23S 



CIDER. 



a tomb which was honoured by emperors and king's. 

 There rests the noble Ximene, and muter the trees 

 before the convent lies the faithful horse Babieca. 



The adventures of the Cid, particularly his banish- 

 ment and return are the subjects of the oldest Cas- 

 tilian poem, probably composed :it the end of the. 

 twelfth century, Poema del Cid ft Cumpeudor, which 

 was published in the Coleceion de Poesias Castellanas 

 anteriores a Siglo XJ""., of Sanchez, in 1775, and has 

 been reprinted in Schubert's Biblioteica Castellana 

 Portugues y Provenzal. The latter ballads, which 

 commemorate the hero, were at the beginning of the 

 sixteenth century, collected by Fernando del Castil- 

 lo, and, in 1614, again published by Pedro de Florez 

 in the Romancero General. There has also been 

 published a collection by Escobar Historia del nu/y 

 noble y valeroso Caballero el Cid Rny Diaz, en Ro- 

 mancfs (Lisbon, 1615 ; Seville, 1632). A great 

 number have been published in the Collection of the 

 best Ancient Spanish Historical, Chivalrous and 

 Moorish Poems, by Depping (Altenburg and Leip- 

 sic, 1817). There are, in all, above a hundred of 

 these ballads extant. Herder in his beautiful Cid 

 (Tubingen, 180(5), has translated into German seventy 

 of these ballads (probably some of the collection of 

 Escobar). John von Muller has written the life of 

 the Cid (in the eighth volume of his works) from 

 Spanish sources, mostly from an old chronicle 

 printed in Risco's Historia del Cid (Madrid, 1792). 

 Whatever chronicles and songs have conveyed to us 

 of the history of the Cid, is collected in the Chronicle 

 of the Cid, from the Spanish, by Robert Southey 

 ^London, 1808, 4to). 



CIDER ; a liquor made from the juice of apples. 

 The quality of this popular beverage depends princi- 

 pally on the following particulars, viz. 1. kind of fruit ; 

 2. condition of the fruit when ground ; 3. manner 

 of grinding and pressing ; 4. method of conducting 

 the requisite fermentation, and precautions to be taken 

 against its excess. 



1. The characteristics of a good cider apple (ac- 

 cording to Mr Buel of Albany) are, a red skin, yel- 

 low and often tough and fibrous pulp, astringency, 

 dnmess, and ripeness at the cider-making season. 

 Mr Knight, a famous English horticulturist, asserts, 

 that, " when the rind and pulp are green, the cider 

 will always be thin, weak, and colourless ; and when 

 these are deeply tinged with yellow, it will, however 

 manufactured, or in whatever soil the fruit may have 

 grown, almost always possess colour and either 

 strength or richness." It is observed by Crocker, in 

 his tract on The Art of making and managing Cider, 

 tliat the most certain indications of the ripeness of 

 apples are the fragrance of their smell, and their spon- 

 taneously dropping from the trees. When they are in 

 this state of maturity, in a dry day, the limbs may, he 

 says, be slightly shaken, and partly disburdened of 

 their golden store ; thus taking such apples only as 

 are ripe, and leaving the unripe longer on the trees, 

 that they may also acquire a due degree of maturity. 

 Mr Buel observes, that " the only artificial criterion 

 employed to ascertain the quality of an apple for 

 cider, is the specific gravity of its must, or unfennented 

 juice ; or the weight compared with that of water. 

 This, says Knight, indicates, with very considerable 

 accuracy, the strength of the future cider. Its weight 

 and consequent value are supposed to be increased in 

 the ratio of the increase of saccharine matter." Mr 

 Knight says that the strongest and most highly-flavour- 

 ed cider which has been obtained from the apple, was 

 produced from fruit growing on a shallow loam, on a 

 limestone basis. All the writers on the subject seem 

 to agree that calcareous earth should form a compo- 

 nent part of the soil of a cider-orchard. Coxe says 

 the soil which yields good wheat and clover is best 



| for a rider-orchard. Mr Buel states, ' My own ob- 

 servation would induce me also to prefer a dry and 

 somewhat loose soil, in which the roots destined to 

 furnish food for the tree and fruit may penetrate free- 

 ly, and range extensively in search of nutriment." 



