186 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



all the sugar in the cider and render it hard ; and it may proceed 

 a stage further, and become acetous, when, of course, the liquor 

 is ruined as cider and becomes vinegar. Experienced cider- 

 makers by long practice are enabled by attention to temperature, 

 by frequent racking, by filtering, and by sulphuring the casks to 

 regulate the fermentation and stop it at the right point ; but their 

 knowledge is more or less empirical, and not being founded on 

 scientific principles too often dies with them. What is wanted 

 in the cider industry is instruction in the scientific principles 

 which underlie the practice. All manufacturers on a large scale 

 do as a rule work scientifically, but even they have much to 

 learn. Great credit is due to the Bath and West of England 

 Society, and one of the most distinguished of its members, Mr. 

 Neville Grenville, of Butleigh, near Glastonbury, on whose 

 estate and at the instance of the Society researches into the 

 science of cider-making have been conducted under the super- 

 vision of the eminent chemist, Professor Lloyd. You will find 

 an exhaustive account of the experiments at Glastonbury written 

 by Mr. Lloyd in the fifth volume of the fourth series of the 

 Journal of the Bath and West of England Society, which will 

 well repay perusal, and for the science and chemistry of the 

 subject I refer you to that paper. 



I think it well, however, to say that there are now what I 

 venture to term two systems of cider-making originating in the 

 endeavour to overcome the difficulties of fermentation, especially 

 the tendency to the conversion of all the natural sugar of the 

 fruit into alcohol. By the first system, which I call the natural 

 system, fermentation by any of the means I have mentioned is 

 checked before all the sugar has been converted into alcohol, and 

 the resulting liquor is bottled or sent out on draught with a 

 sufficient portion of its natural sweetness remaining in it to 

 render it palatable to the general public, who, as all purveyors 

 know, do as a rule prefer the liquor with some sweetness in it. 

 By the second system the liquor is fermented to dryness ; that is 

 to say, all the sugar is converted into alcohol, and in order to 

 render it acceptable it is afterwards sweetened by the addition of 

 a substance such as saccharin, which will not set up fresh fermen- 

 tation ; and if it has been pasteurised and so rendered flat and 

 dead, it will have to be artificially aerated or carbonated by the 

 forcing into it of carbonic acid gas ; and if, as is often the case, 



