers get two harvest-times. The farmers find it an
expensive crop. It costs 50_l_. or 60_l_. to pick a very small garden,
and if the Egyptian plague of insects has prevailed the price at market
will not repay the expenditure. The people talk much of a possible duty
on foreign hops. The hop farmer should have a lady-bird on his seal ring
for his sign and token, for the lady-bird is his great friend. Lady-birds
(and their larvae) destroy myriads of the aphides which cause rust, and a
flight of lady-birds should be welcomed as much as a flight of locusts is
execrated in other countries.
II.
One of the hop-picking women told me how she went to church and the
parson preached such a curious sermon, all about our 'innerds' (inwards,
insides), and how many 'boanes' we had, and by-and-by 'he told us that we
were the only beasts who had the use of our hands.' Years since at
village schools the girls used to swallow pins; first one would do it,
then another, presently half the school were taking pins. Ignorant of
physiology! Yet they did not seem to suffer; the pins did not penetrate
the pleura or lodge in the processes.
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