282 THE FORESTS 0? CANADA. 



in furniture and ornaments is merely a variety of the rock 

 maple, so is the curly maple. The woodsman never knows 

 before he strikes his axe into the tree whether it is bird's- 

 eye, curly, or plain. 



The rock maple is the tree from which the maple sugar 

 is made. Early in the month of April, in Lower Canada, 

 when the snow is still deep in the wood, the habitants, the 

 Indians, and many of the back settlers hie into their sugar 

 camps ; sometimes accompanied by their wives and fami- 

 lies, who enjoy the picnic immensely. The sugar-maker 

 provides himself with a large quantity of birch-bark 

 sheets in the summer, which he makes up into troughs 

 or pails to hold the sap. Some hundreds of these are re- 

 quired in a large sugarie. The maple tree is tapped by 

 cutting the letter V in the bark. At the angle a little 

 peg of wood is stuck in, to act as a spout, and convey the 

 sap into the trough which is placed below it. A good tree 

 will yield 3 gallons of this sap in the day. The sap only 

 runs in warm sunny days after frosty nights ; 4 gallons of 

 this sap are required to make 1 Ib. of sugar. It is boiled 

 down in a cauldron over a hot fire until the syrup on 

 being dropped into the snow turns hard. When it is 

 sufficiently boiled it is strained through a blanket (let us 

 hope a clean one), and poured into bark dishes, when it 

 soon hardens. The boiling and straining is the work of 

 the women ; the men are kept very busy in attending to 

 the trees and collecting the sap. One man will some- 

 times tap two or three hundred trees. An Indian, with 

 his wife and little child, can make 600 Ibs. of maple 

 sugar in one spring. A very good maple tree in one 

 season will yield 8 Ibs. of sugar. Some springs the sap 



