io6 THE BOOK OF THE APPLE 



to over-fastidiousness if he acknowledged that a vintage 

 prepared amidst such surroundings would ill please his 

 gorge. The whole arrangement, though full of interest, 

 was unappetising ; for cleanliness, that first essential of 

 cider making, was obviously unheard of. 



Excellent cider has been, and is still being, made by stone 

 mills and presses no more complicated than the one I have 

 described, and no doubt by even more primitive means. 

 Worlidge, in the middle of the seventeenth century, 

 said that it had " been the usage or custome in most 

 places of England, where but small quantities of this 

 Liquor hath been made, for the operators to beat their 

 Fruit in a Trough of Wood or Stone, with Beaters like 

 unto Wooden Pestles, with long handles. By which 

 means three or four Servants or Labourers might in a 

 day's time beat twenty or thirty Bushels of Apples : 

 some part thereof into a Jelly, being often under the 

 Beaters, whilst other part of the Fruit by its slipperi- 

 ness escapes the Beaters ; much of it also by dashing 

 being wasted : yet by this means are made very great 

 quantities of Cider in several places. But when the 

 Fruit increased, that this way became too tedious for 

 the Ciderist, the Horse-Mill was and is still much in 

 use." Worlidge's description of the horse-mill tallies 

 with the description of the old mill I have already given. 

 Later he mentions that " some have taken the pains to 

 Grate Apples on a Grater made of perforated Latten, 

 such that House-wives use to Grate Bread on ; Others, 

 to beat them on a Table with Mauls : but these ways 

 are to be rejected as idle and useless, where you have 

 any considerable plenty of Fruit. To remedy the incon- 

 veniencies, trouble and expences in those several ways 

 that have been hitherto used, you may erect a Mill, the 

 Ichnography whereof, you have in the following Figure." 

 He then gives figures of the parts of a cider mill not very 

 unlike, in essential part, the modern scientific hand-mill. 



