Now, when maple sap is boiled into sugar—and I want to say before I go further that the reason that the amount of sap syrup is so limited is because it is hard to keep it from fermentation, and the season is so short in which the sap runs that it is difficult to manufacture, to boil enough in the camps to supply the demand; consequently a large proportion of the sap in the States where maple sugar is made is boiled into maple sugar. Now, we have found by experience—not by chemical analysis, but by experience—that the maple sugar made from the sap of the maple tree in Ohio is not so strong as the maple sugar made from the sap of the maple tree in Vermont, and that the maple sugar made from the sap of the maple tree in Vermont is not so strong in flavor as that which is made in Canada, in Quebec Province, because it seems the colder the climate, the stronger in flavor the maple sap is. Now, we buy these various sugars and reduce them to a liquor to make maple syrup, and I will give you my word, gentlemen, if we take a Canadian sugar, which is the highest priced maple sugar we have, it being worth at the present time twelve cents a pound, while Vermont is worth only eight cents a pound—I give you my word that if we make a liquor by melting that Canadian maple sugar, without the addition of sugar to reduce the strength of the flavor, it is so strong you could not use it. Mr. Coombs. What do you mean by strong? Mr. Madden. Strong in flavor. Mr. Coombs. You mean it is positive? Mr. Madden. The flavor is so positive; yes, sir. Mr. Coombs. And it is sweet? Mr. Madden. Sweet, yes; but if you put it on a hot cake you would say right away, “Take it away; I won’t have such stuff,” and you would ordinarily say that it was glucose. You would be wrong, but that is what you would say. Now the Vermont sugar is not so strong, and it does not require so much cane sugar to reduce that to a flavor comparing with the natural maple syrup obtained from the sap itself; and I tell you that we can take maple sugar and reduce it, blending it with cane sugar—and by that I mean take ordinary cut-loaf sugar, for instance, and melt it—and we can take this syrup that is made by melting the maple sugar and blend it with the white syrup, and we can produce a maple syrup that is in flavor strong enough and yet delicate enough to satisfy the appetite, and that, in my judgment, is better than the sap syrup made from the maple tree for a great majority of the people.