The Sugar Maple grows from Florida and Texas northward to Manitoba and Quebec, but it is only in the northern part of its range that the maple sugar industry thrives. This delicious food is one of the many that we learned to utilize from the Indians. The sap is obtained by tapping the tree in the spring before the leaves come out, the best weather for the flow of sap being that when it freezes at night and thaws in the daytime. The sap is boiled down; that is, the water is driven off and the sugar remains. It takes about three gallons, or a little more, of sap to make a pound of maple sugar. Three to four pounds of sugar is an average yield for one tree in a season. Much of the sap, however, is not boiled down into sugar, but the boiling is stopped while it is in the form of syrup. If you have ever eaten buckwheat cakes with real maple syrup you will always esteem the Sugar Maple tree.
The forests perform extremely valuable services for mankind entirely apart from the products they yield.
First, they prevent erosion, or the washing away of soil by the water that falls as rain. After the trees have been cut away, very often, especially upon hillsides, the most productive soil is washed away, usually clear off of the original owner's farm, and deposited in the flood-plains or bottoms of creeks and rivers or in river deltas—in places where it cannot be utilized to any great extent. Thus erosion causes a tremendous loss to farmers, and it is chiefly due to the thoughtlessness of the American people in destroying the forests.
Second, and chiefly related to this, is the fact that the floods upon our rivers, which every year take such heavy toll in property and in human life, are due to the cutting away of the forests. This allows the water from rain and melting snow to reach the streams at times faster than it can be carried off, and so we have a flood. The forest floor, with its undergrowth and humus, in those localities where the forests still exist about the headwaters of our rivers, acts like a huge layer of blotting paper which holds the water back and allows it to escape to the streams slowly, and so floods are avoided.
Third, and related to the above, is the fact that the water supply of our cities would be more constant if the forests had not been cut away. In these cases the summer droughts make much greater the danger from water-borne diseases.
WESTERN YELLOW PINE A magnificent tree which furnishes valuable timber. Range: Hills and mountains of western United States. Photograph by Albert E. Butler.
ROADS THROUGH THE ASPENS
Range: Northern United States and Canada, south in the Rocky Mountains to Mexico. Photograph by Albert E. Butler.