EPISODES 509 



part of the business, but the women and girls are not less 

 busy. 



It takes ten gallons of sap to produce a pound of fine- 

 grained sugar ; but an inferior kind in lumps, called cake 

 sugar, is obtained in greater quantity. When the season 

 is far advanced, the juice will no longer grain by boiling, 

 and only produces a syrup. I have seen maple sugar so 

 good, that some months after it was manufactured it re- 

 sembled candy; and well do I remember the time when 

 it was an article of commerce throughout Kentucky, 

 where, twenty-five or thirty years ago, it sold at from 6J 

 to \2\ cents per pound, according to its quality, and was 

 daily purchased in the markets or stores. 



Trees that have been thus bored rarely last many years ; 

 for the cuts and perforations made in their trunks injure 

 their health, so that after some years of weeping they be- 

 come sickly, exhibit monstrosities about their lower parts, 

 gradually decay, and at length die. I have no doubt, 

 however, that, with proper care, the same quantity of sap 

 might be obtained with less injury to the trees ; and it is 

 now fully time that the farmers and land-owners should 

 begin to look to the preservation of their sugar-maples. 



THE WHITE PERCH AND THE FAVORITE 



BAIT 



No sooner have the overflowing waters of early spring 

 subsided within their banks, and the temperature become 

 pleasant, than the trees of our woods are seen to unfold 

 their buds and blossoms, and the White Perch which during 

 the winter has lived in the ocean, rushes up our streams, 

 to seek the well-known haunts in which it last year depos- 

 ited its spawn. With unabating vigor it ascends the tur- 

 bulent current of the Mississippi, of which, however, the 



