"After obtaining a quantity of Maple sap, it is poured into large iron or tinned copper kettles, and boiled down to a thick sirup; and after ascertaining that it is sufficiently concentrated to crystallize or grain, it is thrown into casks or vats, and when the sugar has formed, the molasses is drained off through a plug-hole slightly obstructed by tow. But little art is used in clarifying the sirup, and the chemist would regard the operations as very rude and clumsy; yet a very pleasant sugar, with a slightly acid taste, is made, and the molasses is of excellent flavor, and is largely used during the summer for making sweetened water, which is a wholesome and delicious beverage.
"The sugar frequently contains oxide of iron, which it dissolves from the rusty potash kettles in which it is commonly boiled down, and hence it turns tea black. A neat manufacturer will always take care to scour out his kettles with vinegar and sand, so that the sugar may be white. He will also take care not to burn the sirup by urging the fire toward the end of the operation. If his sirup is acid, a little clear lime-water will saturate it, and the lime will principally separate with the molasses or with the scum. The sirup should be skimmed carefully during the operation. It is not worth while, perhaps, to describe the process of refining sugar; but it is perfectly easy to make Maple sugar as white as the best double-refined loaf-sugar of commerce. It would, however, lose its peculiar acid flavor, which now distinguishes it from ordinary cane sugar.
"Were it generally known how productive are the groves of Sugar Maples, we should, I doubt not, be more careful, and not exterminate them from the forest, as is now too frequently done. It is, however, difficult to spare any forest trees in clearing a farm by fire; but groves in which they abound might be spared from the unrelenting ax of the woodman. Maple-trees may also be cultivated, and will become productive in twenty or thirty years; and it would certainly be one of our most beautiful pledges of regard for posterity to plant groups of Maples in convenient situations upon our lands, and to line the road sides with them. I am sure that such a plan, if carried into effect, would please public taste in more ways than one, and we might be in part disfranchised from dependence on the cane plantations of the West Indies.
"The following statistics will serve as an example of the products of the Sugar Maple in Maine; and it will also be noted that the whole work of making Maple sugar is completed in three or four weeks from the commencement of operations.
| Lbs. sugar. | |
| At the Forks of the Kennebeck, twelve persons made | 3,650 |
| On No. 1, 2d Range, one man and a boy made | 1,000 |
| In Farmington, Mr. Titcomb made | 1,500 |
| In Moscow, thirty families made | 10,500 |
| In Bingham, twenty families made | 9,000 |
| In Concord, thirty families made | 11,000 |
| 36,650 |
"This, at twelve and a half cents a pound, would be worth $4,581.
"It must be also remarked, that the manufacture of Maple sugar is carried on at a season of the year when there is little else to be done; and if properly-shaped evaporating vessels were used, a much larger quantity of sugar could be made in the season."
CHAPTER III.
Beech-trees.—Purity, Size, Fruit.—Efforts of Bears after the Nut.—The Uses to which its Leaves are appropriated.—Mr. Lauder's Testimony, &c.—Use of Wood.—Singular Exemption.—The novel Appearance of the Leaves of a Species in Germany.—Chestnut-tree. —Remarkable one on Mount Ætna.—Balm of Gilead.—Willow.—Ash. —Basswood, or Tiel-tree.—The Poplar.—The Hemlock.—Beauties of its Foliage.—Uses.—Hickory.—The Fir-tree.—Spruce-tree.— Its conical Form.—Uses.—American Larch.—Success of the Dukes of Athol in planting it on the Highlands of Scotland.