382 DATE SUGAR INDUSTRY IN BENGAL. 



the date juice fuel would have to be purchased. The writer here 

 calls attention to the long season which is possible with palm sugars. 

 Thus the date palm yields its juice in the cold weather, from Novem- 

 ber to March. The Palmyra Palm (Borassus flabelliformis) yields 

 its juice in the hot weather from April to September. There are 

 many places where these palms would grow very well side by side 

 and thus a factory would be able to make its sugar boiling season 

 last over practically the whole year. 



In considering this subject of improvements it will be instruc- 

 tive to refer to the maple-sugar industry of North America. The 

 early settlers in that country learned the art of making maple sugar 

 from the Indians, who simply made axe-cuts in the trees and inserted 

 a rough wooden spout, very similar to the bamboo spout now used 

 in Jessore. The juice was collected in rough wooden troughs and 

 boiled down in clay or bark vessels by dropping hot stones into the 

 sap. The white settlers carried on the same process for one hundred 

 years without material change, save for the substitution of iron or 

 copper kettles for the clay or bark vessels. They also boiled the 

 juice down over a fire of timber instead of dropping hot stones into 

 it. The crude product of those early days was quite dark in colour 

 and very unreliable in quality. 



About the middle of last century a rapid improvement in the 

 methods and machinery employed, took place. 1 Instead of the 

 old destructive axe-cut, holes are carefully drilled into the trees with 

 an auger or bit and closed metal spouts have been substituted for 

 the old wooden spouts. Similarly, tin or galvanised iron pails fitted 

 with covers have gradually taken the place of the rough wooden 

 troughs which formerly caught the sap. At first the sap was gen- 

 erally carried to the fire in buckets by hand or with a shoulder yoke. 

 But as the scale of operations increased, gathering tanks were in- 

 troduced and are now used in all but the smallest groves. These 

 are placed at convenient distances throughout the' grove. From 

 these pipes are often run through the grove to larger storage tanks 



1 See U. S. Dept. of Agri. Farmers' Bull., No. 252. 



