Account of the American Sugar Maple. 187 



Secondly, by fpontaneous evaporation. The hollow /lump of 

 a maple fugar tree, which had been cut down in the fpring, 

 and which was found fome time after filled with fugar, firft 

 fuggefted to our farmers this method of obtaining fugar. So 

 many circumftances of cold and dry weather, large and flat 

 veffels, and above all fo much time is neceflary to obtain 

 fugar by either of the above methods, that the moft general 

 method among our farmers is to obtain it by boiling. 



The kettles and other utenfils of a farmer's kitchen will 

 ferve moft of the purpoies of making fugar, and the time re- 

 quired for the labour (if it deferves that name) is at a feafon 

 when it is impoffible for the farmer to employ himfelf in 

 any fpecies of agriculture. His wife, and all his children 

 above ten years of age, may affift him. The following re- 

 ceipt was publiihed in the Albany Gazette : " Received of 

 William Cooper, Efq. fixteen pounds for 640 pounds of fu- 

 gar, made with my own hands, without any affifiance, in 

 lefs than four weeks, befides attending to all the other bu- 



finefs of the farm. JohnNicholls." A Angle family eon- 



fifting of a man and his two fons, on the Maple Sugar 

 Lands between the Delaware and Sufquehannah, made 1800 

 pounds of maple fugar in one feafon. Not more knowledge 

 is neceflary for mailing this fugar, than is required to make 

 cvder, beer, Sec. and yet one or all of them are made in 

 moft of the farm-houfes in the United States. 



Let us now take a comparative view of this fugar with 

 that obtained from the cane, with refpeel: to its quality, 

 price, and the quantity that might probably be made in the 

 United States, each of which I fhall confider in order: 



1 . The quality of this fugar is necefiarily better than that 

 which is made in the Weft Indies. It is prepared in a fea- 

 fon when not a (ingle infecl exifts to feed upon it, or to 

 mix its excretions with it. The fame obfervation cannot be 

 applied to the Weft India fugar. The infects and worms 

 which prey upon it, and of courfe mix with it, compofe a 

 page in a nomenclature of natural hiftory, I fhall fay no- 

 thing 



