170 HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS. ra 
it comes raw and can be cooked in the glowing embers, 
held on the point of a sharpened stick. How generous 
the hens are in their supply of eggs at sugaring time! 
Large quantities always find their way to the woods. 
The sugar camp is better than a water-cure for a man 
fretting with dyspepsia. Sometimes there are several 
days between the runs, in which the sap will not start 
at all—the weather being too hot or too cold. Freez- 
ing nights and sunshiny days are favorable conditions 
for its free circulation in the trees. Burroughs says: 
“A day that will bring the bees out of the hive will 
bring the sap out of maple trees. It is the fruit of the 
equal marriage of the sun and frost.” No class of 
people note the changes of the weather more closely, 
watching the fulfillment of all signs, than the sugar 
makers. When the piping of the frogs is heard in low 
places, three more sap runs are predicted, as it is 
believed the frogs will be frozen in three times after 
their first appearance. Sugar made after the buds 
begin to start is salvy and will not cake well, and later, 
it will not granulate or crystallize at all, but is stringy 
and has a strong, disagreeable flavor, very different 
from the sparkling cakes made when the trees were 
first tapped: this must be nature’s hint that the sweet 
blood of the tree is needed for other uses; at least, it is 
a hint that the sugar season is over. 
Other urgent work usually compels the sugar makers 
to leave the bush immediately after the last “run” 
until the first hurry of fence and garden making is 
over, when all hands return to the woods to gather, 
