28 
RURAL HGIRS. 
the maples, and, indeed, had quite made up his mind, " canny Scot," 
as he was, to " give up farming altogether, and keep to sugar-mak- 
ing all the year round ;" — a plan which, it may be imagined, tickled 
the fancy of Jonathan not a little, knowing the ways of maples as 
he did. Many other trees are tapped for their juices in different 
parts of the world — the pines for their turpentine, as we all know, 
and the celebrated cow-tree of South America for its nourishing 
fluid, yielding vegetable milk, as it were, in regions where the 
milk of domestic animals seems to have been unknown ; and still 
farther South, on this great continent, they prepare from the sap 
of the Palm of Chili, a syrup of the consistency of honey, using 
it as an article of food. In Northern Europe, the birch sap is 
made into a drink which they call birch-wine, and in this country 
vinegar is occasionally made in the same way. In the Crimea, 
the Tartars regularly make sugar from the fine walnut-trees on 
the shores of the Black Sea. So says Dr. Clarke in his Travels. 
The lime or basswood also yields a saccharine fluid. Our own 
hickory is thought to have the sweetest and richest sap of any 
tree in the woods, and we have heard of superior sugar being 
made in small quantities from it by certain New England house- 
wives. It would not be generally available for the purpose, how- 
ever, as the amount of sap yielded is very small. 
According to the last general Census, the whole amount of 
maple sugar made during one year in this county, with a popu- 
lation of 49,658, was 351,748 pounds, or nearly eight pounds to 
each individual. The whole amount of sugar made in the State, 
was 10,048,109 pounds. The census does not specify the differ- 
ent kinds of sugar, but it is so well known that no other sort but 
maple is made in our part of the country, as a manufacture, that 
