MAPLE SUGAR is made from the sap of the sugar maple, a native of the United States and Canada. The sap is collected by boring the trees several feet above the ground to the depth of about half-an-inch with an auger. A spout or lip is then inserted in the holes, and pails catch the flowing sap. The trees are tapped in the early spring, just after the first thaws. A good tree will yield about six or seven pounds of Sugar each season. The juice is boiled to a syrup, then strained and clarified and crystalized. It appears in our markets in cakes, and, as it commands a good price, is often adulterated with other sugars, and when sold as a syrup, in cans or bottles, is often nothing but ordinary syrup flavored to resemble maple sugar.
A writer in _Harper's, comparing the old niodes of sugar making with those of to-day, says : " Sugar-making now and sugar•making as it was are very dif ferent things, and what it has gained in facility it has lost in picturesqueness. The old camp with its primitive appliances is no more ; the " kettle " has been superseded by the "pan," and the trough has become a mass of crumbling decay. The women and children are kept at home, and no longer know the old-time delights of " sugaring off," though in the Arcadia of the past their services were not despised, and the whole household set up its abode in the woods.
The sap was collected then in troughs, each about three feet long, hollowed out of sections of poplars, and was conveyed to the kettles in barrels, from which it was transferred by scoops. There were five or more kettles, from ten to thirty gallons in capacity, and each was filled with sap, which was kept boiling, the larger kettles being filled from the smaller ones as evaporation reduced the quantity. When the contents were reduced to a desired con sistency, the hot syrup was dipped out and passed through a flan nel strainer into uncovered tubs, from which again it was poured into a large, thick-bottomed kettle for the process of " sugaring off," some milk and the whites of several eggs being added to it. Thus prepared, it was placed over a slow fire, and kept below the boiling-point until the sediment and all foreign matters in it floated to the top and were removed, when it became deliciously translucent. It was now exposed to a greater heat and gently boiled, the evaporation continuing, and bringing it nearer to the point of granulation. Now the sugar-maker was all watchfulness, and it fared ill with those who distracted him, for if the golden liquid seething in the kettle boiled the least bit too much, it would become dry in quality, while if it boiled too little, it would become "soggy." He tested it constantly, plucking threads of it from
his stirring-stick, and trailing them round in cups of cold water. While the threads yielded waxily to the touch, the sugar was not yet done ; but as soon as one broke crisp between his fingers, the moment had come to take the kettle off the fire. As the sugar began to cool, it crystalized round the sides, and gradually the whole mass, under a vigorous stirring, became granular.
in that way sugar was made years ago, and when the sap flowed profusely the operations were continued through the night and the fires cast strange shadows in the woods. But instead of a hut of logs a permanent sugar-house is now built, and furnished with many elaborate devices to prevent waste and deterioration. Formerly, when the maples were tapped with an auger, an " elder quill " was inserted in the incision to conduct the sap into the trough below ; that is, a small piece of elder wood about three inches long, with the pith bored out of it, which formed a tube ; but in most orchards to-day a galvanized iron spout is used, which has the advantage of not souring the sap nor choking many pores. Everything is "improved." The collections are made with the unvarying order of collections from letter-boxes, and if the grove is on a hill, and the sugar-house is in a hollow, the sap, as it is gathered, is emptied into a " flume," which quickly conducts it to a large reservoir within the building, wherein it is strained through cloth. A scoop or ladle is as anachronistic as a javelin. From the reservoir the sap is conducted, as required, through tin pipes, into a " heater,' whence it passes through a series of iron tubes to be delivered, after straining, in a condition for " sugaring off." Maple sugar as it reaches the market is of a clearer color for all these improvements ; but there are some who actually say that the flavor has fallen off, and that the new patent evaporators are a snare. One change has certainly not been for the better, and that is the abandonment of the social life of the old camps which made sugar-time in the Green Mountains enduring memories with those who are now ebbing away."