the Makivg of Cider and Perry. 
407 
tended for sale, in order to enhance its value, it is still quite an 
empirical art, and consequently the practice varies very much in 
different districts. The best practice (that is, such as produces, 
upon the averajje of years, the most valuable cider from the same 
fruit) will perhaps admit of but little improvement from the 
application of scientific principles ; but if that practice be more 
conformable with scientific views than others, its claim to pre- 
ference is strengthened and confirmed by reason, while such 
views may suggest, to a discerning and experienced operator, 
some means of valuable improvement in his practice. 
So great is the difference in the value of cider, arising from 
the choice of fruit and the mode of making combined, that a 
gentleman near Ross, mentioned by Marshall, some years ago 
produced a cider so valuable that he was offered 60Z. for 110 
gallons, or an equal quantity of good foreign wine. This cider is 
said to have been produced from the Hagloe Crab, and the mode 
of making it differed from that generally practised in this — that 
the juice was fermented in wide vessels not more than two feet 
deep, and the cider carefully drawn off from the dregs beneath 
and the scum above, and put into casks Avithout anything more 
being done to it. It is much to be doubted whether this is a 
trustworthy account of the means by which such excellent cider 
was produced. We are not told anything of the temperature of 
the place in which the icrmentation was conducted, nor of the 
time required for the desired change in such shallow vessels. 
The temperature, in all probability, was quite low, and the time 
considerable ; and the process very much resembling the slow 
kind of fermentation mentioned by Liebig, which a peculiar beer, 
produced in some parts of Germany, is made to undergo. It is 
much to be regretted that Mr. Marshall, or the worthy Man of 
Ross himself, did not furnish the world with every particular of 
his method of making this superlative cider. 
While passing through the press, the proof-sheet of this paper 
Mas submitted to the inspection of Dr. Ure, who told the author 
that the views and reasonings therein given are quite correct, and 
in perfect accordance with the science of organic chemistry. 
