302 



Garden and Forest. 



[June 26, 1889. 



however, is not large in proportion to the demand, and can- 

 not hold out many years longer. 



The Red Cedar is the most widely distributed of North 

 American conifers, and in some parts of the country it is 

 one of the most common trees ; but it is in a few favored 

 localities only that it grows in a way to produce the 

 straight-grained material essential for pencil-making. 



The distillation of oil of Cedar, for which there is now a 

 large commercial demand, from the sawdust and other 

 refuse, has been profitable in the pencil-mills at Cedar 

 Keys in Florida, and might be carried on to advantage in 

 other parts of the country. It can be made, of course, from 

 wood of the poorest quality. 



Topiary Gardening in Japan. 



WE have published, in recent issues of this journal 

 (vol. ii., pp. 103, 211), good examples of topiary 

 gardening as practiced in New England and in Old Eng- 

 land, while the illustration upon page 307 of the present 

 issue represents a garden in Tokio, in which the chief 

 features are clipped Pines. They are specimens of Pinus 

 densiflora, the species most often used by the Japanese for 

 this purpose. An examination of these three pictures will 

 show that the Japanese are not behind the Americans or 

 the English in mechanical skill in reducing their trees to 

 formal shapes, or in artistic skill in grouping them, so as to 

 bring out the beauties of purely formal gardening. 



We are indebted to Mr. James M. Codman for the photo- 

 graph from which our illustration has been made. 



Notes on the Production of Maple Sugar. 



O' 



|NE of the most important and interesting of the early writ- 

 ings on the Sugar Maple is " An Account of the Sugar 

 Maple-tree of the United States," by Dr. Benjamin Rush. It 

 was written in the form of a letter to Thomas Jefferson, was 

 read before the American Philosophical Society and published 

 in the "Transactions" of the Society in 1792. Some of the 

 statements hold good at this time, but others sound oddly 

 when compared with modern knowledge and practice. Dr. 

 Rush had a very high opinion of the merits and value of the 

 Sugar Maple. He says : " Its small branches are so much 

 impregnated with sugar as to afford support to the cattle, 

 horses and sheep of the first settlers during the winter, before 

 they are able to cultivate forage for that purpose. . . . The 

 tree is supposed to arrive at its full growth in the woods in 

 twenty years. ... It is in consequence of the sap of these 

 trees being equally diffused through every part of them, that 

 they live three years after they are girdled — that is, after a cir- 

 cular incision is made through the bark into the substance of 

 the tree for the purpose of destroying it." We are told that 

 there are three methods of reducing the sap to sugar : "Byfreez- 

 ingit," " by spontaneous evaporation" and "by boiling." After 

 giving some figures to show that more sugar might be made 

 from the Maple in the country than would be necessary for 

 home consumption, Dr. Rush, in speaking of the benefits he 

 expects from its general use, says : " They will, I hope, extend 

 themselves to the interests of humanity in the West Indies. 

 With this view of the subject of this letter, I cannot help con- 

 templating a Sugar Maple-tree with a species of affection and 

 even veneration, for I have persuaded myself to behold in it 

 the happy means of rendering the commerce and slavery of 

 our African brethren in the sugar islands as unnecessary, as it 

 has always been inhuman and unjust." In a foot-note we are 

 told that " Mr. Jefferson uses no other sugar in his family than 

 that which is obtained from the Sugar Maple-tree. He has lately 

 planted an orchard of Maple-trees on his farm in Virginia." 



Since Dr. Rush wrote his paper much progress has been 

 made in the production and manufacture of syrup and sugar 

 from the Maple, although it has not received so much atten- 

 tion as has fruit-growing and some other kindred industries. 

 It is a most important source of income on many of our north- 

 ern farms, and the sugar-orchard, or "sugar-bush," as it is 

 often called, is in many districts coming to be as well looked 

 after and cared for as a vineyard or fruit-orchard. The annual 

 profit is probably larger than the average of farm crops occu- 

 pying the same acreage of ground, and the work is done be- 

 fore the ordinary farm labors have begun. In many well-man- 

 aged sugar-orchards the dead and diseased branches are 



carefully pruned oft, and the wounds covered by some pro- 

 tecfing substance to prevent injuries by insects or fungus 

 diseases. 



