FOREST TREES. 27 



of refining sugar ; but it is perfectly easy to make Maple sugar 

 as white as the best double- re fined loaf-sugar of commerce. It 

 would, however, lose its peculiar acid flavor, which now distil 

 guishes it from ordinary cane sugar. 



" Were it generally known how productive are the groves of 

 Sugar Maples, we should, I doubt not, be more careful, and not 

 exterminate them from the forest, as is now too frequently done. 

 It is, however, difficult to spare any forest trees in clearing a 

 farm by fire ; but groves in which they abound might be spared 

 from the unrelenting ax of the woodman. Maple-trees may also 

 be cultivated, and will become productive in twenty or thirty 

 years ; and it would certainly be one of our most beautiful pledges 

 of regard for posterity to plant groups of Maples in convenient sit- 

 uations upon our lands, and to line the road sides with them. I 

 am sure that such a plan, if carried into effect, would please 

 public taste in more ways than one, and we might be in part 

 disfranchised from dependence on the cane plantations of the 

 "West Indies. 



''The following statistics will serve as an example of the prod- 

 ucts of the Sugar Maple in Maine ; and it will also be noted that 

 the whole work of making Maple sugar is completed in three or 

 four weeks from the commencement of operations. 



Lbs. sugar. 



" At the Forks of the Kennebeck, twelve persons made 3,650 



On No. 1, 2d Range, one man and a boy 

 In Farmington, Mr. Titcomb 



" Moscow, thirty familii 



" Bingham, twenty families 



" Concord, thirty families 



1,000 



1,500 



10,500 



11,000 



" This, at twelve and a half cents a pound, would be worth 

 $4581. 



11 It must be al*o remarked, that the man e of Maple 



