CHAPTER XXXVI. 

 CIDER AS A " PRIVILEGE." 



PROBABLY no toil of the labouring man in this country, 

 as indeed elsewhere in the agricultural regions of the 

 world, occasions quite so much " thirst " as toil in the 

 open fields, especially in summer when labour is 

 conducted under the trying conditions of heat. It 

 follows, therefore, quite naturally, it may be allowed, 

 that in apple districts the well-known beverage obtained 

 by the fermentation of the luscious juice of the fruit 

 which has its earliest mention in connection with the 

 Garden of Eden should be used for the drink of the 

 labourers. In the western country especially the 

 famous orchards form one of the prettiest and most 

 striking features of that region, nestling, as these great 

 apple nurseries do, in the midst of green and smiling 

 valleys, and on the slopes of the bold or gentle elevations 

 of its hills and other uplands. The present writer's 

 remark of nearly forty years ago, when he penned the 

 following lines, are equally true of to-day : 



" Beautiful in itself by the picturesque ruggedness of 

 its trunk, limbs, boughs, and twigs, mossy as these often- 

 times are, and splashed with the gold and silver of encrust- 

 ing lichen, the apple-tree is a marvel of productive utility ; 

 and hence not only do the extensive apple orchards of the 

 west of England furnish, for consumption, large supplies 

 of their pleasant and edible fruit, to markets far outside 

 their own immediate districts, but they provide the raw 

 material for the manufacture, within those districts, of large 

 quantities of cider." 



A good deal is exported, and an appreciable quantity 



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