ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 155 



remembered too that in Louisiana it is the staple, while at 

 the North maple-sugar has never been manufactured with 

 any considerable skill, or regarded as a regular crop, but 

 only a temporary device of economy. Now it only needs to 

 be understood that maple-sugar may be made so as to have 

 the flavor of the best cane-sugar, and that it may, at a tri- 

 fling expense, be refined to white sugar, and the manufac- 

 ture of it will become more general, more skillful, and 

 may, in a little time, entirely supersede the necessity of im- 

 porting cane-sugar. Indiana stands fourth in the rank of 

 maple-sugar making States. Her annual product is at least 

 four million pounds, which, at six cents the pound amounts 

 to $160,000 per annum. A little exertion would quickly 

 run up the annual value of her home-made sugar to half a 

 million dollars. 



Maple-sugar now only brings about two-thirds the price 



or Virginia, which three States are made to raise 60 per centum more 

 than those two great hemp-producing States. 



" The sugar of Louisiana is given at 119,947,720 Ibs., equal to 120,000 

 hhds., 160 per cent, more than has been published in New Orleans, as the 

 highest product of the five consecutive years, including and preceding 

 1840. 



" But what is this to the wholesale figure-dealing which returns 

 3,^60,949 tons of hay, as the product of New York for that article! a 

 quantity sufficient to winter all the horses and mules in the United States. 



" Other errors of great magnitude might be pointed out ; such as 

 making the tobacco product of Virginia 11,000 hhds., when her inspec- 

 tion records show 55,000 hhds., thrown into market as the crop of that 

 year. Who believes that 12,233 Ibs. pitch, rosin and turpentine, or the 

 tenth part of that quantity, were manufactured in Louisiana in 1840, or 

 that New York produced 10,093,991 Ibs. maple-sugar in a single year, or 

 twenty such statements equally absurd, which I might take from the 

 returns ?" 



Mr. Cist will find in the appendix to Dr. Jackson's Final Report on tho 

 Geology of New Hampshire, a statement, that Vermont makes 6,000,000 

 poun.Is of sugar annually. If this be so, we may, without extravagance, 

 suppose that New York reaches 10,000,000 Ibs. So far as we have colla- 

 teral means of judging, the amount of maple-sugar is wwfcr-stated in tho 

 census of 1840. 



