THE MAPLES TT 
Very early -in the spring, often as early as March, 
the sap begins to flow up through the tree. The farmer 
knows by experience when to tap the tree, which he 
does by boring a three-quarter inch hole with an auger. 
Into this hole he inserts a spout of wood or iron through 
which the lifeblood of the tree—the sap—flows in a 
steady drip, drip, drip, into a pail or bucket placed beneath 
to catch it. 
The sap comes in drops about as regularly as the ticks 
of a clock, one a second. This continues for two or 
three weeks, until each tree has yielded something like 
twenty-five gallons. As it takes five gallons of sap to 
produce a pound of sugar, each tree yields about five 
pounds of maple sugar. In New England and New York 
there are maple groves containing thousands of trees, 
and one farm alone produces five thousand pounds of 
sugar in a season. 
Strange as it may seem, this excessive bleeding of the 
trees does not kill them unless improperly done. The 
farmer must not tap them at the wrong time nor in too 
many places. The tree will stand a great deal if prop- 
erly treated, but harsh treatment will kill it. 
The boiling process is very simple. The sap is poured 
into large boilers or evaporators and boiled until it be- 
comes a sirup. The old-fashioned test to find out when 
the boiling had been carried on long enough was to drop 
