192 Eeceiit hnp'ovements in Cider and Perry Making, 
a twelvemonth old — that is to say, the cider made in the autumn 
of one year was bottled in the winter months of the following 
year. This practice, however, has now become obsolete, and it 
is the general custom to bottle the liquor in the April and May 
after it is made. A few more bottles are burst probably by this 
arrangement, but the liquor gains in richness and comes more 
quickly into the market. The best method of bottling is to 
remove the bung out of the cask the evening before, and, the 
bottles all being ready, in the morning to draw off and fill them 
all before commencing to cork. The corks must be of the very 
best quality, and after corking and wiring, the bottles should, if 
possible, be put in sand for a short time before laying them 
down in the bins. Many small makers, when laying down for 
their own consumption, rinse the bottles out with a little 
brandy, draining each bottle as dry as possible, a bottle of 
brandy being sufficient for a cask of cider. In France this is a 
general custom. 
Perry. — The process of making perry differs somewhat from 
that of making cider. In the first place, as a general rule, pears 
are fit for grinding as soon as they fall from the tree, and, 
therefore, with the exception of a few late sorts, they must not 
be placed in heaps where they would rot and ferment, but be 
carried straight from the trees to the mill. After grinding and 
pressing, the liquor is fermented in open vats, and as soon as the 
active fermentation has subsided and the liquor is Ij'ing " between 
the two lees " it is run off into casks and treated in exactly the 
same way as cider. Theoretically this is perfect ; but in practice 
it will be found that perry, in nineteen cases out of twenty, 
never fines so well as cider between the lees because of the 
greater quantity of mucilage perry contains, so that, in order 
to fine it, it is necessary to filter the liquor through " forfar " 
bags. 
Having thus far brought the whole question from the 
sorts of fruit used to the bottling of the liquor before the 
reader, it only remains to consider that very essential side of 
the question, namely, the paying one. Here statistics are of no 
avail, so the writer will endeavour to give the opinions of a few 
practical men who have made the subject the consideration of 
their lifetime. 
Much, of course, will depend upon the grower himself, 
whether lie really puts his whole energies into his fruit-trees, 
fully resolved to make them pay, or whether he simply looks 
upon hi.s orchard as quite a secondary consideration, and cul- 
tivates it in a diletlante sort of way. As a rule, the best cider 
has hitherto been generally made by small growers who are 
