170 
SAP OF SUGAR MAPLE. 
portion of tlie water abstracted from tbe eartb by tbe roots, 
during this season, when tbe yet undeveloped leaves can bardly 
absorb an appreciable quantity of vapor from tlie atmos¬ 
phere ; * for all this fluid runs from two or three incisions or 
auger holes, so narrow as to intercept the current of compara¬ 
tively few sap vessels, and besides, experience shows that large 
as is the quantity withdrawn from the circulation, it is rela¬ 
tively too small to affect very sensibly the growth of the tree.f 
The number of large maple trees on an acre is frequently not 
less than fifty, X and of course the quantity of moisture ab- 
of maple sugar, writes me that a second-growth maple, of about two feet 
in diameter, standing in open ground, tapped with four incisions, has, for 
several seasons, generally run eight gallons per day in fair weather. He 
speaks of a very large tree, from which sixty gallons were drawn in the 
course of a season, and of another, something more than three feet through, 
which made forty-two pounds of wet sugar, and must have yielded not 
lees than one hundred and fifty gallons. 
* “ The buds of the maple,” says the same correspondent, “ do not start 
till toward the close of the sugar season. As soon as they begin to swell, 
the sap seems less sweet, and the sugar made from it is of a darker color, 
and with less of the distinctive maple flavor.” 
t “ In this region, maples are usually tapped with a three-quarter inch 
bit, boring to the depth of one and a half or two inches. In the smaller 
trees, one incision only is made, two in those of eighteen inches in diame¬ 
ter, and four in trees of larger size. Two f-inch holes in a tree twenty- 
two inches in diameter = yg- of the circumference, and of the area 
of section.” 
“ Tapping does not check the growth, hut does injure the quality of 
the wood of maples. The wood of trees often tapped is lighter and less 
dense than that of trees which have not been tapped, and gives less heat 
in burning. No difference has been observed in the starting of the buds 
of tapped and untapped trees .”—Same correspondent . 
t Hr. Rush, in a letter to Jefferson, states the number of maples fit 
for tapping on an acre at from thirty to fifty. “This,” observes my cor¬ 
respondent, “ is correct with regard to the original growth, which is always 
more or less intermixed with other trees; but in second growth, com¬ 
posed of maples alone, the number greatly exceeds this. I have had the 
maples on a quarter of an acre, which I thought about an average of 
second-growth ‘ maple orchards,’ counted. The number was found to be 
fifty-two, of which thirty-two were ten inches or more in diameter, and, 
of course, large enough to tap. This gives two hundred and eight trees 
