so-called _Amontillado_ Sherry is very often the outcome of accident. Out of a hundred butts of Sherry from the same vineyard, some, says a great authority, will be _Amontillado_, without the manufacturers being able to account for it. At Cordova, a dry wine called _Montilla_ is commonly drunk. SWITZERLAND. Swiss wines are commonly consumed only in Switzerland. The best is produced in the Grisons, called _Chiavenna_, aromatic and white from the red grape. A white _Malvasia_ of good quality is made in the Valais. It is luscious, as is _Chiavenna_. The Valais also furnishes red wines, made at La Marque and Coquempin in the district of Martigny. Schaffhausen gives plenty of red wine. The _wine of blood_[45] is manufactured at Basle. These wines are also known as those of the _Hospital_ and _St. Jaques_. The red wines of Erlach, in Berne, are of a good quality. The red wine of Neufchâtel is equal to a third-class Burgundy. St. Gall produces tolerable wines. In the Valteline, the red wines are both good and durable, much resembling the aromatic wine of Southern France. These wines are remarkably luscious, and will, it is said, keep for a century. The largest amount of wine is produced by the Canton of Vaud. The wines of _Cully_ and _Désalés_, near Lausanne, much resemble the dry wines of the Rhine. [Illustration] [Illustration: APPLES FOR CIDER.] CIDER. The original meaning of the word _cider_[46] appears to have been strong drink. It was used to designate a liquor made of the juice of any fruit pressed, and an example of the word in this use is to be found in Wycliffe’s Bible, in the speech of the angel to Zacharias (Luke i. 15), in allusion to his promised progeny: _He schal not drynke wyn and syder_. The next meaning is that of a liquor made from the juice of apples expressed and fermented. “A flask of _cider_ from his father’s vats, Prime, which I knew.” TENNYSON: _Audley Court_. We have little information about cider either from the Greeks or the Latins. It would seem that it was not known to them, if we may trust Ainsworth, who translates cider by _succus e pomis expressus_, and Byzantius, who gives μηλίτης (οἶνος) εἶδ. ποτοῦ as the equivalent for _cidre_.[47] Gerard, in his _Historie of Plants_, published in 1597, says that he saw in the pastures and hedgerows about the grounds of a “worshipful gentleman,” dwelling two miles from Hereford, called M. Roger Bodnome, so many trees of all sorts that the servants drunk for the most part no other drink but that which is made from apples. The quantity, says Gerard, was such that by the report of the gentleman himself, the parson “hath for tithe many hogsheads of Syder.” This reference to the servants and the parson drinking it, but not to the “gentleman,” seems to show that the liquor was not then held in much esteem.