196 OLD WEST SURREY 



close to sharply-sloping ground, so that the bottom of it was 

 kept dry by natural drainage. And it was easy to see how 

 the word ' top-sawyer ' came to have a special significance in 

 country speech, in the way of meaning something rather 

 grand, or, at any rate, a good bit raised above something or 

 somebody else. 



Cider is still made with the old wooden press. The 

 apples are first crushed by a roller in the cider-mill. Two 

 men work it together by a handle on each side, while one of 

 them presses the stream of apples down towards the roller. 

 The crushed pulp falls into a tub, and is then put into coarse 

 fibre bags. These are then packed one over the other in the 

 press with boards between. The picture shows how the 

 heavy presser is screwed down on to the bags of pulp till 

 they are quite flattened, and all the juice that can be 

 squeezed out of them has come away. 



The heaps of apples, mostly of the poorest of the orchard 

 produce, do not look at all inviting. Many are muddy and 

 bruised, but in they go, mud and all ; and when a mug of the 

 freshly-pressed juice is offered, and is accepted with some in- 

 ternal hesitation, whose outward expression is repressed for 

 civility's sake, one is pleasantly surprised to find what a. 

 delicious drink, tasting clean and pure and refreshing, is this 

 newly-drawn juice of quite second and third-rate apples. 

 For though cider of a kind is frequently made, it is by no 

 means a cider country, and no refinements, either of growing 

 or making, are practised. 



Copse-cutting is one of the handy labourer's winter 

 harvests, and is clone by piecework. One of the industries 

 that grow out of it, namely hoop-making, was described at 

 some length in ' Wood and Garden.' It is the making of 



