However, we were not the only people that ever made such a blunder. They had a wonder-working relic in the church at Skifvarp. It was reputed to be the hand of a saint; and, as such, it healed many people of diseases. I saw it in the Museum at Stockholm some years ago, resting from its labours. It is only a seal’s paw.
Down here a man remarked to me one day, as he was gazing across some fields:—“It be a wonder-workin’ thing, that Consecrated Bone.” I began to think we had a relic here. But he spoke of concentrated bone manure.
A party of Italians was being shown round the gardens on the Isola Bella one day when I was being shown round; and the thing that struck them most, was what we call the common laurel. I cannot remember seeing it at any other place in Italy except the monastery on Monte Cavo, and I suspect that it was brought there by the Cardinal of York. (In Italy the common laurel is what we call sweet-bay.) Few people in England know how beautiful our common laurel is when fully grown, for here they are always clipping it and cutting it down as soon as it begins to grow. On the Isola Bella it is almost a forest tree. In this garden and in Parson Davy’s it grows to 25 or 30 feet, and so also the sweet-bay.
There are two young olive trees growing in sheltered places in this garden. The smaller one (below the Oval Lawn) is from an olive that I picked up at Rapallo, 10 January 1910, when the olives were being shaken down. It is nearly four feet high now—September 1917. The larger one (near Dogtrot Hill) came here from Cornwall in a pot, and was planted out in the summer of 1904. It then was six feet high and very slender, and now is nearly fifteen feet high and nine inches in girth. It has not borne olives yet.
Many of the people here had never seen an olive tree before, and were curious about its fruit: so I gave them olives to try. One comment was:—“Well, Mrs *****’d never have christened her daughter Olive, if her’d a-tasted one of they.”
One afternoon all the strawberries on the strawberry tree were picked and eaten by a boy, who was working in the garden; and they held an Indignation Meeting under the Rotunda. I asked him what the matter was, and he replied:—“Please, zir, my inwards be all of a uproar.”
Besides the strawberry tree (arbutus unedo) I have the toothache tree (xanthoxylum planispinum) growing in the garden. My gardener told me that he had no toothaches for a long while after it was planted, though he often had before: but this immunity wore off. A decoction of the bark is what is needed, and the tree has very little bark as yet. The cork tree also grows here, and this soon developes a thick coat of bark. I expect the bark on mine to yield me cork enough to bung my cider casks; but at present it does not.
During the winter of 1911-12 I planted sixteen acres of new cider-orchards, putting 5½ acres of early trees in Crediford and Blackmore, 5¾ acres of mid-season trees in Middle Parke, and 4¾ acres of late trees in Above Ways. Some such division is usual in new orchards now, as the fruit is handled with less labour, and sheep can go on grazing in the late orchards till the early orchards have been cleared. The early trees were of three sorts in equal numbers—Knotted Kernel, Cherry Pearmain and Cherry Norman: the mid-season trees were of four sorts in the ratio of one Cap of Liberty and one Kingston Black to two each of Eggleton Styre and Strawberry Norman; and the late trees were also of four sorts in the ratio of one Skyrme’s Kernel and one Hagloe Crab to two each of Michelin and Chisel Jersey. These combinations make good blends. But apple trees do not bear uniformly every year: one sort may bear heavily one year, and another sort the next; and that upsets the blend.
In this district the older orchards have mostly been neglected, losses being made good with any kind of apple tree that came to hand. No doubt, the kinds were chosen carefully at first, but not (so far as one can see) in such proportions as to give a definite blend. With all kinds of apples mixed up indiscriminately, no two casks of cider are the same in flavour or in strength.
Cider used always to be made of apples, but I fear that it is very often made of other things now. However, the name does not imply that it is made of apples, but only means that it is strong. And in that sense Wyclif has “wyn and sydir” in Luke, i. 15, where later versions say “strong drink.” Non-alcoholic cider is a contradiction in terms.