is white; dry the loaf, and redissolve it in boiling hot
water, and evaporate it until it becomes dense enough to
crystallise. Now pour it into the cones again, and let it harden. If
any color remains, pour a saturated solution of refined white sugar
on the base of the cone, and this syrup will remove all traces of
color from the loaf.

One gallon of pasture maple sap yielded 3,451 grains of pure sugar.
One gallon of the juice of the sugar cane yields, on an average, in
Jamaica, 7,000 grains of sugar. Hence, it will appear that maple sap
is very nearly half as sweet as cane juice; and since the maple
requires no outlay for its cultivation, and the process may be
carried on when there is little else to be done, the manufacture of
maple sugar is destined to become an important department of rural
economy. It is well known, by the Report of the Statistics of the
United States, that Vermont ranks next to Louisiana as a sugar
state, producing (if I recollect correctly) 6,000,000 of pounds in
some seasons, though the business is now carried on in a very rude
way, without any apparatus, and with no great chemical skill; so
that only a very impure kind of sugar is made, which, on account of
its peculiar flavor, has not found its way into common use, for
sweetening tea and coffee. It would appear worth while, then, to
improve this manufacture, and to make the maple sugar equal to any
now in use. This can be readily accomplished, if the farmers in the
back country will study the process of sugar-making, for cane and
maple sugar are, when pure, absolutely identical. It should be
remarked, that forest maples do not produce so much sugar as those
grown in open fields or in groves, where they have more light, the
under-brush being cleared away.

In Farmington, on the Sandy River, in Maine, I have seen a very fine
grove of maples, but thirty years old, which produced a large yield
of very good sugar. A man and two boys made 1,500 lbs. of sugar from
the sap of these trees in a single season. The sap was boiled down
in potash kettles, which were scoured bright with vinegar and sand.
The sugar was of a fine yellow color, and well crystallised. It was
drained of its molasses in casks, with a false bottom perforated
with small holes--the cask having a hole bored at the bottom, with a
tow plug pla