OCTOBER 



and Jerseys in variety, Fox Whelps and Badger Whelps, 

 Medaille d Or and Wein-apfel, English, French, and Ger 

 man apples, some red and little, like Fox Whelp, some big 

 and pale, like &quot; Bulmer s Norman,&quot; but all sharing alike 

 the peculiar qualities that go to make the cider apple. 



And what are these qualities ? All animals, from man 

 to the ant, appreciate sweetness in an apple. The holes 

 in our Cox s orange, made by ants or birds on the trees, 

 or by rats in the store cupboard, are tributes to the deli 

 cate scented sweetness that comes over the apple when 

 it ripens and matures. The fruit is like the juice of the 

 grape which at a certain age and in right conditions con 

 verts its cruder oils into volatile ethers of the subtlest 

 savour. What was acid becomes sweetness. This bene 

 ficent change, you might think, never comes to the cider 

 apple or the perry pear. If you are brave enough to bite 

 into the perry pear your mouth is &quot; drawn/ as they say, 

 almost as when you eat a sloe. Some forbidding astrin- 

 gency is imparted. If you look at the wound in the fruit 

 of a MedaiUe d Or after your brave bite the white flesh 

 will turn brown within a few seconds as the juices are 

 oxidised by contact with the air. The interpretation is 

 perhaps unexpected to those who are strange to the fruit 

 and have, like most of us, rather vague ideas of the exact 

 distinction between the meanings of acid and sour. The 

 cider apple surprisingly is peculiarly full of sugar. It 

 has no tart sourness, such as belongs to the eating apple 

 (strange phrase !) before it is ripe. But the abundance of 

 sugar is, or may be, associated with an equal abundance 

 of tannin, a forbidding astringent, until the apple is 

 squeezed and crushed, when it becomes a prime necessity 

 in our &quot; English wine/ You can no more make good 

 cider out of &quot; cookers &quot; and &quot; eaters &quot; than champagne 

 out of coarse grapes. 



