VERMONT MAPLE SUGAR 167 



The savages here have practised this art longer 

 than any now living among them remember." 



The white man has since brought the practice to 

 a science. The art remains the same. How far 

 back into the dim ages of the past it goes no man 

 may tell. 



The sugar maple reaches maturity at about a 

 hundred years. Then in the forest the trees are 

 seventy to eighty feet tall and have a diameter of 

 two to four feet. Trees grown from seed pro- 

 duce the sweetest sap, second growth not being 

 so good. The seedling under favorable condi- 

 tions may reach a diameter of sixteen inches in 

 fifteen years, though such growth is exceptional. 

 It is not profitable to tap them before the age of 

 twenty. After that they may be drawn from 

 yearly, a tap to a tree at first. On the largest 

 trees two or more buckets may be hung, never 

 one above the other, as the sap flows up or down, 

 never sidewise. The sweetest and best sap comes 

 from the outermost ring of growth, the wood of 

 the previous year. It is sweetest at the height of 

 the run. It flows better by day than by night; 

 the brighter, lighter and sunnier the day the 



