MAPLE. Aerr. The maple family is an important one to the United States, both from the value of its timber, and for the saccharine juices which some of the species yield. These are notably the Sugar maple, or Rock maple, A. sacelatrinurn, and the variety, A. nigrum, or Black maple. The Sugar maple is the variety that produces the Bird's-eye maple. The Red or Swamp maple, A. rubrum, and the Ash-leaved maple or Box elder, Acer negundo, or more prop erly, negun,do acerades, are also rich in saccha rine juice. The other species are the White or Silver maple, A. Dasyearpum; Mountain maple, A. spicatum, a tall shrub, growing in clumps in rich, moist woods, and the Striped maple, A. Pennsylvonieum, known also as Striped maple and Moose-wood, a tree, small, slender, and with light green bark, striped with dark lines. The Norway maple, A. platanoides, is a foreign tree, a native of Europe, and, as an ornamental tree, finer in some respects than our own, with fine, abundant foliage, which continues green much later than our native maples. The great maple, A pseodo-platanus, is also an European tree introduced into the United States, and some times planted. This and the Plane tree (Pla
tanus) is sometimes called Sycamore. The true sycamore is, however, a species of fig, Kens syeamorus. We should not advise the planting of either of the foreign named; our own Sugar or Rock maple, the Red or Swamp maple, and the White or Silver maple, are preferable. None can be finer than the Sugar maple in summer; and all, both the Sugar and the Swamp maple, are magnificent in their varying foliage, atter the frost has touched the leaves in the autumn. The Ash-leaved maple is among the fastest growing of any of the family, a most ornamental tree, and every way worthy of planting when a quick effect is desired. The seeds of the Silver maple ripen soon af ter the leaves have become fully grown, and should be sown immediately. The seeds of the other maples, including the Ash-leaved variety, ripen in September and October. If the seeds are not sown immediately, they should be kept over winter in sand, just moist, and as cool as possi ble, even down to the freezing point. (See arti cle Acer )