172 Recent Improvements in Cider and Perry Malcinrj. 
diseases of the bladder and kidneys, and is taken and recom- 
mended for them in the districts where that fruit is cultivated. 
The cider-producing districts in England at the present time 
may be divided into two : one, which may be called the West 
Midland district, embracing Herefordshire, Worcestershire, and 
parts of Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire ; the other, the 
Western district, containing the three counties of Somerset, 
Devon, and Cornwall. Cider was formerly made in some 
quantities in Kent and Sussex, but, for reasons which will be 
stated when treating of those counties, the manufacture has 
ceased, at any rate for the market. At what time the apple was 
introduced into the West Midland district is not very clear, but 
that there were good and bad kinds in the fourteenth centuiy we 
can gather from the old poem " Piers Plowman's Visions," where 
the following lines occur : — 
I prelde Piers tlio to pulle a down 
An appul and he wolde, 
And suffer me to assaien 
What savour it hadde " — 
while in the sixteenth century we have the testimony of old 
Gerarde — who says in his " Herbal," a.d. 1597 : — 
" But I haue seene in the pastures and hedgerows about the grounds of 
a worshipful Gentleman dwelling two miles frow Hereford, called Master 
Roger Bodnome, so many trees of all sorts, that the seruants drinke for the 
most part no other di'inke but that which is made of apples ; the quantity is 
such, that by the report of the worthy Gentleman himself the Parson bath 
for tithes many hogsheads of Syder " — - 
that both the apple and the cider made from it were common and 
well kno\\Ti. Some sixty or seventy years after, the cultivation 
of this tree received a great impetus from the care and attention 
bestowed upon it by Lord Scudamore of Holm Lacy, who, while 
serving his country as Ambassador to the Court of France, 
obtained grafts and cuttings of the best fruits grown in that 
country and distributed them through the orchards of his native 
county. But, although the impetus received in the cultivation 
of the tree was great, the manufacture of cider did not reach its 
zenith until quite a century later. 
Worcestershire has always been more celebrated for its peny. 
In Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire, until a very late pei'iod, 
the orchards were chiefly confined to the Herefordshire sides of 
both counties, but the cultivation of both the apple and pear has 
spread considerably of late years, although perhaps more in the 
case of Gloucestershire with reference to the cultivation of what 
are known as " soft fruits," than those more especially devoted 
to the manufacture of cider and perry. This county, like 
Worcester, is better known as a perry-producing district. With 
few exceptions, the orchards throughout the whole of this district 
