introduction of hops. The oldest writers who treat of the good and

bad effects of hops, reckon among the latter, that they dried up the body and increased melancholy; but among their good qualities, they praise their property of preserving liquors from corruption[947]. It was soon remarked also, that the keeping of beer depended a great deal on the season in which it was brewed; for M. Anton quotes from the Ilm statutes of 1350, that people were permitted to brew only from Michaelmas to St. Walpurgis’ day[948]; at other times it was forbidden under certain penalties. At that period various kinds of beer seem to have been in use, and perhaps became fashionable instead of wine, coffee, and tea. Thus M. Anton quotes, from a Hervord document of the year 1144, _cervisia mellita_ and _non mellita_. However, even at present, honey is used for many kinds of beer; such for example as that brewed at Nimeguen, which has an extensive sale under the name of _moll_, a word derived no doubt from _mollig_, mild; which is applied also to wine. In the same manner the English used liquorice. In England, the use of hops seems to have been introduced at a much later period; but it is said that they were at first considered as a dangerous production, and that the planting of them was forbidden in the reign of Henry VI., about the middle of the fifteenth century[949]. This I will not venture to deny, though I very much doubt it. I have found no proof of it in any English writer, and I have searched in vain for the prohibition among the orders of that prince, in which however there occurs one in regard to malt[950]. On the contrary, many English historians assert that the use of hops was first made known in England by some people from Artois, in the reign of Henry VIII., or about the year 1524[951]. It is nevertheless true, that this sovereign, in an order respecting the servants of his household, in the twenty-second year of his reign, that is in 1530, forbade brewers to put into ale hops and sulphur[952]. But perhaps his majesty was not fond of hopped beer. Even at present, most of the dictionaries call ale, beer brewed without hops; and an English physician says expressly that the difference between ale and beer is, that hops are not employed for the former[953]. But according to the English instructions for brewing, hops are required for ale also. In the English laws hops are mentioned for the first time in the fifth year of the reign of Edward VI., that is in 1552, at which period some privileges were granted to _hop-grounds_. The cultivation of hops however, which, like the art of brewing, has in England been carried to the greatest perfection, was very limited even in the beginning of the seventeenth century; for James I., in the fifth year of his reign, that is in 1603, found it necessary to forbid, under severe penalties, the introduction and use of spoilt and adulterated hops. At that time, therefore, England did not produce a quantity sufficient for its own consumption. In Sweden, at least in the fifteenth century, hops seem not to have been very common[954]; for at that time sweet gale (_Myrica gale_) was employed for beer; and so generally, that king Christopher, in 1440, confirmed the old law, that those who collected this plant before a certain period, on any common or on another person’s land, should be subjected to a fine. A similar punishment however was appointed for the too early picking of hops; and the cultivation of them was so strongly enforced, that every farmer who had not forty poles with hops growing round them was punished, unless he could show that his land was unfit for producing them[955]. But it was long doubted in Sweden whether this plant would thrive in the cold climate of that country; in which however it grows wild. In the time of Gustavus I., who became king in 1523, Sweden was obliged to give for the foreign hops it used 1200 _schifpfunds_ of iron, which was about the ninth part of all the iron made in the kingdom. In the year 1558 the king complained, in an edict, that a pound of hops cost as much as a barrel of malt, and on that account was desirous to encourage the cultivation of the hop-plant. But his exertions were attended with so little effect, that even under the reign of queen Christina, that is, in the middle of the seventeenth century, all the hops used in the kingdom were imported from Germany, and particularly from Brunswick and Saxony. The queen had some hop