200 FAMILIAR TREES AND THEIR LEAVES. 



of twenty -five gallons.* A large orchard in Yer- 

 niont or ISTew Hampshire will yield, in a good season, 

 one thousand poands of sugar, besides one hundred 

 gallons of sirap, without injury to the trees.f In a 

 small maple grove, which is near my summer home 

 in the White Mountains, it has been my privilege to 

 watch the effect of " tapping " on scores of trees 

 for a period of twenty -five years — in fact, ever since 

 childhood — and I can not say to-day that they seem 

 to have lost any of their vigor ; yet many a farmer 

 has told me that the process eventually kills the 

 tree. This, I find by experience, is entirely depend- 

 ent upon the treatment it receives. There is a 

 sensitive if not a human quality in a maple which 

 responds to kindness, and rewards the care-taker 

 with an abundance of sugar without injury to its 

 own life. There are, however, careless and igno- 

 rant farmers who bore their trees in several places 

 at once, or out of season, and as a consequence the 

 exliausted trees die sooner or later, according to the 

 measure of the abuse. To tap a tree in threatening 



* One gallon of sap yields about three ounces of sugar. Pew 

 trees yield more than thirty gallons of sap, if the tapping is properly 

 done, so the average production of sugar fi'ora a single tree is about 

 five and a half pounds; but in many instances the average, I 

 find, does not rise over four and a quarter pounds. 



f On a large estate near Stamford, N. Y., the output of sugar 

 in a season is five thousand pounds. 



