Ch. XXXI.] ORCHARDS. 355 



Chapter XXXI. 



ON ORCHARDS— CIDER AND PERRY. 



The apple and pear-trees which form our orchards are well known not to 

 be the natural production of any soil or climate, the one being a variety of 

 the crab, and the otlier derived from the common wild pear. The native 

 wild crab is subject to considerable diversity in the appearance of its leaves, 

 as well as in the colour, shape, and flavour of its fruit. By selecting and 

 cultivating the fairest of these, all the valuable varieties known throughout 

 Europe have been produced, and by repeated propagation new sorts, dif- 

 fering apparently in species, according to the climate in which they have 

 been grown, have been successively introduced into the various countries of 

 the north ; for in tropical climates they do not come to perfection. The 

 principle, indeed, was well understood by the ancients, and the art was 

 gradually spread over the Continent, and adopted in this country by 

 the Monks, yet orcharding did not become a considerable branch of rural 

 economy in England before the reign of Henry the Eighth. Some 

 artificial varieties had indeed been occasionally imported from Normandy 

 at an early period, but about that time a person of the name of Harris, 

 who was fruiterer to that king, is said to have planted the environs 

 of nearly thirty towns in Kent. This example doubtless introduced the 

 practice upon a more enlarged scale ; but the period when the plantations 

 in Herefordshire, which is the most celebrated cider district, acquired its 

 peculiar eminence, seems to have been the reign of Charles I., when Lord 

 Scudamore retired, after the assassination of his friend the Duke of Buck- 

 ingham, to Home Lacey, where he occupied himself in the honourable 

 employment of a country life, and paid particular attention to the culture of 

 fruit-trees, which afterwards became a favourite amusement among the 

 gentlemen of the county. 



Although few farms of considerable size are in this country without an 

 orchard, the produce of which is, in most cases, larger than can be con- 

 sumed by the family, yet it is only in our southern and western counties, 

 and a few scattered spots in Ireland, that they are planted of such extent as 

 to render the manufacture of cider and perry a material object of farming 

 business ; for although in the part of Scotland distinguished as Clydesdale 

 they amount to several hundred acres, yet they are entirely appropriated to 

 the production of table fruit. In those districts to which we allude, namely, 

 Hereford, Worcester, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, the nature of the 

 soil and the aspect of the ground are generally attended to ; but in other 

 places they are commonly fixed, without regard to either the kind of land 

 or its exposure, being as often found open to a northern as to a southern 

 direction, or to any intermediate point of the compass which may be most 

 convenient to the site of the adjoining homestead. The trees are also 

 usually planted at various distances from each other, more according to 

 whim than the dictates of sound judgment; permitted to grow either 

 straight or crooked, as chance may direct, without pruning, care, or culture; 

 and as they are all in pasture, horses, cows, and hogs are almost universally 

 allowed to eat down the herbage, to bark the stems, and, when within their 

 reach, to browse upon the branches*. 



This is no exaggerated picture of the manner in which the common run 



* In large animals this latter mischief can, however, be prevented by the use of a 

 halter and martingale, attached to a surcingle which is girthed round the body. 



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