PHASES OF FARM LIFE. 265 



of the day fully balances the frost of the night. In 

 New York and New England the time of the sap 

 hovers about the vernal equinox, beginning a week or 

 ten days before, and continuing a week or ten days 

 after. As the days and nights get equal, the heat and 

 cold get equal, and the sap mounts. A day that brings 

 the bees out of the hive will bring the sap out of the 

 maple-tree. It is the fruit of the equal marriage of 

 the sun and frost. When the frost is all out of the 

 ground, and all the snow gone from its surface, the 

 flow stops. The thermometer must not rise above 

 38 or 40 by day, or sink below 24 or 25 at night, 

 with wind in the northwest ; a relaxing south wind, 

 and the run is over for the present. Sugar weather 

 is crisp weather. How the tin buckets glisten in the 

 gray woods ; how the robins laugh ; how the nut- 

 hatches call ; how lightly the thin blue smoke rises 

 among the trees. The squirrels are out of their dens ; 

 the migrating water-fowls are streaming northward ; 

 the sheep and cattle look wistfully toward the bare 

 fields ; the tide of the season, in fact, is just beginning 

 to rise. 



Sap-letting does not seem to be an exhaustive pro- 

 cess to the trees, as the trees of a sugar-bush appear 

 to be as thrifty and as long-lived as other trees. 

 They come to have a maternal, large-waisted look, 

 from the wounds of the axe or the auger, and that is 

 about all. 



In my sugar-making days the sap was carried to 

 the boiling-place in pails by the aid of a neck-yoke 



