d,
Flemish,[293] English, Gascoyne, and black, and the preserving of them
from birds, always a burden on the grower, the author says can be done
by a gun or a sling; the worst enemies being jays and bullfinches, who
ate stones and all. Stone fruit should be gathered in dry weather, and
after the dew is off, for if gathered wet it loses colour and becomes
mildewed. If nettles newly gathered are laid at the bottom of the
basket and on the top of the fruit, they will hasten the ripening of
fruit picked unripe, and make it keep its colour.

Those English farmers who still shake their apples from the trees to
fall and be bruised on the ground had better listen to the careful
directions for placing the ladder on the trees where it will do no
damage, as to the use of the gathering hook so that the branches can
be brought within easy reach of the picker on his ladder, the wearing
of a gathering apron, and the emptying of it gently into the baskets.
Green fern has the same effect on pears packed for carriage as nettles
on stone fruit; while apples should be packed in wheat, or better
still in rye straw. For long journeys the American system of packing
in barrels is anticipated, the apples being carefully put in by hand,
and the barrels lined at both ends with straw, but not at the sides to
avoid heating, while holes should be bored at either end to prevent
heat. Pippins, John Apples, Pearmains, and other 'keepers' need not be
turned until the week before Christmas, and again at the end of March,
when they must be turned oftener; but never touch fruit during a frost
or a thaw, or in rainy weather, or it will turn black.

Hartlib, a few years after, reckoned no less than 500 sorts of apples
in England, though doubtless many of these were identical, since the
same apple often has two or three names in one parish. The best for
the table were the Jennetings, Harvey Apple, Golden Pippin, Summer and
Winter Pearmains, John Apple, &c.; for cider the Red Streak (the great
favourite), Jennet Moyle, Eliot, Stocking Apple, &c. He was told that
in Herefordshire a tenant bought the farm he rented with the fruit
crop of one year; L10 to L15 having been given per acre for cherries
and more for apples and pears. Pears for the table were the Windsor,
'Burgamet,' 'Boon Christians'! Greenfield, and others; and for perry,
which John Beale, a well-known writer of the day considered 'a weak
drink, fit for our hindes and generally refused by our gentry