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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[JUNE 16, 1900. 

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accustomed to NEWS 
California Maple Sugar. 
SHasta Mountains, Cal., April 30.—Editor 
Forest and Stream: I have been much interested 
in the article on “Trees in Winter,’ by Clarence 
M. Weed, and his description and drawing of the 
ash-leaved maple remind me of our California 
mountain maple, with which I have experimented, 
and have produced sugar and syrup of good 
quality. 
I believe that I am the first to demonstrate that 
sugar can be produced from this Pacific Coast 
maple. This year the season has been too warm 
for sap flow, but in the past three seasons I have 
made considerable sugar and syrup. I believe 
sugar can be made from this tree successfully 
on this coast. 
Four years ago, while excavating a cellar, I 
cut some roots of a tree, and noticing the con- 
tinued flow of sap from a root; I collected a 
pint or so of it, and my wife boiled it down to 
about half an ounce of syrup. As it had all the 
sweetness and flavor of the best maple syrup, 
we were enthusiastic enough to tap about twenty 
trees near our home, and as the weather and 
season were favorable (February, 1902), I col- 
lected about a hundred gallons of sap from the 
twenty trees and we reduced it to syrup and 
sugar. I sent some of this sugar to Mr. C. H. 
Grimm, of Rutland, Vt., a manufacturer of 
sugar makers’ equipment, together with some 
leaves from the tree. Mr. Grimm was greatly 
interested and wrote me that he could see no 
difference in the sugar from that made in Ver- 
mont. He stated that the leaves were like those 
of the sugar maple, except that they were 
larger. 
Two years ago I applied to Mr. Grimm for 
catalogues and information as to maple sap 
collecting and the process of making the sugar, 
later obtaining from him the necessary sap pails, 
spouts, gathering tank, and an evaporator with 
which to continue experiments. The modern 
process, while greatly improved over old 
methods, is simple in detail. The trees are 
tapped by boring into them about two inches 
with a half-inch bit, a metal spout is driven into 
the bore lightly, under which a pail is hung. 
The pails are provided with covers to keep out 
rain and snow in stormy weather. The sap 
should be gathered at least once a day and evap- 
orated with as little delay as possible. 
In my experiments it required about forty 
gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup, of 
proper consistency, and twenty quarts of sap to 
make one pound of sugar. This would tend to 
show that the sap from the trees here is not so 
rich in sugar as it is in Vermont, where, I be- 
lieve, the sap is claimed to yield a pound of 
sugar from sixteen to eighteen quarts of sap, 
but I should think that conditions in California 
for collecting the sap are much more favorable 
than in colder regions, and I see no reason why 
the business of maple sugar making should not 
assume commercial importance on this coast, 
which would have a pleasing result in protecting 
from general destruction a beautiful and valu- 
able tree. I would pronounce it a splendid field 
for investment and development. The ‘trees 
are notably vigorous and hardy, thriving in 
rocky cafions, ravines and upon mountain sides 
where the land can scarcely be utilized for any 
other purpose. The trees reach a diameter of 
from two to three feet in some instances, but 
perhaps ten or twelve inches is the average dia- 
meter of a mature tree. Commonly they grow 
along water courses, but often upon high and 
dry northern slopes. In inland California they 
are native to altitudes above 1,000 feet, and, I 
believe, from that elevation to 5,000 or 6,000 feet. 
The size of a tree does not determine its flow 
of sap, for I have obtained as much from one 
six to eight inches in diameter as from the 
larger ones. I have taken from a single tap, 
for several sucessive days, six gallons of sap in 
twenty-four hours. This would produce one 
and one-third pounds of sugar per day, and with 

