VOL. XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 459 



• The tree is also tapped with a small gimblet below the box, so as to draw 

 the liquor off'. When we have pierced or tapped the tree, or box, we put in a 

 reed, or pipe, or a bit of cedar scored with a channel, and place a bowl, tray, 

 or small cask at the foot of the tree, to receive the liquor, and so tend the 

 vessels as they are full. 



The liquor is boiled in a pot, kettle, or copper. Ten gallons will make 

 somewhat better than lib. of sugar. It becomes sugar by the thin part eva- 

 porating in the boiling, which is continued till it is as thick as treacle. Ten 

 gallons must boil till it comes to a pint and half. A kettle of 20 gallons will 

 be near 1 6 hours in boiling before it can be reduced to 3 pints : a good fire 

 may do it sooner. 



When taken off, it must be kept almost continually stirring, in order to 

 make it sugar: otherwise it will candy as hard as a rock. Some put in a little 

 beef suet, as large as a walnut, when taken off" the fire, to make it turn the 

 better to sugar, and to prevent its candying; but it will do without. A good 

 large tree will yield 20 gallons. The season of the year is from the beginning 

 of February to the beginning of April. 



Mr. Dudley in a following letter says, that he has nothing to add to his 

 chapter of maple sugar, but that the physicians esteem it not only as good for 

 common use as the West India sugar, but to exceed all other for its medicinal 

 virtue. 



^n Account of a Boy who lived a considerable Time without Food, By Patrick 

 Blair, M. D. F. R, S. N° 364, p. 28. 



This account, is of a boy, of 1 5 years of age, said to have lived 3 years 

 without eating or drinking ; during which time he had several severe fevers, 

 with sometimes the loss of the use of his limbs, and one while of his 

 speech. After the 3 years he gradually recovered tolerable health, excepting 

 the use of one of his limbs, and taking extremely little food. 



A Discourse concerning a Method of discovering the Virtues of Plants by their 

 external Structure. By the same. N° 364, p. 30. 



I cannot sufficiently admire the judiciousness and sagacity of the ancients, 

 who, without any of those means used by the moderns, have handed down to 

 us such an account of the virtues of those plants, which are more particularly 

 useful in physic, that all the laborious endeavours of their inquisitive successors, 

 have never been able to outdo them. It must have been a long course of ex- 

 perience, which enabled Dioscorides and Theophrastus to collect such a lasting 

 catalogue of the virtues of plants, as scarcely any thing has been added to it 



3 N 2 



