HOW TO GROW GOOD ORCHARDS. 343 



houses on wattled hurdles. This keeps it from the 

 rain, by which it becomes sodden when in exposed 

 heaps : then the wind will only partially dry it, and 

 the result will be a general heating of the mass, 

 which results, if not in quick decay amounting to 

 absolute rottenness, yet in that state, technically 

 called "moisey,"* or dead, in which the juices are 

 nearly dried up and the fruit flavourless. 



We have seen heaps of apples, consisting of many 

 waggon-loads, in the orchard at Christmas, when wet 

 and frost had so preyed upon them that none of their 

 proper juices remained. This is certain to make a 

 cider which will be of inferior quality ; and though 

 some of our friends boast of the good quality of their 

 cider which has been made in the roughest manner, 

 yet one cannot help thinking how much better it 

 might have been with the fruit carefully collected, 

 and kept until it could be ground. Still, with all 

 our care in this matter, disappointment is sometimes 

 the result; for it is with cider as with wine, the 

 season will have a great deal to do with it, though 

 with both, the manner of making and storing will be 

 all-important matters, to which we shall advert in 

 the next chapter. 



We much object to the gathering of fruit for any 

 purpose in the wet. Were it not for the expense, 

 it would be better to take advantage of dry weather, 

 and to collect even cider-fruit by hand-picking before 

 it has become dead ripe, and so let the ripening pro- 



* Apple moise, or apple moce, was an old dish made of pressed 

 apples. In cider counties apples are called moisey when they are 

 juiceless, dry, and without flavour — dead. (See Archaic Dictionaries.) 



