SOCIETY OF CENTRAL ILLINOIS. 255 



commonly is on the old hand-press, the product was part cider and part 

 pumace, a muddy compound flavored with rotten apples from which 

 the average customer turned in disgust, or drank because it was called 

 cider. 



Cider-makers have replaced these old mills with the improved 

 machinery of the present, pay greater attention to the quality of the 

 fruit used, and the cleanliness of everything that comes into contact 

 with cider. It is noAv possible, with improved methods, to make cider 

 that is a pleasure to place upon the market, and the public once 

 having tasted cider of fine quality is beginning to distinguish 

 between a good and a poor article. There yet remain many, however, 

 who assume that cider is of necessity all alike, their impression com- 

 ing from that which they drank through straws when they were 

 boys on the old New England farms. 



When all cider-makers are alive to the necessity of a better ar- 

 ticle, improved methods of cider-making and refining, then the de- 

 mand for cider will increase until the temperance drink of the Am- 

 erican people will be pure sweet cider. 



It is not my purpose to enter upon the discussion of sweet cider 

 as a harmless, health-producing drink, for in a body of intelligent 

 horticulturists this is not necessary. The sentiment of the times de- 

 mand that cider shall possess no effect calculated to produce intoxi- 

 cation, or lead thereto; and this sentiment is right and just, and if 

 we, as cider makers, fail to meet this demand, we must close up shop. 

 It becomes necessary, then, to keep cider siveet. To this end we 

 must direct our experiments. In the first place, sound, ripe fruit is 

 a primary necessity, for without that, all future treatment is without 

 avail. It is as impossible to make first-class cider out of poor fruit 

 as it would be to convert a scrub into a thoroughbred. The apples 

 must be reduced to a fine pulp, and expressed through cloths which 

 act as a filter, retaining all of the pumace. The cloths, vats and 

 press must be scalded at least once each day, and kept perfectly pure 

 and sweet. The product then, after filtering, is ready to be stored in 

 the cellar in perfectly clean barrels. 



Thus far, then, to sum up, we may say that good cider* depends 

 upon sound, ripe fruit, clean handling, clean packages, and the best 

 machinery. 



Before entering upon the process for the preservation of cider 

 in its sweet state, I. must digress for a moment, to discuss the cause 

 of fermentation, that we may better understand the difficulty that 

 the cider-maker meets with in attempting to control fermentation. 

 I take it that all understand the germ theory of fermentation; that 

 certain microscopic spores exist in the air, floating here and there 

 with seemingly no purpose in view any more than the butterfly as it 

 flies from flower to flower. But in the great laboratory of Nature, 

 even those microscopic organisms have a mission to perform. Ac- 

 cording to this theory, these spores come into contact with the cider 



