[Illustration: FIG. 30.--Sap-yoke and Pails for gathering Sap.] "Sugaring off," as the boiling down of the sap is called, is quite an event. Often a number of people will be invited to go to the sugarhouse and take part in the operation. Before the modern evaporator came into use "sugaring off" always occurred at night. This was necessary, because during the day the sap buckets had to be attended to. The young people would sing songs, tell stories, and eat sugar. Some of the "sugar bushes" contain but a few trees and some contain one or two thousand or even more. A tree will yield from one to six pounds of sugar during a season. Our country produces great quantities of sugar every year, but we use so much that we have to buy much more than we manufacture at home. It was not always in such common use, however, because people in olden times did not understand how to make it cheaply. Long, long ago sugar was used only as a medicine. Don't you wish that all medicine to-day was as good as sugar? About seven hundred years ago an Italian nobleman died and left to his relatives, among other things, _six pounds of sugar_. His will caused considerable comment among the people, who said that no one family should be allowed to have so much sugar in its possession. WHERE SALT COMES FROM The Arab, journeying over the yellow sands, riding upon the back of his faithful "ship of the desert," often looks longingly for some sign of water to cool his parched lips. The sailor may ride upon the beautiful blue waters of the ocean in his white-winged ship; but although there is nothing but water to greet his eyes, he cannot drink it, for it is bitter to the taste. If you were to place a quantity of ocean water over a fire and evaporate it, there would remain a white substance. This is common salt. You see that it is as necessary to provide fresh water when one wishes to cross the ocean, as it is if one is going to cross the desert. Most streams and lakes contain _fresh_ water, so you will wonder why the waters of the ocean are briny. The rocks and soil of the earth contain salt, and the streams wash it from the land. Each one carries so little that we do not notice it, but they have worked so steadily and so long, that they have carried a great amount to the sea. None of it can escape, so the ocean gets more and more briny. No healthy person would ever think of eating salt alone as a food, and yet our food would taste very unsatisfactory without it. Farmers supply their cattle and horses with salt, and wild animals search for it in the forests, and lick it from the soil with their tongues. Salt is so important to us that I want to tell you about some of the ways in which men obtain it.