SUGAR MAPLE.
A letter writer in the Albany Statesman, in giving an account of the New York canal, says—
"I saw for the first time the famous ascersaccharinum, or sugar maple. It grows spontaneously like all other trees of the forest, and is a most beautiful and stately tree.—It is said that each tree will produce from three to five pounds of sugar. An acre will contain 30 trees, and a tree will be fit for use in 15 years, and will probably continue so for two centuries. An orchard of ten acres would produce annually two hogsheads and a half of sugar, which can be made as good in all respects as the produce of the cane or the sweet beet. I speak from ocular observation and from taste. Mon. Le Ray, a very respectable and sensible land holder in Jefferson county, showed me at Washington Hall, in New York, a sample of maple sugar, which I have never seen excelled, and which was raised on his estates in that county; and I have been told by Mr. George Parish, a most accomplished and public spirited gentleman, from St. Lawrence county, that the inhabitants of that region not only supply themselves with maple sugar for domestic uses, but have a surplus for market. A plantation of maple trees of ten acres, beside being highly ornamental and beneficial for pasture—besides the use of the decayed trees for fuel, and the acquisition of excellent syrup and molasses, and a sufficiency of sugar, for family purposes, will yield a profit of $100 to the proprietor; and these operations are carried on in the month of March, continue but a short time, and interfere with no other business. The forests of the north and west, will supply the other parts of the state with the best of sugar and molasses through the great canals."
From Scoresby's Voyages.