When Vermonters congregate at some special social function when responses are expected concerning the state and its products, the speakers may be relied on to advance at least the claim of excellence for the men it sends to other states and countries to become noted factors in the land of their adoption; for its gracious women; for its pure bred Morgan horses and its far famed maple sweets. These claims are in a great measure valid and the inborn pride that vouches for them is pardonable, for of the first it is only necessary to consult municipal, state and national Blue Books to find corroborative evidence; the second are known the world around in art and song and story. The supple Morgan, elastic to the tread of his native hills, with arching neck and prancing feet, an ear for martial music, and an intelligence too often of a higher degree than his master, has enlivened the trotting and road stock of the country. It is of the last product and the environment of its manufacture we will treat. Vermont has become as justly celebrated for its fine flavored maple products, as for the silky fibre of its merino wool. For the climate and soil contribute to that end as much as do the soils and climate of Cuba and Sumatra to the delicate aroma of smoking tobacco, and it is safe to say that nowhere in the known world do these exact conditions occur to such a great degree as in the section which comprises upper New England and some portions of New York and Canada. There is probably no crop dependent upon the elements, so sensitive to and actuated by meteorological conditions as this, from the day the bud of the maple bursts forth a tiny leaf in May or June to the day of sap flowing in the March or April following. The summer’s heat is quite as essential as the winter cold, for the former makes the starchy growth to the tree that the latter converts into sugar, and while the sugar maker is blistering in his hay field in mid-summer or putting up the fires to keep out 30° below zero temperature when winter shuts him in, he knows the right forces are at work in nature’s laboratory to produce his sugar crop, and is so patient in his discontent. The sugar season may commence early in March or it may be delayed until April, all again “depends on the weather.” The old time saying “When ye ancient moon of April shall glow so shall ye maple sap in abundance flow,” often holds good, but when it sometimes happens there are two last quarters of a moon in April the sugar maker can take his choice as to which he will close the harvest. [Illustration: THE CAMP AFTER A SUGAR SNOW.]