durability and beauty; and as an article of fuel its wood equals the solid hickory.  Its height is sometimes 100 feet, but it usually grows to a height varying from forty to eighty feet.  It is bushy, therefore an elegant shade tree.  The maple is indigenous to the forests of America, and wherever there has been opportunity for a second growth, this tree attains to a considerable size much sooner than might be imagined.  In the course of ten or fifteen years the maple becomes of a size to produce sugar.  The trees which have come up since the first clearing, produce sap that yields much more saccharine than the original forest maples.

The whole interior of the northern part of the United States have relied, and still rely, more on their maple woodlands for sugar than on any other source; and as a branch of domestic manufacture and home production, the business is of no little consequence.  The time occupied too in the manufacture is very limited, and occurs at a season when very little other labor can be performed.

Hitherto but comparatively little attention has been bestowed upon this important branch of industry in Canada.  The inhabitants of that province might doubtless manufacture a sufficient quantity of maple sugar to supply the demand or consumption in this article for the whole population of the country.  This variety of sugar may be refined, and made as valuable for table use as the finest qualities of West India sugar.  On the south shore of Lake Huron, and the islands of that inland sea, there are forests of sugar

maple unsurveyed capable of producing a supply for the whole population.  The Indians upon those islands have lately turned their attention pretty largely to the manufacture of sugar from the maple; and many tons have been exported from this source.  If the Indians could obtain a fair value for their sugar, say seven or eight dollars per 100 lbs., they would extend their operations upon a large scale.  Upon these islands alone, there are upwards of a million of full-grown maple trees, capable of yielding each from two and a half to three pounds of excellent sugar per annum; and if proper attention were given to this branch of production in that quarter, I see no reason why a most profitable business could not be carried on.  Every farmer who has a grove of sugar maple, should endeavour to manufacture at least sufficient for the consumption of his own family.  In most cases 150 trees of medium growth would yield an amount of sap that would make 300 lbs. of sugar, twenty-five gallons of molasses, and a barrel of vinegar.  The labor required to manufacture this amount of sugar, molasses, and vinegar, would scarcely be felt by the well-organised cultivator, as the season for the business is at the close of the winter, and opening spring, when no labor can be done upon the land.  In proportion to the amount of labor and money expended in the production of maple sugar, it is as capable of yielding as large