I20 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 264. 



he bought his materials, to be treated after methods of his 

 own inventing. If nothing similar existed in England, 

 nothing to show Mr. Sedding a true original for his charm- 

 ing verbal picture, the fault did not lie, as he thought, at 

 the door of landscape-gardening ; it must be laid to the 

 fact that no real artist had practiced landscape-gardening 

 in the regions which he knew. 



It is important thus to realize that no garden or park or 

 landscape picture can be treated in a "natural way" — 

 that the work whose result comes nearest to Nature's can- 

 not be more than naturalistic work ; for this realization will, 

 in the first place, teach us to apply a right standard when 

 we judge works of naturalistic kinds, and, in the second 

 place, will remove the prejudice which most Americans have 

 against formal styles of gardening. When we feel that all 

 gardening which is artistic must, to some extent, be artificial, 

 we shall feel that the measure of artificiality may now be 

 greater and now less, and that, under certain conditions, 

 a very strictly architectural, geometrical scheme may be 

 the best that we could possibly employ. This lesson 

 needs to be taught, and there is small danger that it will 

 harm us in any way. Our Teutonic blood predisposes us 

 to a more spontaneous and general love for Nature than 

 for art, and thus to an instinctiv^e preference for naturalistic 

 rather than architectonic ideals in gardening. We are not 

 likely ever to become so enamored of formal gardening 

 that we shall turn to it in cases where landscape-gardening 

 would serve us better ; the danger lies in the opposite direc- 

 tion. Moreover, a true appreciation of the charms of 

 formality would profit our landscape-work itself. Giving 

 us a clearer insight into the true character of each artistic 

 ideal, it would help us to use formal elements well when 

 they are needed in a naturalistic scheme, and to dispense 

 with them altogether when they are needless and, there- 

 fore, inharmonious and inartistic. 



Secretary of the Interior and place it on the role of the 

 wise, far-seeing and useful statesmen of this country. 



Making Maple-sugar 



The Old Way and 



New.— I. 



the 



At the very close of his administration, President Har- 

 rison established by proclamation a number of forest- 

 reservations in the west. The Yosemite National Park has 

 been enlarged in this way by over 4,000,000 acres, or 

 by more than 6,000 square miles, the new territory lying 

 south of and adjoining the present park, and containing 

 that portion of the Sierra Nevada Mountains which is con- 

 sidered by many observers to contain the grandest scenery 

 in the United States. Within it is the highest land in the 

 United States outside of Alaska, and it includes the won- 

 derful King's River Caiion and considerable forests of Se- 

 quoia, immense bodies of Sugar Pine, Libocedrus and other 

 valuable trees, and the sources of the San Jaquin River. 



Three other reservations in California and Washington, 

 comprising 2,500,000 acres, and a fourth in the Grand 

 Canon of the Colorado, of nearly 2,000,000 acres, have also 

 been established. Mr. Harrison and Mr. Noble, his Secre- 

 tary of the Interior, have by these wise measures conferred 

 a benefit upon the nation of an importance that it is difficult 

 to estimate. Something, however, in this connection is left 

 to their successors, for it must not be forgotten that these 

 reservations are only reservations on paper, and that de- 

 signing men will continue to plunder them ; that fires will 

 continue to rage through them, and sheep and other graz- 

 ing animals will continue to threaten their existence until 

 proper means are adopted for their care and protection. 



The government is still without adequate machinery for 

 protecting its forest-property, and although a great step 

 forward has been taken in the direction of forest-preserva- 

 tion and the proper use of the national domain, the situa- 

 tion will remain critical until some system is devised by 

 which these forests can be managed for the benefit of the 

 nation, and by which they can be made not only self-sup- 

 porting, but capable of yielding a revenue to the govern- 

 ment. Few questions of public policy require more imme- 

 diate attention at the hands of the present administration 

 than the care of these great forest-reserves, which, if 

 properly managed, will perpetuate the name of the late 



A S a practical worker in tlie sugar-orchard, my memory 

 ■^"^ carries me back sixty years, wiien the methods and oper- 

 ations in this industry were very primitive as compared witl> 

 those of the present time. The changes I speak of have all 

 taken place between my own boyhood and old age. The 

 making of maple-sugar by the Indians four hundred years 

 ago was a much cruder process than our own one hundred 

 years ago. 



