172 NATURAL HISTORY OP THE FARM 



sources of supply, have enormously increased and cheapened 

 the product, and what was but recently a luxury in diet has 

 become a necessity. The sugar increase has all come from 

 herbaceous plants, that may be quickly grown mainly sugar 

 cane and sugar beets. Doubtless these have permanently 

 occupied the field and maple sugar and syrup will never again 

 be staple products. Once they were groceries: now they 

 are confections. 



Sugar-making has gone the way of all the home industries, 

 and it is hard for the youth of to-day to realize with what keen 

 interest and enthusiasm, all members of the household, 

 entered into the operations of the sugar camp*. We know 

 the sugar maple mainly as a shade tree, long-lived, hardy, 

 clean, strong-growing, with beautiful heavy foliage. But the 

 pioneer and the red man knew it as the source of his chief 

 delicacies. Bound up with it are many fine traditions, both 

 of our own race, and of our predecessors on this continent. 

 If we could realize the poverty of sweets in the Indians' bill 

 of fare, then we might understand why he counted the sugar 

 maple one of the good gifts of the Great Spirit to his people; 

 why he reverenced it and made it an object of his simple 

 nature-worship. 



Study 22. The Sap-flow and Its Beneficiaries 



There is but a short time at the very beginning of spring, 

 when nights are sharp and frosty and days bright and sun- 

 shiny, that an abundant flow of sap may be obtained from the 

 trees. Take advantage of it, shifting other studies if need be. 



The tools needed for the work will be a sharp half-inch bit 

 and brace for tapping trees, a supply of galvanized metal sap- 

 spouts to fit holes, and of pails (paraffined paper pails will do, 



*Some suggestion of it may be obtained by reading Mrs. Comstock's 

 excellent account ot maple-sugar making in her Handbook of Nature- 

 Study, pp. 739-741- 



