Cider and Fruit Houses. District Factories. 
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has said, that “ he who provides a new fruit renders a greater service to mankind than he who wins 
a battle.” It requires great patience, perseverance, and fortitude too, for it is not every one that 
can with equanimity bear to be told that the seedlings he has grown himself and watched and petted 
for years, are worthless, and only good as stocks for grafting. 
The Cider House. —The want of suitable buildings is a very serious drawback to the proper 
storage of fruit, and to the manufacture of Cider and Perry in perfection. Marshall and other 
writers have pointed out the saving in time and labour that would be effected if every orchard farm 
had a well arranged Fruit and Cider House, furnished with simple machinery, and with the usual 
mechanical fittings. Such buildings should be so constructed as to command a low, or still better, 
different degrees of temperature at will. They need not necessarily be expensive—thick walls of 
stone, or hollow bricks, and a good thick straw thatch, with due arrangement for free ventilation, 
is all that is essentially required. By these means it would be possible to regulate and prevent 
those sudden changes of temperature, which so frequently prevail in Autumn, and which are often 
so injurious to the liquor; at one time suddenly checking fermentation, and at another exciting it 
again, when it is most important to avoid it. 
In America, fruit growers find the greatest advantage in their refrigerating houses, in which 
by simple and ingenious mechanical and chemical appliances, they preserve their Apples and Pears, 
at a temperature a little above freezing point, in the finest condition for exportation throughout the 
entire year. In the manufacture of Cider and Perry these houses afford the utmost advantage. 
The details of their management are given in full in Downing’s “American Orchardist and when 
it is considered that these appliances are only required during the end of Autumn and in the early 
Winter months, it should be a matter of serious consideration for the landlord and the tenant in a 
fruit district, whether suitable buildings of the same character should not be provided. 
Mr. Thomas Andrew Knight at the commencement of the present century felt so much the 
necessity of commanding a low temperature for his Cider that he built a cellar on the hill side at 
Wormsley Grange in the bed of a small stream, so that he could keep it filled with running water, 
and thus prevent refermentation. The theory was good, but the practical inconveniences connected 
with this means of carrying it out, proved to be greater than the advantages derived from it. 
District Factories. —The establishment of large Cider and Perry Factories in the 
immediate vicinity of the Orchards has been often advised. Marshall and other old writers 
recommended the plan, and it is very probable that they would have been established very much 
more generally, if the manufacture had not gone into a state of lamentable neglect. There are private 
cider makers now, who will buy up such of the superior varieties of Apples as they require, but they 
will not purchase the enormous amount of poor fruit which pervades the Orchards. The farmers 
therefore have to make the Cider and Perry themselves, as best they can, and sell it in bulk, at a 
very low price, to the so called “ Cider Merchants.” From their hands it passes on to other 
