Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/235

 house have come many in the methods of getting the sap from the trees. The pioneer method was to "box" them. This meant cutting a receptacle in the tree itself large enough to hold a pint or so of the liquid which ran into it. Boxing, year after year, was destructive to the trees which, nevertheless, survived a vast amount of it. It is probable that boxing has not been carried on in the Vermont groves for more than fifty years, yet there are trees standing to-day which show marks of the old-time method. On what was known once as the Kathan farm, just west of the Connecticut River in Dummerston, still stand a few trees of what is believed to be the first grove in the State from which white men made maple sugar in any quantity. Thirty-three of these veterans were there in 1874, but now only nine remain. They are gigantic trees, free of limbs to a great height and one at least sixteen feet in circumference. At the base can be seen the knotted, uneven growth covering the scars of nearly seventy years of "boxing." After the boxing method came the tapping iron, almost as hard on the trees. A slanting kerf, an inch deep and four inches long, was