Recent Improvements in Cider and Perry Maling. 171 
A healtKy public opinion among agi'iculturists, and a feel- 
ing that both the grower and the manufacturer have the same 
interests to serve, will set many matters right. We in the 
manufacturing districts are as strongly of opinion as the agi'i- 
culturists are that things are too cheap ; but both can, at all 
events, resolve that what they produce shall be good. 
VIII. — Recent Improvements in Cider and Perrij Maldng. 
By D. R. Chapman, The Athengeum, Liverpool. 
In these days of keen competition and agricultural depression 
it becomes a duty to look more closely into comparatively small 
matters, and either endeavour to find new fields of energy, or 
point out old sources of income which have been neglected, but 
which may be revived with some prospect of success. Among 
the latter is one which until a century since was a source of great 
profit to many, but now has fallen into great neglect — viz. the 
production of those pleasant and wholesome drinks, when pure, 
Cider and Perry. 
Both liquors have a pleasant sub-acid taste, and are very 
clean on the palate, pei'ry as a general rule being much the 
sweeter of the two. Among our forefathers they were sup- 
posed to conduce to longevity and possess many medicinal 
qualities, and this opinion still remains in the cider-growi-ng 
districts. Many eulogiums have been written in their praise, 
notably "Phillip's Cyder," and two quaint old tracts, one of which 
was witten by the Vicar of Dilwyn in 1677, and is quoted in 
Dingley's " History from Marble," who says : — 
" Our flourishing orchards . . . yield us plenty of ricli and winy liquors, 
-w^ long experience hath taught do conduce very much to the constant 
health and long lives of our inhabitants, the Cottagers as well as y* wealthier 
using for the most part little other liquors in their families, than restorative 
syder ; " 
and in a poem of some length again says : — 
*' With all the Gallick wines are not so booue 
As Hearty Sider, y* strong son of wood 
In fullest tydes refioes and purges blood." 
At the end he gives a list of six or eight persons who died 
in his own parish during his vicarage, whose drink was nothing 
but cider, and whose ages ranged from ninety to one hundred 
and fourteen. The other tract relates a morrice dance which 
occurred at Morehampton, where ten persons danced whose 
united ages reached the total of more than a thousand years. 
Perry made from the Barland pear is supposed to be good for 
