1 92 FRUIT FARMING 



fore, and within a decade would be sending fruit here 

 which would be a surprise to many -people. But it 

 would come in when English fruit was over. When 

 English Grapes were finished, there would be a good 

 opening for Grapes from the Cape. Men had gone to 

 the Cape from California, who were laying down 

 hundreds of acres of fruit land, and they would be 

 sending thousands of packages before many years. 

 But it would do no harm to English fruit, which was 

 equal to anything in the world when well grown and 

 properly sent to market. 



Mr. E. D. TILL thanked Sir Owen Burne for his 

 remarks on Mr. Bunyard's reference to cider-making, 

 and he remembered that when Mr. Radcliffe-Cooke 

 read a paper on cider before the Society, the Chair- 

 man, Sir W. T. Thiselton-Dyer, was also sympathetic 

 on the same subject. He would like to state his own 

 experience. In 1895 there ws an abnormal crop of 

 Apples in Kent, and he urged the Technical Education 

 Committee of the Kent County Council to make ex- 

 periments, with a view to instructing Kentish people 

 as to cider-making. They declined, but as a glut 

 crop is not too frequent, he urged two Scotchmen, 

 farmers at Swanley, to get an expert from Hereford, 

 erect a press, and as Apples were plentiful they made 

 5,000 gallons that season. In a " glut " year liquid 

 storage is the best way of saving a crop and relieving 

 a glutted market of fruit. Something like 40,000 

 gallons have been made at Swanley since that experi- 

 ment, and it is commercially successful. There is no 

 difficulty in selling it. It contains a low per-centage 

 of alcohol, 2\ and 3 per cent., and although cider 

 from Kent fruit is different in character from that of 



