MAPLE SAP AND SUGAR 



169 



Pig. 65. A sap-sucker 

 on a tree trunk, mak- 

 ing lines of perfora- 

 tions. 



Before the Indians, there were many animals that had dis- 

 covered the springtime sugar supply of the maple trees : sap- 

 suckers, that tap the trunks in the neatest 

 and most methodical and least injurious 

 way imaginable (fig. 65) ; and porcupines, 

 that strip the bark disastrously from young 

 trees, killing them outright; and red 

 squirrels, that gnaw little basins in the 

 upper surface of horizontal boughs and, 

 when these fill with the sap, come to the 

 basins for a soft drink (fig. 66). And 

 when these larger creatures set the sap 

 flowing, there are innumerable lesser 

 creatures, mostly flies and beetles, that come in swarms to 

 be partakers with them. 



This store of sweets is the accumulated food reserve of the 

 preceding season. It is stored as starch when the leaves are 

 active, to be transformed into sugar and dissolved in the 

 sap in early spring. When, at the approach of warmer 

 weather in February and March, the days are warm and 

 bright and the nights clear and frosty, changes of pressure 

 in the vessels of the trees, due to the great diurnal changes 

 of temperature, 

 set the sap flow- 

 ing. 



The warm 

 sunshine on the 

 treetops ex- 

 pand the air in 

 the trunks and 

 increases the 

 internal pres- 

 sure, so that 



c — •— •„ Fig. 66. A squirrel drinking sap as it exudes from a maple 



from any mOS- bough (after Cram). 



