THE CIDER AND PERRY INDUSTRY. 



181 



expressive of the general regret felt at Sir Trevor's absence 

 called upon Mr. C. W. Radcliffe Cooke, M.P., who read the follow- 

 ing paper : — 



THE CIDER AND PERRY INDUSTRY. 

 By Mr. C. W. Radcliffe Cooke, M.P. 



It is no doubt in consequence of the public interest I have 

 taken in the promotion of the cider and perry industry that I 

 have been honoured with an invitation to read a paper on the 

 subject before your Society. It is natural that I should be 

 interested in this branch of agriculture, because I was born and 

 bred, and have lived most of my life, in one of the most noted 

 cider-producing counties of England — to wit, Herefordshire, 

 where cider and perry are the ordinary every-day drinks of the 

 bulk of the population, and because I have also the distinction of 

 representing the capital city of my native county in the House 

 of Commons. 



I have long been of opinion that the cider industry is 

 one capable of considerable development, and from which 

 farmers might consequently derive more profit than they do 

 now. Everywhere, in the remains of once flourishing orchards 

 and in the clumps and single specimens of great pear-trees, there 

 is throughout the County of Hereford, as likewise in other cider- 

 producing districts, ocular demonstration that the industry 

 was formerly one of great importance, and this at a time when 

 the taste of the age as regards liquors resembled that of the present 

 day. That is to say, our orchards were most extensive and at 

 their best, and the demand for cider and perry greatest, when 

 the light wines of France and Germany were preferred before 

 heavier beverages. 



Dr. Beale, a distinguished horticulturist who wrote in the 

 second half of the seventeenth century, declared that Herefordshire 

 orchards were " a pattern for all England." " From the greatest 

 person," he says, "to the poorest cottager, all habitations are 

 encompassed with orchards." Evelyn, who wrote somewhat later 

 in the same century, says : " By the noble example of Lord 

 Scudamore and of some other public -spirited gentlemen in those 

 parts, all Herefordshire is become in a manner but one entire 



