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RURAL HOURS.

the maples, and, indeed, had quite made up his mind, “ canny Scot,” as he was, to “ give up farming altogether, and keep to sugar-making all the year round;”—a plan which, it may be imagined, tickled the fancy of Jonathan not a little, knowing the ways of maples as he did. Many other trees are tapped for their juices in different parts of the world—the pines for their turpentine, as we all know, and the celebrated cow-tree of South America for its nourishing fluid, yielding vegetable milk, as it were, in regions where the milk of domestic animals seems to have been unknown; and still farther South, on this great continent, they prepare from the sap of the Palm of Chili, a syrup of the consistency of honey, using it as an article of food. In Northern Europe, the birch sap is made into a drink which they call birch-wine, and in this country vinegar is occasionally made in the same way. In the Crimea, the Tartars regularly make sugar from the fine walnut-trees on the shores of the Black Sea. So says Dr. Clarke in his Travels. The lime or basswood also yields a saccharine fluid. Our own hickory is thought to have the sweetest and richest sap of any tree in the woods, and we have heard of superior sugar being made in small quantities from it by certain New England housewives. It would not be generally available for the purpose, however, as the amount of sap yielded is very small.

According to the last general Census, the whole amount of maple sugar made during one year in this county, with a population of 49,658, was 351,748 pounds, or nearly eight pounds to each individual. The whole amount of sugar made in the State, was 10,048,109 pounds. The census does not specify the different kinds of sugar, but it is so well known that no other sort but maple is made in our part of the country, as a manufacture, that