380 
has been used instead of ram, in some instances by those farmers in Con¬ 
necticut, whose ancestors have left to them here, and there, a sugar maple 
tree, (probably to shade their cattle,) in all their fields. Mr. Brace 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 Lucerne 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 grain¬ 
ing point, it may afterwards be exposed to the action of the fire for that 
purpose. 
2. By spontaneous evaporation. The hollow stump of a maple-sugar tree, 
which had been cut down in the spring, and which was found sometime 
afterwards filled with sugar, first suggested this method of obtaining sugar to * 
our farmers. So many circumstances of cold and dry weather, large and flat 
vessels, and above all so much time, are necessary to obtain sugar, by either 
of the above methods, that the most general method among our farmers is 
to obtain it, 
3. By boiling. For this purpose the following facts which have been 
ascertained by many experiments, deserve attention. 
1. The sooner the sap is boiled, after it is collected from the tree, the 
better. It should never be kept longer than twenty four hours, before it is 
put over the fire. 
* 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. “ The tree yields a sap which has a much pleasanter 
taste than the best lemonade or cherry water, and makes the wholesomest drink in the world. This 
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 knife, whichlias 
some vessels 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 plantations. The gash does no harm to the tree. 
Of this sap they make sugar and syrup, which is 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.” 
