Sometimes the sap of other trees, as birches or elms, is made into syrup, but none is as abundant or as good as the maple syrup. The wood of the sugar maple is hard and is valuable for furniture and other uses. Indeed the wood of most of the maples is prized for furniture making. The bird’s eye maple is a very pretty satiny wood dotted over with round spots that look a little like eyes. It comes from certain sugar maples whose wood is full of little knotty places. The curled maple is also a pretty wood with wavy, shining lines made by irregular streaks in the wood. It is sometimes found in sugar maples and sometimes in other maples. Maple wood is light in color, and the bark of the tree is rather smooth. It is gray in most species, and often has white spots on it. [Illustration] ELMS. The American elm is one of the most beautiful trees in the world, it is so majestic in size and so graceful in form. If you do not know the elm tree, get some one to point it out to you at once, and you will feel that you have made a new friend. It is a very good thing to make friends with the trees and to learn to know them when you see them. [Illustration] Elm trees have winged seed pods or samaras. The trees are covered with pretty, short fringes in the springtime—very pretty, but not as airy and pretty as the maple fringes. The pistillate flowers are followed by samaras that do not grow two together, and that have the wing growing around them instead of from one end. [Illustration] The bark of the elm is very handsome; it is marked quite regularly and is easy to recognize. It is a good thing to learn to know a tree by its bark. The bark of trees is an interesting and beautiful subject for study. [Illustration] The wood of the elm is tough and hard, and is used in building ships and making wheels, and for other purposes where a tough, hard wood is required. There are a number of species of elm trees, but the best-known one is the beautiful American elm that is everywhere used in parks and for shade trees. Next to this is the red elm, or slippery elm, whose inner bark is fragrant and mucilaginous and good to chew. This bark is good for colds and is sometimes ground up and made into lozenges. Every country boy lays up a supply of slippery elm bark to dry in the attic along with his nuts. ASH TREES. Ash trees are tall, straight, and handsome, with a very dark-colored bark, so regularly marked that one soon learns to know it at a glance. I once knew three of them that stood in an open pasture on the shore of Lake Ontario. It was worth going to the pasture in a high wind to see the tall, beautiful trunks sway as the wind struck them. I used to wish I could climb up into the tops of them, though it would have been a very unsafe perch indeed. You have guessed by now that ash trees have winged seed pods, and so they have. [Illustration]