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apple altogether or altered strangely in character. Now it is one of our earliest 
and best cider fruits in the Ledbury district, while in Forsyth’s time, the Dymock 
Red—similar otherwise in description—kept from January to March. 
The Royal Wilding also demands a special notice. It is one of our best 
cider fruits, and I always thought that Herefordshire had the credit of raising 
it until undeceived by Dr. Hogg, who claims that honour for Devonshire. Now 
I find in old Barry Langley so different a plate altogether of the Royal Wilding 
in his time, to what it is now with us, that I must consider them two distinct 
varieties of apples, until disproved by seeing a specimen of this fruit in the autumn 
from Devonshire. 
Of the Forest Styre, I have failed in obtaining any history whatever. It is 
mentioned by the oldest writers, and its praise extolled to the skies when grown 
on light and chalky soils. It is an early sort, and the strength of its cider 
immense. I am told grafts from the old trees canker and perish sooner or later, 
while the cider made now is harsh, and has lost all that charm of flavour for which 
formerly it was so celebrated. 
With the Foxwhelp this is not the case; I mean with the original trees; if 
fruit only can be got the flavour or gust is most prononcé, but from any other trees 
than the original this flavour is barely perceptible. 
With this piece of information I come to a full stop. Evelyn dismisses the 
Foxwhelp in a single line contemptuously, ‘‘as making a cider that requires two or 
three years to come round.” Can I with any sense of self-respect or in common 
justice, leave to the last and dismiss hurriedly our prince of apples, the sole 
survivor in the race of time, our highly-flavoured fruit that like Shelley’s flower is 
“dying of its own sweet loveliness,” and like the ‘‘expiring swan is singing only 
in its death”? No, we “‘orchat lords of Herefordshire,” as represented by the 
Woolhope Club, mean to pay the highest tribute in our power and to make its 
fame immortal by allotting to the Foxwhelp Apple the pride of place, in the first 
number of our Standard Herefordshire Pomona, while as to my humble self, I will 
not, I repeat, insult the time-honoured, lichen-sheathed giant by giving him now 
a beggarly passing notice, but thanking the company for their attention will leave 
some other brother member the high privilege of reading a special paper in honour 
of the Foxwhelp, on its longevity, its specific untransferableness, and its unri- 
valled power in the words of Evelyn (speaking of all good cider), ‘‘in soberly 
exhilarating the spirits of us hypochrondriacal islanders.” 
