A short pamphlet called the Fruiterer’s Secrets, published in London in 1604, imparts some interesting and curious information about fruit growing.[292] There were then four sorts of cherries in England, 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 as breeding wind in the stomack’, the Horse Pear, Bosbury, Choak, &c.[294] There were many kinds of plums, among them the Mistle Plum, Damazene, Violet, and Premorden.