Lbs. of Sugar. 
At the Forks of the Kennebec, twelve persons made    3,605
On No. 1, 2d range, one man and a boy made           1,000
In Farmington, Mr. Titcomb made                      1,500
In Moscow, thirty families made                     10,500
In Bingham, twenty-five families made                9,000
In Concord, thirty families made                    11,000

A cold and dry winter is followed with a greater yield of sugar from the maple than a season very moist and variable.  Trees growing in wet places will yield more sap, but much less sugar from the same quantity, than trees on more elevated and drier ground.  The red and white maple will yield sap, but it has much less of the saccharine quality than the rock or sugar maple.

The work begins usually about the first of March.  The tree will yield its sap long before vegetation appears from the bud:  frequently the most copious flow is before the snow disappears from the ground.

Some persons have a camp in their maple orchards, where large cauldrons are set in which to boil down the sap to the consistency of a thick syrup:  others take the liquid to their houses, and there boil down and make the sugar.

The process begins by the preparation of spouts and troughs or tubs for the trees:  the spouts or tubes are made of elder, sumach, or pine, sharpened to fit an auger hole of about three-fourths of an inch in diameter.  The hole is bored a little upward, at the distance horizontally of five or six inches apart, and about twenty inches from the ground on the south or sunny side of the tree.  The trough, cut from white maple, pine, ash, or bass wood, is set directly under the spouts, the points of which are so constructed as completely to fill the hole in the tree, and prevent the loss of the sap at the edges, having a small gimlet or pitch hole in the centre, through which the entire juice discharged from the tree runs, and is all saved in the vessels below.  The distance bored into the tree is only about one-half an inch to give the best run of sap.  The method of boring is far better for the preservation of the tree than boxing, or cutting a hole with an axe, from the lower edge of which the juice is directed by a spout to the trough or tub prepared to receive it.  The tub should be of ash or other wood that will communicate no vicious taste to the liquid or sugar.

The sap is gathered daily from the trees and put in larger tubs for the purpose of boiling down.  This is done by the process of a steady hot fire.  The surface of the boiling kettle is from time to time cleansed by a skimmer.  The liquid is prevented from boiling over by the suspension of a small piece of fat pork at the proper point.  Fresh additions of sap are made as the volume boils away.  When boiled down to a syrup, the liquor is set away in some earthen or metal vessel till it becomes cool and settled.  Again the purest part is drawn off or poured into a kettle until the vessel is two-thirds