2. Condition of the fruit. Fruit should be used 

 when it has attained full maturity, ami before it be- 

 gins to decay. The indications of ripeness we have 

 above stated. Each kind of apple should be manu- 

 factured separately, or, at least, those kinds only 

 should be mixed which ripen about the same time. 

 Mr Buel says, " The apples should ripen on the tree, 

 be gathered when dry, in a cleanly manner, spread 

 in an airy, covered situation, if practicable, for a 

 time, to induce an evaporation of aqueous matter, 

 which will increase the strength and flavour of the 

 liquor, and be separated from rotten fruit, and every 

 kind of filth, before they are ground." 



3. Grinding, &c. The apples should be reduced, 

 by the mill, as nearly as possible to a uniform mass, 

 in which the rind and seeds are scarcely discovera- 

 ble, and the pomace should be exposed to the air. 

 Knight ascertained, by experiments, that, by exposing 

 the reduced pulp to the operation of the atmosphere 

 for a few hours, the specific gravity of the juice in- 

 creased from 1,064 to 1,078 ; and, from the experi- 

 ment being repeated in a closed vessel with atmos- 

 pheric air, he ascertained the accession to be oxygen, 

 which, according to Lavoisier, constitutes sixty-four 

 per cent, of sugar. For fine cider, he recommends 

 that the fruit be ground and pressed imperfectly, and 

 that the pulp be then exposed twenty four hours to 

 the air, being spread and once or twice turned, to 

 facilitate the absorption of oxygen ; that it be then 

 ground again, and the expressed juice be added to it 

 before it is again pressed. A grater cider-mill was 

 presented by J. R. Newell, of Boston, at an exhibi- 

 tion of the Massachusetts agricultural society in the 

 autumn of 1828, for which he received a premium of 

 twelve dollars. It is thus described by the commit- 

 tee who awarded the premium : " It has a wooden 

 cylinder, upon the surface of which nails are fixed : 

 the heads are sharp upon the edges, and project above 

 the cylinder about one eighth of an inch. The apples 

 are filled into a hopper placed over the cylinder, and 

 led into a narrow cavity at the upper side of it. The 

 cylinder is mounted on a high frame, its axes being- 

 placed in composition boxes. A rapid revolution is 

 produced by connecting it with a horse-mill by belts 

 or bands. The apples are reduced to a fine pomace, 

 grated, not pressed. It performed well in the pre- 

 sence of the committee, and grated a barrel of russet 

 apples in one minute thirty-four seconds." 



4. Fermentation. The vinous fermentation com- 

 mences and terminates at different periods, accord- 

 ing to the condition and quality of the fruit, and the 

 state of the weather. According to Knight, the best 

 criterion to judge of the proper moment to rack off 

 (or draw the liquor from the scum and sediment), 

 will be the brightness of the liquor which takes place 

 after the discharge of fixed air has ceased, and a thick 

 crust is collected on the surface. The clear liquor 

 should then be drawn oft" into another cask. If it re- 

 mains bright and quiet, nothing more need be done 

 to it till the succeeding spring; but if a scum collects 

 on the surface, it must immediately be racked off 

 again, as this would produce bad effects if suffered to 

 sink. 



Among the precautions used to prevent excessive 

 fermentation is stumming, which is fuming the cask 

 with burning sulphur. This is done by burning a rag 

 impregnated with sulphur in the cask in which the 

 liquor is to be decanted, after it has been partly filled, 

 and rolling it, so as to incorporate the liquor with the 

 gas. A bottle of French brandy, or half a gallon of 



