sown with teasel and caraway, because these do not come to perfection until the second year; so that the coriander may be harvested without injury to them. It is cultivated solely for the sake of the small globular seeds, which are used by distillers, druggists, and confectioners, to impart an aromatic or pungent flavour. It is sometimes mixed with dough to flavour bread.

CARAWAY SEEDS, I need not say, are employed in the same way; although, as substitutes for plums or currants, I always thought them, when a boy, quite an imposition of the cook. The plant grows wild in many places. It is harvested in July, and threshed out in the field.

F

66

HOPS.

AND now must I travel out of Essex into Kent, to learn something of the management of this plant on a large scale. It must not, however, be supposed that parts of our own county, and of many counties besides Kent, do not produce this important commodity.

The hop plant is a native of Britain; but there is reason to think that our ancestors were not aware of its use, until they learned it from the Continent, in the reign of Henry VIII. Without the dried flower-buds of this plant, which are the hops of commerce, our barley wine, or ale, would be unpalatable and a quickly-spoiling drink; so that, unless some substitute for hops were used of old, we need not