BERKSHIRE HOPS.
A little event at the Brewers' Exhibition in London suggests that farmers in England are much too shy of innovation. The silver medal for hops went not to Kent or Worcestershire, but to Berkshire, where an experiment in the growing of this crop was made two or three years ago. You would have been laughed to scorn if you had said five years ago that hops could he grown well at Kingston-Bagpuize, where the land was slowly going out of all cultivation in any degree intensive. As in the neighbourhood of Wye, few prizes for produce excite keener interest than those for hops and barley ; and this surprising victory for Berkshire should be of some service in calling attention to the really wonderful enterprise in inten- sive farming carried out by Mr. Tanner on behalf of the late Member for the district.
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