Only in North America is the sugar maple found. To cause the sap to flow freely it is necessary to have nights of frost, followed by days of sunshine. March is generally the month giving these conditions, and at that time in the remaining maple orchards in Canada our citizens will be found boiling down this incomparable sweet. Great as has been the decimation of our sugar orchards, yet there are many still found in our province, and the writer advises all those who have not yet tasted the nectar to make an effort to get to a genuine “sugaring-off” and indulge for the nonce in this experience, the memory of which a lifetime cannot obliterate. I will describe a sugaring-off as well as I can, that others not conversant with it may in a measure realize its charms. The trees are now tapped by boring a shallow auger hole just through the bark of the maple. Below the auger hole a tin spile or spout is inserted by driving the sharp end of the rounded tin into the bark. Below the spile is placed a bucket made of cedar, by those possessing such buckets. There are cedar buckets now in use, made sixty years ago, among some of the older settlers, and owing to the peculiar lasting qualities of cedar, are as sound to-day as when first made. Others, as before spoken of, use tin pails or pans, but old sugar-makers aver that the sugar tastes best when caught in the cedar buckets. A shallow sheet-iron pan set over a stove range receives the sap, and in this the boiling is done. The fire, by passing along the arch, thus heats the extended surface of the pan, and the sap is thus boiled or evaporated far faster than it is in the ordinary process by boiling in a kettle. After the sap has been evaporated down to the consistency of syrup it is then taken out of the evaporating pan and placed in the sugaring-off kettle. Up to this time in the process the expectant and waiting sugar eaters have not indulged in the boiling nectar. Reducing the syrup by boiling it down in the kettle is the interesting process. Soon the surface of the sugar presents a yeasty appearance, and it begins to rise and fall in globules. Now is the time for careful watching to see that the mass does not burn; and for fear that it may run over, a piece of fat pork has been thrown into the boiling mass. This has the effect of keeping the boiling syrup within the bounds of the kettle sides, and when this piece of pork is extracted it is about the sweetest piece one ever tasted.