264 THE FARMER AT HOME. 



reduce the labor of manufacturing maple sugar incident to the pro- 

 gress of the country, these rude and simple fixtures have been super- 

 seded ; and, instead of them, will now be found in large maple forests, 

 commodious houses with kettles placed on brick furnaces, where the 

 labor can be done with greater facility and less personal toil and ex- 

 posure. As little as has generally been thought of this American 

 product, the amount manufactured has some years reached nearly forty 

 millions of pounds. One hundred good trees will produce sap suffi- 

 cient to make from three to five hundred pounds of sugar. The 

 season for it is in March and April. 



MAPLE TREES. There are several species of the maple in this 

 country ; the most important and valuable is the sugar maple. This 

 tree is found in great abundance in the northern portions of the 

 United States and in Canada. The labor of procuring the sap and 

 converting it into sugar is exceedingly onerous, but it is required at 

 that season of the year when the general operations of the farm least 

 demand it. The finest sugar is made from the sap that flows the 

 earliest ; and care should be taken that the sap is always boiled down 

 before the process of fermentation or souring commences. In the lat- 

 ter part of the sugar season, after the buds begin to swell, the con- 

 version of sap into sugar becomes more difficult, and that made is not 

 as fine flavored as that earlier produced. The sap flows from the 

 alburnum or sap wood, and this should not be wounded to the depth 

 of more than an inch or an inch and a half. Some of the other varieties 

 of maple produce those beautiful woods called curled or birdseye 

 maple, and which are so much in demand by cabinet-makers. 



It would be difficult to imagine what wiser and better thing can be 

 done by farmers than to transplant the sugar maple. If there were 

 to be an hundred only on each farm, how much value would thereby 

 be given to it. Only a moderate sized piece of land would be wanted 

 for them, and they would yield sap sufficient to supply the family with 

 sugar. And independent of such an use, a number of such trees 

 about our dwellings would be in the highest degree ornamental, and 

 furnishing delightful shades in summer for man and beast. And if 

 each land holder were to plant these trees by the road side opposite 

 his own premises, how much would be added to the beauty of rural 

 scenery ! It would be the admiration of all travellers. Let every 

 man in a township or county do this ; arid let there be on every farm 

 an hundred or more of these trees, and no one can tell what may be 

 he advantage of it to posterity. It would be better to the farmer's 

 children than money invested at twelve per cent. In fifteen or 

 twenty years after being transplanted, these little trees, if in the order 

 of an orchard, would make a delightful and magnificent forest ; arid 

 if by the road side, aud about the neat cottage or the stately mansion, 

 would in their season impart i delicious fragrance to the atmosphere, 

 conducing to the health and the pleasure of all inhaling it. Wf 



