74 THE APPLE-TREE. 



There appears to be something very wholesome in the juice 

 of the apple, and it is chronicled as a very significant fact 

 that in 1849 the cholera spared the cider-drinking districts 

 of the West of England in so uniform a manner, that the 

 immunity could be ascribed to nothing else. This drink is 

 of very ancient use in England, and is beyond doubt the sieder 

 of the Britons. 



In one sense the juice of the apple is the natural wine of 

 Britain, and when properly made it is perhaps a great deal more 

 suitable to our British constitutions than the fervid wines of the 

 South, so liable to deposit uric acid round the joints in high 

 latitudes, though grateful and innocent enough to the swarthy 

 Spaniard and the sultry Moor. Like to Like ! nature has laid 

 down her laws, and the scurvy grass grows where the scurvy 

 prevails. 



The cider counties lie in the form of a horse shoe round the 

 Bristol channel, and in the upper part of this circle the old cider 

 fruit, namely, the Fox-Whelp, Eed Must, Hagloe Crab, and 

 Brandy Apple are even in Hereford hastening to decay, and are 

 mostly unknown in Cornwall, where perhaps the best cider 

 comes from the Dufflin and other sorts flourishing in the river 

 side orchards of Kea, where three places have been locally 

 renowned for cider, viz : Trevaster, Trethowell, and Woodbury. 

 The old Adam-Sweet, luscious, yellow, and speckled like the 

 Q-olden Pippin, made the vats flow at Trevaster during ihe first 

 half of this century, whilst a little red streaked apple called the 

 kSweet Oakin Pin, but not corresponding to Forsyth's description, 

 mingled with a wilding sort growing on ancient seedlings, gave 

 its excellence to Woodbury eider ; and Trethowell orchards still 

 boast the Dufflin. 



The Scarlet Pearmain rules the far away fruitful orchards 

 of Tasmania, where also, strange to say, ''the cider hath no 

 body." 



The contemplative author of the Si/lva and Pomona says : — 

 " nothing contributes more to mens' long lives than the planting 

 of many trees," and " a plantation of orchard fruit " was 

 mentioned by him in his visionary abode of happiness {vide 

 introduction, Sylva) ; and "were I," says an eloquent writer, 

 "asked to describe the location of the fabled fountain of Hygeia, 

 I should decide that it was certainly situated in an orchard." 



