410 HOPS.

a chamber, and an attic floor; the tops, or fon of the kilns rising to the page between the two last.

The green or fresh-gathered hops are hoisted, by tackle, to the attic, as a receiving room; from whence they are shot, or sho- velled down, up8n the kiln cloths; and, when dried, are thence thrown down, with equal facility, into the store room: and, from this, are lowered,.in the operation of packing, into the warehouse, on the ground floor.

Of the nop KILN, too, I found a valuable variety, in this District. In two of the dry-~ ing houses that I examined(the one a < public oast” of four kilns, the other a pri- vate one of three) the kilns were invariably heated, with sea coal. But instead of con- veying the heat into the body of the'kiln, by the means of iron cylinders, as in West Kent, flues of brickwork are formed, on the inner side of the walls of the kiln, on the principle of the garden stove, or hot house.- A mode of construction which ap- pears to be safer, and to be calculated to promote a more even and general heat, than the cockles of the Maidstone quarter.

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