A CIDER. ORCHARD 243 



This week cider apples are coming over from France 

 in shiploads. The French harvests are earlier than ours, 

 but our economic entomologists have recently decided 

 that the pernicious caterpillar of the Colorado beetle 

 (brought to France in the war) goes to ground not later 

 than October 14. After that critical date it is therefore 

 considered safe to import the French apples. In France 

 they will tell you at any rate in some districts that the 

 queen of cider apples is Medaille d Or, which is only less 

 prolific than an aphis and of a delectable commixture of 

 sugar and tannin. But Medaille d Or has a suicidal ten 

 dency, like the apples we put in store, which are rotted 

 by their own emanations. It is so prolific that it bears 

 many more apples than its weak shoots can support and 

 is apt to break its own limbs with its own excesses. Such 

 a fate has befallen many sorts of fruit, especially plums, 

 in any bountiful year, however careful the propping of 

 the boughs. The experts dream of the day when they 

 shall have created a Medaille d Or of an undiminished 

 carat, but with tougher cells in the branch, and so it shall 

 be enabled without wrenching of twig or limb, to bear 

 what wealth it pleases. There is, indeed, a single tree in 

 existence, on which a dozen or so crosses of the Medaille 

 d Or are grafted, and you may compare at a single glance 

 and discover whether or no the joint qualities of tough 

 ness of stalk and richness of produce have at last been 

 wedded. 



It is a pleasant thing to see in some of the Western 

 counties, perhaps most distinctively in Herefordshire, 

 that the orchards, which had fallen more and more into 

 decay, have begun to revive. The cider apple is best as 

 a taU, a towering standard, that gives plenty of room 

 below its canopy for the grazing of stock. How lovely 

 are these Western and South- Western orchards compared 