Some of the more thrifty proprietors, at the end of the sap- 

 harvest, have the holes which were bored in the trees care- 

 fully plugged with neat stoppers of dry, sound wood, cut so as 

 not to project beyond the surface of the last ring of wood 

 formed. At the close of the growing season the new layer of 

 wood and bark will have completely covered the wound. This 

 is a great improvement on the barbarous method of making a 

 great gash in the side of the tree with an axe and using a chip 

 for a spout. The amount of abuse which a large tree will bear 

 when standing in the forest is surprising. In some districts 

 there are many large old trees to be found having the trunks 

 for tive or six feet from the ground, very i-ough and uneven, 

 and often a foot greater in diameter than the trunk imme- 

 diately above, caused by the earlier crude way of obtaining the 

 sap. These trees may have been subjected to such rude treat- 

 ment almost every year for half a century or more, and now, 

 tapped in the more approved way, they continue to produce 

 abundantly without showing other signs of injury or decay 

 than such as are found in trees under natural conditions as 

 they attain old age. 



In regard to the manner of tapping the trees writers still 

 seem to differ in their accounts as to the depths bored. Dr. 

 Rush, in the essay already quoted, says : " The perforation is 

 made with an axe or an auger. The latter is preferred from 

 experience of its advantages. The auger is introduced about 

 three-quarters of an inch, and in an ascending direction, and 

 is afterwards deepened gradually to the extent of two inches." 



In Emerson's " Trees and Shrubs of Massachusetts" (p. 564) 

 it is stated that the holes are bored " to the depth of from two 

 to six inches, according to the size of the tree, and M. Ed. 

 Andr6, in an article in the Revue Horticole for 1886, p. 284, 

 says that the holes are often bored even to the heart of the 

 tree. There are probably very few experienced men, owning 

 sugar-orchards now, who have the holes bored more than a 

 couple of inches in depth, and one inch is deemed quite suffi- 

 cient by many. There is little to be gained, and a much greater 

 possibility of injury to the tree by boring deeply into its trunk. 

 Probably nearly all of the sugar-bearing sap comes from the 

 outer layer of wood extending less than an inch deep. Many 

 writers have stated that the south side, of the tree gave the 

 best flow of sap, but experienced men advise tapping the 

 side bearing the most branches. 



As yet most of the sugar-orchards are made up of trees of 

 natural growth, and comparatively few plantations hav.e been 

 set out for sugar-making purposes. The twenty-five years 

 required by the trees to grow before being regularly tapped 

 seems a long period to many, but if properly planted with 

 other trees among them the Maple-orchard could be made 

 self-supporting, by annual thinning of wood, after the first few 

 years. Trees on rocky hill-sides yield more profitable sap than 

 those on low ground, so that some of the best locations 

 would be on New England hill-sides that are now bare and 

 unprofitable. The French Canadians in some portions of 

 Canada are said to be planting large quantities of the Ash- 

 leaved Maple {Negundo aceroides), with tlie idea of producing 

 syrup and sugar from it, and because it is a fast-growing tree. 



The time may not be far distant when nurserymen will give 

 particular attention to the propagation of the best sugar-pro- 

 ducing strains of Maples and other native trees. Careful com- 

 parative studies of the amount of sap obtained from different 

 species of trees, and of the same species under different con- 

 ditions, and of the percentages of sugar contained in the sap 

 are much needed. Numerous analyses have been made of 

 saps by different investigators, but the published results are 

 very contradictory and unsatisfactory. While, no doubt, much 

 depends upon the surroundings, vigor and other conditions 

 attending the trees, it seems as if some general rules might be 

 determined upon which would be approximately reliable. Dr. 

 G. L. Goodale gives the average amount of sugar in the sap of 

 Acer saccharinum as about eight per cent. (Physiological 

 Botany, p. 360), which seems very high when compared with 

 the results of other experiments. In the report of the Massa- 

 chusetts Board of Agriculture, 1874-75 (P- 290) the analysis by 

 Charles Wellington gave a result of 2.777 per cent. 



In recording some interesting experiments made in Indiana 

 (Proceedings A. A. A. S., 1879, vol. xxvii., p. 234) Dr. H. W. 

 Wiley gives the highest percentage as 4.30, from a tree noted 

 for the sweetness of its sap. In a series'of experiments con- 

 ducted at Lunenburg, Vermont, under the direction of Dr. 

 Wiley, and published in Bulletin No. 5 (1885) of the Chemical 

 Division of the Department of Agriculture, the highest per- 

 centage recorded was 10.20 in a small flow of sap from a speci- 



