In the numerous sections of the United States where apples are grown in large quantities the manufacture of cider furnishes a most important means for the utilization of such fruit as is unfit for marketing, either from being too small or sour, or too thoroughly ripened, or bruised from handling. The conversion of these into cider, and perhaps of the cider into vinegar, is a very important branch of apple growing, and the cider press is an indispensable adjunct to a large orchard. Within the last ten years the manufacture of cider has been greatly aided by improvements, both in the machinery for crushing the fruit and in the presses for extracting the juice, but it is doubtful if the methods of treatment of the juice after extraction have undergone a corresponding development. The methods of fermentation and preserving - operations that are so carefully performed in the manufacture of other fermented liquors - are exceedingly crude, as I can testify from personal experience. The juice, whether containing a relatively large percentage of sugar or not, is drawn into barrels and left to itself, probably exposed to a hot sun and to all the changes of temperature incident to the autumn season; and when the season is over or the cider is in danger of freezing, it is transferred to the cellar in the same barrels in which it was originally run, without any attempt at cleansing it of sediment, or filtering or racking, and when any attempt at improving its keeping quality is made it is by adding some antiseptic instead of freeing it from the matters which conduce to improper fermentations, or so conducting the process as to produce a liquor which can properly be called the "wine of apples." It seems remarkable that with these methods so palatable a drink is produced, a fact which only shows what might be done if a little care and scientific knowledge were applied to the treatment of the juice. There is a great difference between the practice here and in other countries in regard to the treatment of the juice. Here the greater part of the cider produced is treated as indicated above, and is sold to the consumer in the fall or winter of the same year it is produced, without any treatment whatever, except perhaps the addition of a dose of mustard seeds or sulphite of lime or salicylic acid, to arrest or retard the fermentation. This addition serves only to stop the fermentation for a while, probably through the winter, and in the spring whatever has not been consumed has to be thrown away or turned into vinegar. In England and France the juice is treated according to the sweetness of the apples from which it is made, very sweet juice requiring a low temperature for its fermentation in order that the operation shall not be too rapid. The juice is run into barrels or large vats, which are kept in a barn or cellar where the temperature is more or less constant, and the fermentation allowed to go on until a "chapeau" or head of scum forms on top, containing many of the impurities of the juice. The clear liquid is then "racked off" from between the impurities which have risen to the top and those that have fallen to the bottom. The casks into which it is received are scrupulously clean and are filled nearly full and transferred to a cooler cellar, where a second slow fermentation takes place. The racking-off process may be repeated if necessary, or the juice may be filtered from the first fermentation. Cider fermented and properly racked in this way will keep indefinitely at a low temperature, especially if bottled. For bottling, it generally undergoes the operation called "fining," by the addition of isinglass, which removes most of the albuminous constituents which are so inimical to its proper preservation. Cider made in this way will be much richer in alcohol, and contain much less acetic acid than when its first fermentation is allowed to take place at a high temperature and in a rapid, tumultuous manner. It is a true apple wine and will keep indefinitely. The cider of Devonshire has been kept twenty or thirty years.