The wood of all of the forms is very valuable for manufacturing pur- 

 poses, while from the sugar maple we get our maple sugar and maple 

 syrup. If there are any sugar maple orchards near where you live see 

 if you can find out how maple sugar is made. At what season of the 

 year is it made? How is the sap of which it is made secured without 

 injury to the tree? Be sure to visit a '"sugar camp" if there is one in 

 your neighborhood and watch every process from the collection of sap 

 to the time in which it is changed into syrup or sugar. If you do not 

 live near a sugar maple orchard, have your teacher tell you how maple 

 sugar is made. 



I suppose every boy and girl in Indiana has eaten walnuts and 

 hickory nuts, and many of you have gathered them in the fall, after 

 the first heavy frosts have loosened them from the branches and 

 brought them rattling to the ground. The walnuts and hickory nuts 

 are very closely related to each other, being in the same family. If 

 trees counted kin as we do, the walnuts and hickory nuts would be 

 cousins. Look, now, for a walnut tree. See how thick and rough and 

 ■dark colored the bark is, much darker than in the case of the dark- 

 colored oaks or maples. If, however, the walnut tree is very young 

 the bark will be somewhat lighter in color. The tree is tall and very 

 straight, and is sometimes two or three feet in diameter. Pick a leaf 

 of the walnut, being very careful that you get the entire leaf. Do 

 you see how the leaf stalk, instead of bearing a single green part, as 

 in the maples and oaks, bears many such parts, each looking like a 

 perfect leaf? In the case of the walnut the number of these leaflets. 

 as they are called, varies from fourteen to twenty-two. When a single 

 leaf stalk bears more than one green part it is known as a compound 

 leaf. All the trees in the great walnut family, and that means the 

 walnuts and butternuts, and all of the different kinds of hickory nuts, 

 have compound leaves. Are the leaflets in the walnut opposite each 

 other, or is one slightly above the other? Do the leaves of the walnut 

 unfold before those of the maple, or after? Do they appear before or 

 after the leaves of the oak? Do the leaves appear before the flowers? 

 At what date do the leaves and flowers appear? There, you see, is 

 another long list of questions which you can easily answer if you 

 watch the trees from day to day on your way to and from school. 

 You will be surprised to find how many things you can learn about 

 trees by vaicliing them in this way. 



Of course, you know the wood of the walnut tree is very valuable. 

 In the fully grown, old trees the wood is very dark in color and takes 

 a beautiful polish, and so it has been very largely used in making fur- 



