Photo by the Field Museum, Chicago. 



AN OI.D-FASHIONED SUGAR CAMP 



This rural scene lies near Pickens, Randolph County, W. Va., at an altitude of 2,700 feet. The stand of maple is pure. Buckets in place of 



the old-time sugar troughs are used to catch the sap which drips from the trees. 



Maple Sugar Making 



THE great importance of maple lumber and the 

 other products manufactured from the wood 

 should not throw too far into the background 

 the industry which produces maple sugar and syrup. 

 The northern states yield most, but such sugar is made 

 in commercial quantities as far south as Georgia. In 

 1860 New York was the leading maple sugar state. 

 Ten years later Vermont attained first place and held it 

 for thirty years, and then lost it to Ohio. The general 

 government and various state governments have con- 

 cerned themselves in detecting and discouraging the 

 adulteration of maple syrup and sugar. The temptation 

 to doctor the product with impurities seems exceptionally 

 strong. It is so easily done, and the fraud is so difficult 

 for the ordinary consumer to detect that it has been 

 found necessary that the strong arm of the law inter- 

 pose its authority to protect the public. 



All maples yield sugar, but the common hard maple 

 and the variety known as black maple are usually con- 

 sidered best. The manufacture of maple sugar in this 

 country has gone on since prehistoric times. The In- 

 dians understood the process very well, but their methods 

 were crude. They caught the sap in bark buckets or in 

 gourd shells; boiled it in bark troughs by dropping in 

 hot stones, and they stored the sugar for future use in 



bark boxes. Sugar carried in such retainers was an 

 article of commerce on the frontiers a hundred years ago. 

 Chicago was a maple sugar center before it had any 

 business with grain and meat or with lumber. Early 

 traders at Chicago reported as a common article the 

 "barks of sugar" brought in by Indians to be traded for 

 whiskey. Further to the northwest, where hard maple 

 was scarce, the Indians made sugar from boxelder. 



The sugar-making carried on by early white settlers 

 was nearly as crude and unsanitary as that of the In- 

 dians, and in some rural communities there is still room 

 for improvement; but where the industry is on a large 

 scale, up-to-date methods prevail. The business pays. 

 In Vermont the claim is made that a sugar grove brings 

 larger returns than the same ground would bring if 

 devoted to agriculture. In the past, most of the sugar 

 has come from trees planted in nature's way, and at 

 haphazard ; but the tendency now is to plant trees, or at 

 least to thin and properly space those which nature 

 plants, so that they will not be unduly crowded, nor yet 

 so far apart that they do not wholly occupy the ground. 



The flow of the sap from which sugar is made takes 

 place during the first warm days of spring. An erro- 

 neous idea prevails that the sap is rising from the ground 

 to the tree's crown, and that the flow is due to that fact. 



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