CIDER. 173 
consumption; and generally all strong and pleasant Cider 
excites and cleanses the stomach, strengthens the digestion, 
and infallibly frees the kidneys and bladder from breeding the 
gravel, and stone, especially if it be of the genuine Irchin-field 
Red Strake (the famous Red Strake of Herefordshire, and 
surnamed the Scudamore’s Crab), not omitting how excellently 
it holds out good many years to improvement if full-body’d and 
strong, even in the largest and most capacious vessels; so as 
when for ordinary drink our honest countrymen and citizens 
shall come to drink it moderately diluted (as now they do 
six-shilling beer in London and other places) they will find it 
marvellously conduce to health; and labouring people, where 
it is so drunk, affirm that they are move strengthen’d for hard 
work by such Cider than by the very best beer.” _ ‘* Innumerable 
are the virtues of Cider, as of Apples alone, which being raw-eaten 
relax the belly, especially the sweet, and their concoction ; 
depress vapours ; being roasted, or coddled, are excellent in raw 
distempers, resist melancholy, spleen, pleurisy, strangury, and, 
being sweeten’d with sugar, abate inveterate colds. These are 
the common effects even of raw Apples; but Cider performs 
it all, and much more, as more active, and pure. In a word, 
we pronounce it for the most wholesome drink of Europe, as 
specially sovereign against the scorbute, the stone, spleen, and 
what not.” 
Cider nowadays is brought to such perfection at the regular 
Cider-factories, that not more than 4 per cent of alcohol need 
be contained in the liquor thus manufactured. Apples are 
chosen carefully (whereas heretofore the farmers took all, and 
sundry), the pulp is treated by hydraulic pressure, and the 
juice runs into barrels with the fermentation accurately regulated, 
while finally the liquid is filtered through sterilized cotton-wool, 
and thus the Cider becomes a most safe drink, even for gouty 
persons ; this last fact is of great public importance, seeing that 
almost everyone is in the present day a victim more or less to 
uric acid. The chief fruit acid in Ciders is malic, whilst analysis 
shows also the presence of salicylic acid, formalin, and other 
chemical constituents. The Latin name was Pomaceum. Cider 
apples were originally introduced by the Normans. and the 
beverage began to be brewed in 1284. The Hereford orchards 
were first planted in the time of Charles the First. Old, natural 
Cider invariably forms a slight deposit, or crust, at the bottom 