At the age of twelve years I followed my father from tree 

 to tree and set the troughs to catch the sap after he had tapped 

 the trees. His method of tapping was to strike two blows 

 with a sharp axe so as to take out a chip, leaving the wound 

 clean, which was tlien called " boxing." The cuts of the axe 

 were made diagonally across the tree so that the lower faces 

 of the gash met in a point and led the sap into the spout. 

 About an inch and a half below the wound an iron instrument 

 was driven into the tree to receive the spout. Tliis instrument 

 was called the tapping iron, and it was eight or ten inches long, 

 with the lower end flattened and curved and brought to an 

 edge. Spouts were made to tit this instrument and driven 

 home. Troughs in which to catch the sap were made by cut- 

 ting Basswood-trees into logs two feet long, then splitting the 

 logs once through the middle and digging out the flat side. 

 At the close of the sap season these troughs were turned bot- 

 tom-side up and left in the woods until the next season. 



The first boiling apparatus I remember was a potash-kettle, 

 hung on oneendof alongpole with weights attached lo the other 

 end and the whole balanced on a post so that the ketlle could 

 be swung on or off the tire as needed. The sap was gathered 

 with pails and a sap-yoke balanced on the shoulder. In those 

 early days no tubs were used for storing the sap, which was gath- 

 ered as fast as the kettle would receive it. Large green loo's 

 were rolled one on each side of the kettle. Green wood only 

 was used in boiling, for it was cut as it was wanted. 



No sugar-house or shed of any kind was ever thought of. 

 The open firmament was our only shelter; storms of snow, 

 rain and wind beat on us as mercilessly as it did upon the trees 

 around us. The gathering of sap otherwise than by hand was 

 unknown. The fire was kindled under the kettle with Birch- 

 bark peeled from standing trees and tucked in between the 

 kettle and logs. Cinders, smoke, steam and occasionally a 

 brand of wood would fall into the boiling sap to discolor the 

 product. 



In those days we boiled the same sap from morning till 

 night by constantly replenishing the kettle, thus wasting time 

 and fuel and sacrificmg quality, and at night we "syruped 

 down " to a density of about ten pounds to the gallon. This 

 was then taken home and reduced to tub-sugar. Syrup was 

 not made for sale, and therefore it was taken from the fire before 

 the malic acid and lime of the sap combined to form wliat the 

 chemists call malate of lime, or, as it is popularly called, 

 " nitre." 



This sediment that so troubles sugar-makers now is the ash 

 of the sap, and it was in the sap then, no doubt, as it is now, 

 but it was not precipitated to give trouble as it now does. 



After the potash-kettle, in my experience, came smaller 

 kettles, the chaldron, holding from three to five pails, swung 

 on a pole supported by two crotched posts. Next came the 

 sheet-iron pans set on stone fire-places, built up in the woods 

 with no flue or chimney. After this came sugar-houses, with 

 regular arches built for the pans, with chimneys ; this was a 

 great advance. In process of time evaporators were invented, 

 which was a still longer stride forward. 



After the axe, in tapping, came the auger; a two-inch hole 

 was bored by some and an inch-hole by more. After this bits 

 were mainly used, first a three quarter-inch size and then a 

 half-inch size, which many use still, although the more ad- 

 vanced and intelligent sugar-maker uses only the three-eighth- 

 inch bit. We now have vats or store-tubs in which to keep 

 the sap, and drawing-tubs and teams to transport the sap in 

 bulk to the place of storage. 



Sap should never come in contact with wood, therefore 

 store-tubs and drawing-tubs should be lined with metal ; the 

 sap-tubs also should be of metal ; tin is good in some respects, 

 but objectionable in others. It renders the sap warm, which 

 is a serious faidt, as the cooler the sap is kept the better the 

 product in color and flavor. If tin is used tor tubs they should 

 be painted white inside and out, so that the heat of the sun 



