314 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS OF 



between the 14th and 23d of April, in the year 1789, from a single tree." Mention 

 has already been made here of a maple that produced thirty-three pounds in one 

 season; also one that flowed 175 gallons of sap, which would indicate a production of 

 forty-three pounds for the season. 



In a Vermont sugar bush there is a tree two feet in diameter, with a record of 

 thirty pounds of "small cake" sugar in one season. The sap from this tree was rich 

 in saccharine matter, for it required only seven quarts for a pound of sugar, instead of 

 sixteen quarts, the usual quantity. A sugar maker in Waitsfield, Vt., states that he 

 made twelve pounds from one tree in twenty-four hours ; but there were six spouts in 

 this tree. There are, also, various reports of trees that produced fifty pounds in one 

 season, ten or twelve spouts being used on each. 



But these are maximum records, and the reader need bear in mind only the two 

 main facts: (1) That four gallons of sap make a pound of sugar. (2) That a sugar 

 bush yields about six pounds per tree in an average season. But this does not apply 

 to maples standing in a primitive forest ; for such trees yield far less than the second- 

 growth maples in a farmer's grove or in his fields. 



The sap contains about three per cent, of sugar; but the percentage is variable, 

 being somewhat less or more at times and places. Investigations made in 1885 by the 

 Chemical Division of the United States Department of Agriculture furnish a maximum 

 record of 10.20 per cent., obtained from a tree in Vermont during a small flow late in 

 the season; but the same tree averaged only 5.01 per cent for the entire run 

 that spring. Maples standing in the valleys, on the low, flat lands along the streams, 

 where the soil is dark and moist, will yield plenty of sap, but of inferior quality. 

 Trees thus located produce a smaller amount of sugar in proportion to the sap, and 

 the sugar is darker in color. 



The best and lightest colored sugar is made from the sap which flows from the 

 white or sap wood ; and the darkest colored product comes from the sap of the 

 duramen or heart wood.* There is a variety of hard maple known as the black maple 

 •(Acer nigruni) which is in high favor with sugar makers, many of whom assert that its 

 product is far superior in both quantity and quality to that of the regular species. 



In the details of sugar making there has been a great advance beyond the simple, 

 primitive methods of earlier years. Then the sap was conducted from the spouts into 

 rude troughs of basswood. These troughs were from two to three feet long, made by 

 splitting the log in halves and hollowing out the flat side. The sap was then gathered 

 in pails and carried to the fire, each man carrying two pails suspended from the ends of 

 a neck yoke fitted to his shoulders. There was seldom any main receptacle for storing 

 the sap, but it was carried to the boiling kettle as fast as it was needed. 

 * Timothy Wheeler. Garden and Forest. Vol. VI, p. 174. 



