128 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 31S. 



We are, therefore, compelled to face a difficulty in the care of 

 our parks that has not as yet been solved. We have been ex- 

 ceptionally fortunate in having men of great talent to create 

 our parks, but as yet we have no one to carry out their ideas 

 or to watch and care intelligently for what has been planted. 

 It is manifestly impossible for the designer of a park to attend 

 personally to the detail work of thinning out, removing nurses 

 at the proper time, etc., and the Park Commissioners can 

 hardly be expected to find time for such work, even if they 

 have the necessary knowledge. 



The result is that this most important point in the manage- 

 ment of young plantations is entirely neglected. 



Boston, Mass. H. S. H. 



The Flavor of Maple-sugar. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Living at the centre of the maple-sugar manufacture, 

 and being a sugar-maker on a moderate scale myself, I ven- 

 ture to respond to Professor Plumb's criticism upon what he 

 denominates the modern process of its manufacture. There 

 is, as yet, little difficulty in obtaining all that there seems to be 

 any call for of sugar made in the primitive fashion to which 

 the Professor refers with so much satisfaction. But very little 

 of it is called for, or can be sold at paying prices. What is 

 sold now goes mostly to western cities — especially to Chicago 

 — to be used in the manufacture of what is really a factitious 

 or greatly "extended" article. 



Many of us are aware that the tastes of our childhood, espe- 

 cially in food, cling to us, at least in imagination, even to old 

 age. Those of us who are getting well on in years recall only 

 the maple sugar, or syrup, of the old iron caldron hung upon 

 a pole, supported by stakes, and open to receive whatever the 

 wind, the sparks, the dropping mosses and fragments of bark 

 may have added to the sap, received in open troughs and 

 gathered in open buckets. Most of these adventitious matters 

 were of a "woodsy" nature, and veritably conveyed to the 

 open kettle a woodsy flavor, which, however dear in our 

 youthful reminiscences, was not the true and unadulterated 

 taste of the maple-sap, or of pure maple-sugar. Not to put too 

 fine a point on it, that flavor, though unquestionably " woodsy," 

 was far from being a "pure maple taste." It was rather the 

 taste of the woods in general, maple being more or less ap- 

 parent, along with the rest. 



Now I am far from blaming any one for liking that flavor. 

 I like it myself, spite of knowing so well where it comes from. 

 There is nothing whatever astonishing about the preference 

 felt for it by the older generation. Yet we must look at the 

 fact that the demand for a purer article, of more delicate fla- 

 vor, is now far greater than the demand for the old-fashioned 

 sort. This pure maple sugar, or syrup, has made a market for 

 itself in the last twenty years, far better and wider-spread than 

 any present market for the old kind ; and there are many who, 

 having used no other than the new, regard the older make as 

 a factitious, or at least a greatly adulterated manufacture, a 

 "filthy compound," as a visitor at my home not long ago 

 styled it ; having never before seen that black, woodsy-tasting 

 product of ancestral or, perhaps, aboriginal art. 



Professor Plumb makes one point which at first, after be- 

 coming familiar with the modern method, I thought a good 

 one myself. It appears really to be too fluid, not boiled down 

 enough; and many makers have tried to amend it by more 

 concentration. The result was simply that this more concen- 

 trated syrup grained in the cans and was utterly spoiled for 

 table use. Every maker of the pure maple-syrup has been 

 forced, a hundred times at least, to explain this unfortunate 

 fact. If it could be made heavier, without graining, we should 

 all be glad to know how. But being pure maple-sugar, with 

 no admixture, much less a preponderance of "inverted" 

 sugar, it becomes a very nice and a very important matter to 

 stop the concentration at the right point, which is signified to 

 the workman by the thermometer which controls his work. It 

 is but a slight matter to concentrate this pure syrup by a little 

 boiling before use. The difficulty could be obviated by the 

 use of a harmless chemical substance ; but then it could no 

 longer be sold honestly as "pure and unadulterated maple- 

 syrup." 



Newport, Vt. 



T. H. Ho skins. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — I have read with interest in your issue of March 7th the 

 letter of Professor C. S. Plumb, on maple-syrup. His conten- 

 tion is that the evaporator-process of maple-syrup and sugar- 

 making has overrefined the product and brought about a loss 

 of the subtle and indefinable flavor peculiar to it. Professor 



Plumb was born, as he states, under the shadow of the New 

 England Rock Maple. He knows the ways of the sugar-bush 

 and camps, and, if I mistake not, we have indulged together 

 in that toothsome dainty, " sugar on snow." But I fear that 

 his sojourn, almost under the shadow of the city where more 

 " pure Vermont maple-syrup" is made than in all the sugar- 

 bushes of the Green Mountain state combined, has vitiated 

 his taste for the luscious sweet. 