plantations as rarities in her garden; yet the cultivation of hops was begun under this princess, and carried so far that German hop farmers, who before had been accustomed to travel to Sweden every three years, to receive payment and take new orders, returned very much dissatisfied, and suffered a part of their hop-grounds to run to waste. Under Charles XI., however, who reigned from 1660 to 1697, the cultivation of hops was first brought to a state of considerable improvement. In the year 1766, Linnæus hazarded a conjecture that hops, spinage, chenopodium, tarragon, and many other garden vegetables were brought to Europe by the Goths, during their periods of emigration, from Russia and particularly the Ukraine, because the old writers make no mention of these plants, and because in those districts they all grow wild at present[956]. It however appears certain that hops belong to our indigenous plants, as they grow everywhere wild in Germany, Switzerland, England, and Sweden, and even in countries into which the cultivation of them has never yet been introduced, and where it cannot be supposed that they accidentally became wild by being conveyed from hop-fields and gardens. The want of information in works older than the emigrations of the northern tribes, is no proof that a plant did not then exist. At that time there was no Linnæus to transmit plants to posterity, as Hipparchus, according to the expression of Pliny, did the stars. Such vegetable productions only as had become remarkable on account of their utility or hurtful qualities, or by some singular circumstance, occur in the works of the ancients. Many others remained unknown, or at least without names, till natural history acquired a systematic form; and even at present botanists have often the satisfaction to discover some plant not before observed. Is it probable that the Chinese even are acquainted with our hops? They have a kind of beer made from barley and wheat, which is called _tarasun_; and according to the account of J. G. Gmelin, who purposely made himself acquainted with the preparation of it, hops formed by pressure into masses, shaped like a brick, are added to it[957]. It is well known that the Chinese have also a kind of tea formed into cakes by strong pressure. Our hops are compressed in the same manner in Bohemia; and in that state will keep without losing any of their strength for fifty years. They are put into a sack or bag of coarse canvass, and subjected to a press. A square sewed bag, each side of which is two ells, contains fifty bushels of hops prepared in this manner; and when any of them are required for brewing, the bag is made fast to a beam, and as much as may be necessary is cut out with an axe. The whole mass is of a brown colour, and has a resemblance to pitch, in which not a single hop-leaf can be distinguished. Whether the Chinese conceived the idea of employing our common hops for the like purpose, is a question of some importance in regard to the history of them; but at present I am not able to answer it. [Hops are extensively cultivated in Kent, Sussex, and Herefordshire; and to a less extent in Worcestershire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Surrey, and several other counties. From 50,000 to 60,000 acres of land are covered in England with hop-gardens, about one-half being in Kent; an excise duty of 18_s._ 8_d._ per cwt. is levied upon their produce. British hops are exported to Hamburg, Antwerp, St. Petersburg, New York, Australia, and other places. A trifling quantity is also imported, principally from Flanders. The duty on hops of the growth of Great Britain produced in 1842, £260,979.] FOOTNOTES [917] One of these, in particular, is J. F. Tresenreuter, in A Dissertation on Hops, which was printed at Nuremberg, 1759, 4to, with a preface by J. Heumann. [918] Σμίλαξ τραχεῖα. [919] Dioscor., iv. 244. [920] Hist. Plant. iii. 18. [921] xxi. 15, sect. 50. [922] Cato De Re Rustica, xxxvii. p. 55. [923] Most of the passages in ancient authors which relate to beer have been collected by Dithmar in his edition of Tacitus De Moribus German. cap. xxiii.; and by Meibom De Cerevisiis Veterum in Gronovii Thes. Antiq. Græc., ix. p. 548. [924] [The word _humulus_ is derived from _humus_, fresh earth, the hop only growing in rich soils.