Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1877 — Maple-Sugar Statistics. [ARTICLE]

Maple-Sugar Statistics.

A few figures about the maple-sugar business are suggested by the fact that this season thirty-five tons of the sugar have been shipped to market from Brattleboro, Vt. The best estimate puts the yield of a tree at twelve to twenty-four, say eighteen, gallons a season, and of sugar not over four pounds. That is, eighteen quarts of sap make a jjound ; consequently there were boiled, about Brattleboro, to make 70,000 pounds of sugar, 1,260,000 quarts of sap, which were the yield of 17,500 trees. Supposing that, the country through, there are 100 places where as much sugar is made as about Brattleboro, then a total of 81,500,000 gallons of sap is drawn every spring. No doubt this is far less than the actual amount, yet it w'ould weigh about 252,000,000 pounds or 126,000 tons, and would make a far

greater liquid mass than some of the reservoirs that have, in bursting, caused such disaster in the past few years. A pound of wood burned raises twenty-seven to thirty-six pounds of water from thirtytwo degrees to tne boiling point. Assuming that a pounu of. ordinary forest gathering would boil the water out of thirtysix pounds of sap. it appears that it would take 7,000,000 pounds (8,500 tons) of wood to make a season's sugar; and also that the fire-wood burned, just about equals in weight the sugar produced. Trees have to be tapped; fuel has to be gathered, if not prepared; and thirty-five pounds of water have to be boiled away before the sugar is reached; moreover several weeks are spent at the work. What wonder that foreign substances sometimes creep into the pans.— Hartford (Conn.) Courant.