A CIDER ORCHARD 247 



different from its fellows ; and not the best experts in 

 France or England could put a name to it, so it was re- 

 christened, after both its old and new home, Bulmer s 

 Norman. It has grown portentously. It bears apples very 

 much bigger than other cider apples, and when the crop, 

 like wheat, is &quot; white to harvest,&quot; the dome of apples 

 becomes a feature of the landscape. The hope of its 

 yield was reckoned by a visitor from half a ton to twelve 

 and a half hundredweights. It is a great weight ; but it is 

 authoritatively recorded by one of our very greatest 

 men of science that a perry pear in the neighbourhood 

 once bore two and a half tons of fruit. But then the pear 

 is heavy and sinks. Most cider apples are light and float. 



5- 



Whether the farm sale was more comic or more pa 

 thetic, it would be hard to decide ; but the neighbours 

 and the auctioneer decided, almost before it began, to treat 

 it as a joke. The country man loves a sale, merely as a 

 spectacle, and a considerable company wandered in a 

 promiscuous queue from ploughland to farm building, 

 from cow-yard to green field, as they were bidden, pass 

 ing casual heaps of strange junk deposited as fancy 

 pleased. Before each of these the observant auctioneer 

 and his man paused for a brief minute or two in the 

 attempt to wheedle a few shillings off us for this decayed 

 debris of a once prosperous holding. The first lot was 

 frankly labelled old iron, and lay against the side of a 

 hovel that looked as if only the iron kept it upright. The 

 heap fetched 23. 6d. ; and that set the note. Every suc 

 cessive heap was recorded as old iron. The auctioneer 

 fought a hard fight to prevent the bidding advancing, if 

 it advanced at all, by sixpences* Finally, when a bidder 