--Loudon and Sir W. Hooker.] [925] This valuable monument of antiquity is to be found in (Nyerup) Symbolæ ad Literaturam Teutonicam, sumtibus A. F. Suhm, Havniæ 1787, 4to, pp. 331, 404. [926] Lib. xviii. cap. 7. [927] Histor. Stirpium, ii. p. 290. [928] Biblioth. Botan. i. p. 161. [929] Originum lib. xx. 3, p. 487. [930] Speculum Naturale, lib. xi. 109. [931] Lib. v. cap. 7. [932] Joh. Mesuæ Opera. Venetiis, 1589, fol. [933] Du Cange Doublet Hist. Sandionys. i. 3, p. 669. [934] In C. Meichelbeck’s Histor. Frising. I. Instrument. p. 359. [935] See the works quoted by Tresenreuter, p. 15: Pezii Thesaur. Anecdot. i. P. 3, pp. 68, 72.--J. C. Harenberg Histor. Gandersheim. p. 1350.--Eccard Origin. Saxon. p. 59.--Leukfeld Antiquit. Poeldens. p. 78. [936] F. G. de Sommersberg Silesiac. Rer. Scriptor. i. pp. 801, 829, 857.--Von Ludwig Reliq. Histor. v. p. 425.--Tresenreuter, p. 20, quotes later information in the fourteenth century. [937] L. ii. art. 52. [938] Art. 126. [939] For an account of the author and his works, which are now scarce, see Haller’s Bibliotheca Botan. i. p. 222. [940] Article Ydromel. [941] This celebrated work, known as the Schola Salernitatis, was first printed in 1649, and has since been frequently republished and translated into various languages. A very complete edition, with an English version and a history of the book, was given by the late Sir Herbert Croft. The history of this book may also be found in Giannone’s History of Naples. [942] [Loudon observes in his Encycl. Plants, that _lupulus_ is a contraction of _Lupus salictarius_, the name by which it was, according to Pliny, formerly called, because it grew among the willows, to which, by twining round and choking up, it proved as destructive as the wolf to the flock.] [943] Columella, x. 116. The root (radish?) was sliced and put into the Egyptian beer along with steeped lupines, in order to render it more palatable. Lorsbach über eine Stelle des Ebn Chalican. Marburg, 1789, 8vo, p. 21. [944] Plin. xviii. 14, sect. 36.--Geopon. ii. 39, p. 189, and the passages quoted there by Niclas: Galen. de Fac. Simpl. Med. vi. 144: and Alim. Fac. i. 30. [945] De Re Rustica, i. 13, 3. [946] This document is in Matthæi Analecta Vet. Ævi, iii. p. 260. See also Du Cange, under the word _Grutt_, and its derivatives. [947] St. Hildegard in Physicæ, lib. ii. cap. 74. Petro Crescentio d’Agricoltura, lib. vi. cap. 56. This writer lived in the thirteenth century. [948] A celebrated female saint of the eighth century, said to have been a native of England, but canonised in Germany, where she was abbess of a nunnery at Heidensheim in Thuringia.--TRANS. [949] This is asserted in the Götting. Gel. Anzeigen, 1778, p. 323. [950] Statutes at Large, vol. i. p. 591. [951] Husbandry and Trade Improved, by J. Houghton. Lond. 1727, 8vo. ii. p. 457.--Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce. [The fermented liquor anciently in use in this country is usually termed ale, but we have in fact no certain account of its composition, and all that is now known respecting it is, that it was a pleasant but intoxicating liquor. Our Saxon ancestors were so far addicted to its use, that so far back as the time of king Edgar, it was found necessary to order marks to be made in their cups at a certain height, beyond which they were forbidden to fill, under a severe penalty. This probably gave rise to the _peg tankard_, of which there are a few still remaining. It held two quarts, and had on the inside a row of eight pegs, one above the other, from top to bottom, so that the space between each contained half a pint. The law of compotation was, that every one who drank was to empty the exact space between peg and peg, and if he either exceeded or fell short of his measure, he was bound to drink down to the next. In archbishop Anselm’s canons, made in the council of London, A.D. 1102, we find an order, by which priests were enjoined not to go to drinking bouts, nor to drink to pegs.] [952] Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 157. [Indeed, at a much later period, the common council of the city of London petitioned parliament against the use of hops, “in regard that they would spoyl the taste of drinks and endanger the people.”--See Walter Blithe in his Improver Improved, published in 1649.] [953] Hamburgisches Magazin, xxxiii. p. 465. [954] Instead of this plant, which grows wild in Sweden, another wild plant in Germany called _post_, and by botanists _Ledum palustre_, was in old times used for beer by poor people in its stead; but it occasioned violent headaches.--See Linnæi Amœnitat. Acad. viii. p.