i88 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



when the land was allowed to return to pasture, a proceeding 

 which was quite contrary to their previously quoted assertion 

 that tillage was best for fruit trees. The cider-makers were 

 quite convinced, as many are to-day, that rotten apples were 

 invaluable for cider, and the lady who was famous for the best 

 cider in the county never allowed one to be thrown away. 

 A generation later than this Marshall ^ noted that in Here- 

 fordshire the management of orchards and their produce 

 was far from being well understood, though ' it has ever 

 borne the name of the first cider county '. All the old fruits 

 were lost or declining in quality, the famous Red Streak 

 Apple was given up and the Squash Pear no longer made to 

 flourish. 



As for prices, in 1707 apples were selling at Liverpool for 

 V 2,s. 6d. a bushel,^ a very good price if we allow for the differ- 

 ' ence in the value of money, but prices then were entirely 

 dependent on the English seasons ; no foreign apples were 

 imported, and a night's frost would treble prices in a day. In 

 iy4'2, at Aspall Hall, Suffolk, apples, apparently for cider, 

 were lo^?. a bushel, in 1745 i-f. a bushel, in 1746 only 4^., 

 and in 1747 cider there was worth 6d. a gallon.^ At the 

 end of the century, in 'the great hit' of 1784, common apples 

 were less than 6d. a bushel, the best about 2,s.; in 1786 the 

 price was twice as high, owing to a short crop. Inciden- 

 tally there is mentioned in the Complcat Cydcrman a novel 

 implement, 'a most profitable new invented five-hoe plough, 

 that after the ground has been once ploughed with a common 

 plough will plough four or five acres in one day with only 

 four horses, and by a little alteration is fitted to hoe turnips 

 or rape crops as it is now practised by the ordinary farmers ;' 

 much too favourable an estimate of the ordinary farmer, as 

 Young found horse-hoeing rare. 



^ Rural Economy of Gloucestershire (1788), ii. 206. 



^ Blundell's Diary, p. 55. 



' MS. accounts of Mr. Chevallier, of Aspall Hall. 



