with flour, which thickens and renders it heavy. It is very hard, and requires to be scraped with a knife when used for tea, otherwise the lumps would be a considerable time in dissolving. The Canadians say that it possesses medicinal qualities, for which they eat it in large lumps. It very possibly acts as a corrective to the vast quantity of fat pork which they consume, as it possesses a greater degree of acidity than the West India sugar. Before salt was in use, sugar was eaten with meat, as a corrective; hence, probably, the custom of eating sweet apple-sauce with pork and goose, and currant-jelly with hare and venison."--Lambert, vol. i., p. 84. "The production of maple sugar amounted (in 1836) to about 25,000 cwt. annually. A plantation of maple is termed 'suegari,' and is considered very valuable: the sugar sells from 3_d._ to 6_d._ per pound. A moderate tree is said to yield from twenty to thirty gallons of the sap, from which may be extracted five or six pounds of sugar. Nor is sugar the only product to be obtained from this valuable tree: strong and excellent vinegar is made from it, as well as good wine; and, with the addition of hops, sound and pleasant beer may be had at a very trifling expense."--H. Murray's _Canada_, vol. iii., p. 315; Gray's _Canada_, p. 224. "It is a very remarkable fact that these trees, after having been tapped for six or seven successive years, always yield more sap than they do on being first wounded. This sap, however, is not so rich as that which the trees distill for the first time; but, from its coming in an increased portion, as much sugar is generally produced from a single tree on the fifth or sixth year of its being tapped as on the first. "The ingenious Mr. Nooth, of Quebec, who is at the head of the general hospital in Canada, has made a variety of experiments upon the manufacture of maple sugar. He has granulated, and also refined it, so as to render it equal to the best lump sugar that is made in England. To convince the Canadians also, who are as incredulous on some points as they are credulous on others, that it was really maple sugar that they saw thus refined, he has contrived to have large lumps, exhibiting the sugar in its different stages toward refinement, the lower part of the lumps being left hard, similar to the common cakes, the middle part granulated, and the upper part refined. Dr. Nooth has calculated that the sale of the molasses alone would be fully adequate to the expense of refining the maple sugar, if a manufactory for that purpose were established. Some attempts have been made to establish one of the kind at Quebec, but they have never succeeded, as the persons by whom they were made were adventurers that had not sufficient capital for such an undertaking."--Weld, 1800, p. 271.