niscent of the Saturnalia; with
hundreds of strangers from distant villages and a few gipsies and
tramps, it is not possible to enforce strict discipline, for it is
very necessary to keep the people in good-humour. On the final day of
the picking they expect to be allowed to indulge in a good deal of
horse-play, the great joke being suddenly to upset an unpopular
individual into a crib among the hops. Shrieks of laughter greet the
disappearance of the unlucky one, of whom nothing is to be seen except
a struggling leg protruding from the crib.

The last operation in the hop garden is stacking the poles, and
burning the bine, a most inflammable material which makes a prodigious
blaze. As the men watch the leaping flames the same remark is made
year after year--"fire is a good servant, but a bad master." These
fires seem a great waste of good fibrous matter, as in former times
the bine was utilized for making coarse sacking and brown paper.
During the war I suggested to the National Salvage Council that, owing
to the scarcity of both these articles, it might be worth while to
attempt the resuscitation of the manufacture. The suggestion was
followed by experiments which produced quite a useful brown paper of
which I received a sample, but the cost of treatment was unfortunately
prohibitive from the commercial point of view.

Worcester hop fair is the start of the trade, and the market is held
behind the Hop-Pole Hotel, where there are spacious stores and offices
for the merchants. When the crop is bountiful the stores are filled to
overflowing, and the ancient Guildhall built in 1721 has to be
requisitioned. On either side of the doorway stand the statues of
Carolus I. and Carolus II., who must have watched the entrance and the
exit of innumerable pockets. Worcester is distinguished as the
Faithful City, for like the County it had small use for Cromwell and
his Roundheads; and to this day, on the date of the restoration of
Charles II.--"the twenty-ninth of May, oak apple day"--a spray of oak
or an oak-apple is in some villages worn as a badge of loyalty, the
penalty for non-observance being a stroke on the hands with a
stinging-nettle.

It was a great relief to get away from my 300 pickers and ride the
eighteen miles to Worcester on my bicycle, through the lovely river
scenery of the Vale of Evesham, the hedges drooping beneath the weight
of brilliant berries, the orchards loaded with apples, the clean
bright stubbles,