VERMONT AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 23 



THE STORY OF THE SUGAR MAPLE. 



AS TOIvD BY MR. J. A. CHAPIN, A PROMINENT SUGAR MAKER OF 



MIDDLESEX, VT. 



The following paper was read at last year's meeting of the 

 Vermont Botanical Club. It is of more than passing interest, 

 not only because of its timely suggestions of the secrets of the 

 sugar woods, but as embodying the results of exact studies 

 into the rate of development of these veterans of the primeval 

 forest which are so rapidly disappearing in Vermont. 



THE STORY OE A MAPLE TREE. • 



This is the story of a sugar maple tree for the last 200 or 

 225 years — a true story and to me an interesting one — as the 

 tree has recorded it. I cannot tell it as well. It is also not only 

 the story of one maple tree but of tens of thousands of its brothers 

 all over the good old State of Vermont. And, further, it is no': 

 alone the history of these maple trees, but of their human neigh- 

 bors, the people that have lived among them and loved them from 

 generation to generation, the pioneer woodmen that spared them 

 in the first cutting and clearing of the new state; their sons that" 

 protected them and harvested their bountiful products ; their 

 grandsons, who, with tlie benefit of modern knowledge and its 

 application, have come to appreciate more fully their intrinsic 

 value in many ways. 



My attention was first forcibly called to the fact that a 

 maple tree could of itself tell a most wonderful story, while 

 sawing a wood pile the past winter. I had cut down several 

 large maples that had survived their usefulness for sugar-mak- 

 ing, and in sawing them for wood, I cut from the butt of one 

 medium-sized maple a round cross-sectional block about 3 inches 

 long and in size the diameter of the tree. 



This block was of such a height in the tree (3 or 4 feet from 

 the ground) that it disclosed very plainly the tapping marks of 

 the past 100 or more years, and their results on the tree, and 

 of course, also the annual rings showing the age of the tree. 

 I am sorry that the weight of this block prevented my showing 



