188 A DISCOURSE 



BOOK I. Aier, and employed often by those who make musical instruments ; that 

 ^'^^ especially which grows in Friuli, Carniola, and Saltzburglandt. There 

 is a larger sort which we call the Sycamore. 



2. Pliny's description of this lesser Maple, and the ancient value of it, 

 is worth the citing. Ace?' operurn elegantid et suhtilitate Citro secundum. 



on the wor//i-side, from which an increased discharge takes place. The sap flows from four 

 to six weeks, according to the temperature of the weather. Troughs, large enough to contain 

 three or four gallons, made of white Pine or white Ash, or of dried water Ash, Aspen, Linden, 

 Poplar, Zzrzoiiendron Tk/z/)2/era, or common Maple, are placed under the spout, to receive 

 the sap, which is carried every day to a large receiver, made of apy of the trees before 

 mentioned. From this receiver it is conveyed, after being strained, to the boiler. To pre- 

 serve the sap from rain and impurities of all kinds, it is a good practice to cover the troughs 

 with a concave board, with a hole in the middle of it. It remains yet to be determined 

 ■whether some artificial heat may be applied so as to increase the quantity and improve the 

 quality of the sap. Mr, Noble informed me, that he saw a tree, under which a farmer had 

 accidentally burnt some brush, which dropped a thick heavy syrup resembling melasses. 

 This fact may probably lead to something useful hereafter. During the remaining part of 

 the spring months, as also in the summer, and in the beginning of autumn, the Maple-tree 

 yields a thin sap, but not fit for the manufactory of sugar. It affords a pleasant drink in 

 harvest, and has been used instead of rum, in some instances, by those farmers in Connecticut, 

 whose ancestors have left them here and there a Sugar Maple-tree, (probably to shade 

 their cattle,) in all their fields. Mr. Bruce describes a drink of the same kind, prepared by 

 the inhabitants of Egypt, by infusing the sugar-cane in water, which he declares to be " the 

 most refreshing drink in the world *." There are three methods of reducing the sap to 

 sugar : 



" 1. By freezing it. This method has been tried for many years, by Mr. Obadiah Scott, a 

 farmer in Luzerne county in this State, with great success. He says that one-half of a given 

 quantity of sap reduced in this way, is better than one-third of the same quantity reduced by 

 boiling. If the frost should not be intense enough to reduce the sap to the graining point, 

 it may afterwards be exposed to the action of the fire for that purpose. 



" Baron La Hontan gives the following account of the sap of the Sugar Maple-tree, when used as a drink, 

 and of the manner of obtaining it. " Tlie tree yields a sap which has a much pleasanter taste than the best 

 lemonade or cherrj'-water, and makes the wholesomest drink in the world. The liquor is drawn by cutting 

 the tree two inches deep in the wood, the cut being made sloping to the length of ten or twelve inches ; at the 

 lower end of this gash a knife is thrust into the tree slopingly, so that the water runs along the cut or gash, 

 as through a gutter, and falls upon the Icnife, which has some vessel placed underneath to receive it. Some 

 trees will yield five or six bottles of this water in a day ; and some inhabitants of Canada might draw twenty 

 hogsheads of it in one day, if they would thus cut and notch all the Maple-trees of their respective plan- 

 tations. The gash does no harm to the tree. Of this sap they make sugar and syrup, which are so valuable, 

 that there can be no better remedy for fortifying the stomach ; it is but few of the inhabitants that have 

 the patience to make them, for as common things are slighted, so there are scarce any body but children 

 that give themselves the trouble of gashing these trees." 



