292 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
est, and it is only at the threshold of its usefulness, as the 
sugar product will increase up to 3,000 pounds per year, while 
the proper thinnings will yield a handsome remuneration in 
fuel. 
Objections may occur to many, or all of these figures, and 
in reply the fact may be urged that though they had been 
taken from an actual transaction, it would be no proof that 
everyone would be able to do just the same thing if they tried; 
but the cost of picking seed given ; the cost of raising yearling 
trees given; the cost of transplanting given, and the size at 
the stated age, were taken from actual transactions and actual 
measurement, and as to the amount of sap per tree at ten years 
old, the writer got two quarts of sap in one days’ flow from a 
tree but three and o. half inches in diameter, and from a tree 
of sixteen inches diameter, and nineteen years old, two and a 
half gallons ran in one day. 
These facts and figures are given with a purpose of drawing 
public attention to this subject, in hopes that experiments may 
demonstrate the usefulness of a neglected and comparatively 
unknown tree, which has, in the writers estimation, claims 
upon the earnest attention of everyone interested in the domes¬ 
tic economies. It was not without long and laborious effort 
that the beet plant was brought forward as a rival of the 
southern cane, and even yet, owing to the peculiarities of its 
constitution, the capital and skill required to manipulate it, 
render it almost uncertain whether beet sugar manufacture, as 
a permanent industry will be profitable. But here is a tree 
which yields the same sugar by simple incision and evapora¬ 
tion, needing no very costly apparatus to make a good quality 
of sugar, and hence just suited for domestic manufacture, 
which will employ time profitably, at a period of the year 
when farm labor is not exacting, and which may be carried on 
by nearly every prairie farmer of Wisconsin, and in time give 
a home supply of the commodity which taxes us so heavily 
when imported and brought from afar. 
The slight purification which the ash leaf maple sugar needs 
to make it in every respect equal to cane sugar of the south, 
