134 THE TREE BOOK 



September the leaves burst forth in a scarlet 

 glory, the very brightest in all the surrounding 

 autumnal beauty. The Indians made dye from 

 its bark. Ink has also been made from it. 



Many of you know the sugar, or rook maple. 

 It is perhaps the most useful of its family, and 

 is a beautiful tree, sometimes growing one hun- 

 dred and twenty feet high. It is a favorite 

 shade tree, though rather slow in growth. In 

 New England and the Middle states it makes 

 up a considerable part of the native forests. In 

 autumn it tints the landscape with beautiful 

 shades of red, orange, and yellow. The wood 

 is light reddish-brown, very strong and close- 

 grained, and capable of taking a fine polish. It 

 is much used for furniture and house finishing. 

 Now and then it shows some of the beautiful 

 bird's-eye and curled maple effects, which are so 

 puzzling to account for. It is highly prized for 

 its sugar-making qualities. Almost every one 

 knows how the trees are tapped and the pails 

 hung on the spouts in the early days of March, 

 when the warm sun and the rough winds start 

 the sap to stirring. Only about seventy drops 

 run into the pail per minute, when the flow is at 

 its best, but it keeps doing this for three weeks 

 or more, until the tree has yielded up about 

 twenty-five gallons of its life blood. This will 



