UNIVERSITY HOPS. CHAPTER I. HISTORY, BOTANY, ECONOMIC USES, AND CHEMISTRY OF HOPS. THE hop, so extensively cultivated here and in other countries for the use of the brewer, and so well known to every housekeeper for culinary use, was not unknown to the ancients, being mentioned by the Arabian physician Mesué, who lived about 845. Hops were apparently first used for beer in Germany and in the Dutch breweries about the year 1400, their properties and uses being well understood. It was introduced into England from Flanders in 1524, but its strobiles were not used to preserve English beer, until about the year 1600. Henry VIII., in 1530, forbade the breweries to mix hops in their beer, and somewhat later Parliament was petitioned by Londoners to prohibit their use, " as they would spoil the taste of the drink, and endanger the people." Beckmann ('Hist. of Inv.,' vol. iv. p. 386) states that plantations of hops had begun to be formed in England A.D. 1552. They are first mentioned in the English Statute-book in that year, viz. in the 5th and 6th Edward VI., c. 5 (repealed 5 Eliz., c. 2), an Act directing that land formerly in tillage should again be so cultivated, but excepting, B amongst other ground, "land set with saffron or hops;" and by an Act of Parliament of the first year of James I., anno 1603, c. 18, it appears that hops were then produced in abundance in England. In the oldest book I know about hops (Reynolde Scot's 'Perfite Platforme of a Hoppe Garden'), dated 1574, and printed in black letter, with many prefaces terminating in inverted pyramids of type, Kent is spoken of as the county of hops. The system of cultivation appears to have little changed since then; and the book, if it were not written in the style of an Act of Parliament, and interlarded with moral reflections and allusions to every poet and orator of ancient times, might have been written in the present day. Yet hops, at that date, were but of recent cultivation. For ages, while our ancestors were wont to flavour their ale with ground ivy, and honey, and various bitters, a weed called "hop" had been known about the hedges of England; but no one thought to cultivate it for brewing until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Some say the cultivated plant came first from Flanders, where it was certainly used before our brewers knew its virtues. In France, hop gardens are very ancient. Mention is made of them in some of the oldest records, though what the hops were used for does not appear. In England it had many enemies to contend with at first. The leafy cone-like catkins or imbricated heads (strobili) of the common hop (Humulus lupulus, Lin.), a diœcious plant, with a perennial root, have long been an important article of commerce, and the culture and trade are becoming more and more extensive. The scales are scattered over with resinous spherical glands, which are easily rubbed off, and |