DIFFERENT VARIETIES OF MAPLES. 
65 
Nor does the luxuriant beauty of the maple mislead us as to 
its properties ; it is a highly valuable wood. We should be very 
thankful for its sugar, if that imported from other regions could 
not be procured ; to the Indians it was very precious, one of the 
very few luxuries known to them. In winter, it ranks with the 
better sorts of fuel for heat and a cheerful blaze, and the different 
kinds are employed for very many useful and ornamental pur- 
poses. A large amount of furniture of the better sort is made of 
the various maples. A few years back, maple ranked next to 
mahogany for these pui'poses, but lately black walnut has been 
more in favor. With the exception of the ash-leaved variety, a 
Western tree, all the American maples are said to be found in this 
county. The moose-wood,'^ a small tree of graceful, airy growth, 
and bearing the prettiest flowers of the tribe, to whose young 
shoots the moose is said to have been so partial ; the mountain 
maple, a shrub growing in thick clumps with an upright flower, 
the scarlet maple, the silver, the sugar, and the black sugar ma- 
ples, are all included among ou.r trees. They all, except the 
shrubby mountain maple, yield a portion of sweet sap, though 
none is so liberal in the supply as the common sugar maple. The 
very largest trees of this kind in our neighborhood are said to be 
about three feet in diameter, and those of forest growth attain to 
a great height, from sixty to eighty feet ; but the common maples 
about the country are rarely more than eighteen inches in diam- 
eter, and forty or fifty feet high.f As their wood is usually sound 
* Sometimes twenty feet high, in this county, 
t The sugar maple does not thrive in England, seldom growing there to more 
than 'fifteen feet in height. The silver maple, on the contrary, succeeds very well 
in Europe. 