FRANK 
J. THOMPSON, 
favorable weather might continue for several 
weeks in the season. It would seem that maple 
orchards in California would be more produc- 
tive of value than her famous orange, fig or 
prune orchards, with the probability that un- 
favorable seasons would be very rare, while the 
trees would flourish for many years, and in the 
end be valuable for fine lumber. 
My experiments have been made at an eleva- 
tion of 1,200 or 1,300 feet, in Shasta county. 
Conditions are more favorable at a higher alti- 
tude than this, for the reason that frosts are 
earlier and later, and open frosty weather in 
January, February and March, is the time the 
sap flows at its best. After the buds burst the 
san loses its sugar and becomes bitter. Sap 
flows best with the thermometer between 40 and 
50 Fahrenheit. 
Our winter of 1905-1906 proved phenomen- 
ally mild, and at this altitude in the mountains 
of Shasta there was but one freezing night be- 
tween Jan. 3 and March to. This was unfavor- 
able to my experiments, as the little sap col- 
lected was not prime, and the quantity so small 
it could not be evaporated to advantage. In my 
experiments I have made about seventy pounds 
of sugar and fifteen or twenty gallons of syrup. 
Under the circumstances, and many disad- 
vantages attending the experiments, I am con- 
vinced that maple sugar making upon this coast 
can be conducted profitably, and that it will be 
when fairly undertaken. Careers 
In a separate parcel by this mail I am sending 
you: (1) Leaves of the tree, not yet mature. (2) 
Blossoms, which precede the leaves in develop- 
ment. (3) Some of the mature seeds of last 
year’s growth. (4) A chip of seasoned wood 
from the tree. (5) A sample of the sugar made 
by me from the tree. I will be pleased to have 
these particulars and the specimens submitted 
to Mr. Weed, by which he may be able to deter- 
mine the species if the tree is now classified. I 
will be glad to contribute any other particulars 
that he may desire. eae P, 
[The specimens sent us by our correspondent 
appear to be the Oregon maple (Acer macrophyl- 
lum). This identification has been confirmed by 
Mr. Weed and by Mr. J. G. Jack, of the Arnold 
Arboretum at Boston. The Oregon maple is the 
only far western species that can be considered 
as a producer of sugar from an economic view- 
point, although the box elder (Acer negundo) 
produces sugar, and in ancient times some tribes 
of the plains Indians commonly made sugar 
from that tree. 
In localities where the season is favorable, the 
Oregon maple produces sap of good quality in 
considerable quantity. The tree is found west 
of the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada from the 
Canadian line to Southern California. It is said 
to prefer a rich soil, and to reach its best de- 
velopment in the river bottoms of Washington 
and Oregon. In the census report of 1900 there 
is mentioned a very small production—126 gal- 
lons of syrup—from Columbia county, Wash- 
ington. 
Our correspondent’s experiments and the pub- 
lication of their results ought to bring this sub- 
ject to the attention of the Pacific coast dwellers. 
Here is an industry that is worth following up, 
and here is a tree worth tapning.] : 

Some Common Insects. 

BY CLARENCE M. WEED. 

I.—Butterflies and Grasshoppers. 
INSECTS in general are characterized by having 
jointed bodies with jointed appendages, and by 
commenly having in the adult stage three great 
divisions of the body—head, thorax and abdomen. 
Many of them are also characterized by under- 
going curious changes of form and structure dur- 
ing their period of growth. The butterflies are 
the most striking examples of insects undergoing 
such changes, the adult being a very different 
creature from the caterpillar that preceded it. — 
The true insects are also distinguished from 
the centipedes, scorpions, spiders and related 
creatures by the fact that they have only six 
legs, the others commonly having eight or more. 
In the spiders and scorpions, as may be seen from 
the picture of one of the latter herwith, the dis- 
tinction between the head and thorax is not well 
marked. 
The life history cf the butterflies may very well 
be illustrated by the common white cabbage 
butterfly, shown in the accompanying picture 
from a plate prepared under my direction some 
years ago for a bulletin in the New Hampshire 
experiment station. The adult is, perhaps, the 
commonest of all our butterflies, being of genera! 
whitish color marked on the tips of the front 
wings with blackish blotches and near the outer 
border with blackish dots. The females deposit 
their small eggs upon the cabbage leaves, gener- 
ally singly. Each of these eggs shortly hatches: 
into a tiny caterpillar that feeds upon the greem 