I cannot agree with him that the evaporated maple syrup- 

 and sugar has lost its savor as compared with the open-kettle 

 product. Its flavor, as a rule, is more delicate, though less- 

 pronounced. The kettle often turns out a fine article, but, with 

 average hands, seasons and saps, is less liable to do this than 

 the evaporator. The open-kettle syrup is more readily burned 

 and inverted, and its delicate flavor is more apt to become dis- 

 guised by the products of prolonged boiling and inversion. 



The modern palate delights indelicate as distinguished from 

 pronounced flavors. We used to prefer mother's butter, and 

 we are apt to look back to it as the acme of perfection. If it 

 were now placed beside the creamery butter, which we then 

 would have thought flat and which we now admire, it would 

 often be found possessing too strong an aroma. We like 

 lamb better than mutton. 



Light-colored and delicately flavored maple-products are no 

 temporary fads, but have come to stay. Our best sugar makers 

 and buyers, brought up, so to speak, on open-kettle sugars, 

 have not endorsed the evaporators for naught. They have 

 found better goods, easier made, selling at higher prices, to 

 be the results of the use of the evaporator. The consumer, 

 moreover, though at first inclined to doubt upon the score of 

 color, is seldom disappointed in the taste, unless wedded to 

 the pronounced and often buddy flavor of the "last runs." 



The remarkably warm weather of the past two weeks has set 

 our sugar-camps in operation. I expect soon to send Professor 

 Plumb a gallon of Vermont evaporator-made maple-syrup. 

 " The proof of the pudding is in the eating," and I shall call 

 on him to eat his words as well as our syrup. 



Ag'I Expt. Station, Burlington, Vt. yosepll L. Hills. 



Notes from West Virginia. 

 To the Editor of Garden and Forest : 



Sir, — Jasminum nudiflorum began to hang out a few yellow 

 blossoms in December. Dandelions have been found every 

 week of the year. Chickweed, Shepherd's-purse and Draba 

 verna are common everywhere, and not to be despised when 

 flowers are few. These are all in bloom. 



A little Veronica, V. Buxbaumii, naturalized from England, 

 opened its blue eyes a week ago in a neglected garden-bed in 

 company with some early Pansies, and, of course, the white of 

 Snowdrops and the blue of Scillas brighten all the borders. 



Several varieties of Narcissus are now flowering. Chiono- 

 doxa and Narcissus princeps make a charming picture in the 

 rockery, and are surrounded by mats of Periwinkle, whose 

 blue blossoms are twinkling by the hundred in the morn- 

 ing dew. 



Single white Violets grow beneath the Forsythia-bushes, and 

 betray their presence by their balmy breath. The Forsythias 

 are well into flower. The grass of the lawn has been studded 

 with Crocuses, and as these are passing some Saxifrage-plants, 

 clustered at the foot of a ledge of rock, are showing. One of 

 these, S. crassifolia, var. Schmidtii, has handsome bright pink 

 blossoms, and remains a long time in bloom. 



An early-flowering Plum is now attracting the bees, and 

 shares their attentions with its near neighbors, an Aspen Pop- 

 lar and a Silver Maple, both in flower. Willows, Hazels and 

 Alders hang out their pretty catkins, and in the woods the first 

 Bloodroot and Toothworts are blooming in sheltered sunny 

 spots. Last year we did not find Bloodroot until the 4th of 

 April. And all this in mid-March, with dusty roads and thirsty 

 fields beginning to long for rain. 



Shepherdstown, w. Va. Vanske Dandndge. 



The Weeping Willow. 



To the Editor of Garden and Forest: 



Sir, — Thoreau, in the volume entitled Early Spring in Mas- 

 sachnsetts, writes of the Weeping Willow as blooming "not 

 the less hopefully, though its other half is not in the New 

 England world at all and never has been." Will you kindly 

 inform me whether this is true, and if so, whether it is the pis- 

 tillate or staminate tree which we know here ? 



Worcester, Mass. ". H- J • 



[It has always been stated that the pistillate plant of 

 Salix Babylonica only was introduced into this country. 



