Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/223

 The savages here have practised this art longer than any now living among them remember."

The white man has since brought the practice to a science. The art remains the same. How far back into the dim ages of the past it goes no man may tell.

The sugar maple reaches maturity at about a hundred years. Then in the forest the trees are seventy to eighty feet tall and have a diameter of two to four feet. Trees grown from seed produce the sweetest sap, second growth not being so good. The seedling under favorable conditions may reach a diameter of sixteen inches in fifteen years, though such growth is exceptional. It is not profitable to tap them before the age of twenty. After that they may be drawn from yearly, a tap to a tree at first. On the largest trees two or more buckets may be hung, never one above the other, as the sap flows up or down, never sidewise. The sweetest and best sap comes from the outermost ring of growth, the wood of the previous year. It is sweetest at the height of the run. It flows better by day than by night; the brighter, lighter and sunnier the day the