ich to hang the bucket. Sometimes, also,
spouts of tin are used, being driven into the bark just beneath the
auger-hole.

After the spouts have been driven in, the buckets must be put in place
and fastened there. If iron spouts are used they are already provided
with hooks. If wooden or tin ones are used, instead, the common practice
is to drive into the tree, a few inches below the spout, a nail made of
wrought-iron, with a tapering point and thin head, and upon this to hang
the bucket by means of its upper hoop; or, if the ground is level and
the snow nearly gone, it is sometimes set upon the ground.

[Illustration: BOILING SAP--THE OLD WAY.]

At length the trees are tapped, the spouts and nails are driven, the
buckets are set, and all is ready for the sap.

I remember once to have seen in an illustrated magazine a picture, one
of a series intended to represent the process of sugar-making, in which
the spouts were several feet in length, and the sap poured out in a
rushing stream, as though each spout were a hose-pipe, and every tree a
water-main. To carry out the idea, it would have required a man to
stand at every tree and empty the rapidly filling buckets into a monster
hogshead.

Not thus lavishly is this nectar of the gods poured out on our New
England hills; but slowly, filtered through the closely wrought fibres
of the _acer saccharinum_, absorbing new sweetness, and gaining a more
delicate flavor at each step of its progress, until at last it falls
drop by drop into the bucket. This is rarely filled in less than
twenty-four hours, while three or four bucketfuls is an average yield
for a season, and six a large one.

[Illustration: BOILING DOWN.]

Next the sugar-house is put in order, the arch is mended, the kettle or
pan washed out, and all necessary preparations are made for boiling. The
earliest method of boiling sap of which I have any recollection was in a
huge caldron kettle suspended from a heavy pole, which was supported at
each end by the limb of a tree or on top of a post. Then a huge log was
rolled up to each side of the kettle, and the fire was built between
them. This was known simply as the "boiling-place," and could be changed
as often as convenient. The kettle which contained the sap was also open
for the reception of the dust, and smoke, and falling leaves, and forms
of dirt innumerable.

The first advance on this primitive method was made by building a rough
arch of stone around the