Part 24

In early April it is worth a long walk or drive through the woods to see the scattered serviceberry trees standing out from the bare background of leafless trees, lovely as any tree can ever be, in their robes of white. Thereafter, they seem to retire from view, engulfed by the foliage curtain the woodland draws about itself, as spring advances.

VALUABLE SAP OF TREES

In early spring on the New Hampshire hillsides, the sap begins to mount the trunks of the sugar maple trees, dissolving the sugar stored in the wood cells during the previous summer. It is time for the making of maple sugar. Winter is over. Spring work has begun.

Hundreds of twigs of elder have been cut in short lengths, and the pith pushed out, to make “spiles.” Holes are bored in the trunks of the trees, and in each hole one of these hollow spiles is driven. These are the little spouts that drain the sap from the tree into the waiting buckets that stand or hang below. Drip, drip, drip, the sweet sap flows into the buckets; and as often as they fill, the farmer makes the rounds of the trees with barrels on a low sled or “stone boat,” emptying the buckets.

The sap he gathers is poured into the evaporating pans in the sugar house, and a roaring fire keeps it boiling. As the water goes off in steam, the remainder becomes maple syrup, which thickens as it boils. Skimming and straining removes any dirt or chips that fall into the sap. When it is just thick enough, the syrup is drawn off into cans, and sealed to be sent to market. A part of it, however, is boiled longer, and when drawn off, and cooled, it crystalises into the granular yellow maple sugar. It is cooled in shallow pans that hold a certain amount, and thus the bricks of maple sugar are formed. Little heart-shaped cakes are made by filling “patty pans” with this heavy syrup.

As long as the sap flows in sufficient quantities, the sugar harvest goes on. If the trees are bored with care, with holes not too close together, the tree will stand this draining from year to year, and seem not to be injured by the loss of sap. If the holes are close together, and extend all around the trunk, the tree will be practically girdled and it will die from the injury.

The finest kind of maple sugar is the wax which is made by pouring heavy syrup on the snow to cool. Quickly it thickens by the cold into stringy yellow wax, which tastes like other maple sugar, but does not have the unpleasant gritty feeling, which sets some teeth on edge. Maple wax may be made at home, by melting the sugar, and pouring it into snow; but the time and the place to enjoy it most, is in the sugar camp when the hot syrup is poured from the long-handled ladle onto the nearest snow bank by the person who is in charge of the boiling. The cold air of the woods puts a keen edge on the appetite. The warm fire under the boiler takes off the chill, and the silent woods all around give a charm to the scene which one does not feel in any other place.

Hickory sap is sweet. This is sometimes added to that of the maples when maple trees are scarce.

The sap of pine trees is a liquid called resin. The pine forests of the South are rich stores of this resin, which we call also pitch. The crude liquid drained from these trees is heated, and a light liquid called turpentine is drawn off. The remainder hardens, and is known as rosin. The pine trees are tapped, not as the sugar trees of the North are, but in a way that is far more injurious to the trees. Resin hardens into gum when exposed to the air, so it is impossible to draw it out through small tubes like spiles of elder that drain the maple sap. A great gash is cut in the side of the trunk of a pine tree, forming a pocket holding three pints or more. Now a square foot or more of the bark above the pocket is cut off, and the wood is chipped to a depth of an inch or more. The bleeding surface of the wood fills the pocket below with resin, and a man comes around with pails and dipper to empty these pockets as fast as they fill. The pails are carried to a still, where the resin is poured into a tank and heated to draw off the limpid turpentine.

Once a week, from March till November, more bark and wood, above the scored surface, must be chipped to renew the flow of resin. If this fresh wounding did not occur, the flow would cease, because the resin thickens and hardens when exposed to the air. This stops up the pores of the wood.

Fortunes have been made by the draining of these pine trees of their rich, pitchy sap. Turpentine and tar and rosin are all products of the sap of pines, and all are immensely valuable, especially in shipyards, and in the provisioning of sea-going craft of all sorts. The term, “naval stores,” has been applied to the products of turpentine gathering. Our forests supply most of these products to other countries.

The sap of certain tropical trees hardens into rubber. This is one of the most valuable of tree crops, for there is hardly a household that does not have rubber articles of a dozen kinds that are daily used. Lacquer varnish is the juice of certain sumach trees that grow in Japan. Gums of fir trees have a special use in medicine, and in various arts.

Sweet gum oozes from trees of that name. This is not noticeable in our trees of the North, but if we follow the trees southward, the gum flow increases. In Mexico it is an article of commerce, obtained by wounding the bark of the trees. It is one of the staple glove perfumes in France. It is also made into medicines, perfumes, and incense.

The sap of wild cherry, holly, and buckthorn, of witch hazel and sassafras all yield medicinal drugs. The flowers of locust, of basswood, and all the fruit trees furnish nectar out of which bees make honey. The juicy inner bark of the slippery elm is valuable for food, and as a medicine.

THE USES OF TREES

Imagine a stranger who has lived all his life in a desert where no trees grow, coming suddenly into our village, and looking with wonder at the trees that shade the streets. He knows only the spiny cactuses, and other plants of the desert. His first question would be, “What are these great plants that stand so tall?” The name, tree, is new to him. It would be a strange experience to take such an eager and ignorant man and show him the trees, on the streets, planted in orchards, and growing wild in the woods outside of the town. His questions set us to thinking. He wants to know why we plant trees, and how we use those that grow in forests.

First, we tell him the uses of the living trees. Up and down the streets they are set for shade, and for their beauty. Rows of evergreens set close together make a protecting wall of green against the cold winds. Low clipped hedges of many kinds of trees make living boundaries, much more beautiful than wooden or wire fences. On lawns and near houses trees are planted for their beauty and for their shade. Orchards of fruit trees are planted because they furnish food. Nut orchards are set out for the same reasons.

The trees cut down in the woods, and sawed at the mills give us lumber to build houses to live in, and furniture to make them comfortable, and the same forest furnishes the fuel that keeps us warm. There is so much to explain to a person who discovers trees for the first time. It takes a long time to tell all we know.

Do we think that we know a great deal about the uses of trees? If so, we are mistaken. The truth is that trees serve us in ways of which we have never dreamed.

We must travel over the world and read a great deal to learn how the people of other countries make use of trees. The basswood or linden which nobody cared to use except for fuel in the Middle West might pass for a useless tree, compared with those whose wood is harder and stronger. But in older countries people have quite a different opinion of the tree.

In Russia the tough bark of young lindens is used to make the shoes of peasants. Ropes, fishing nets, and braided mats are made from the same tough “bast” fibres, which are very long and tough in this family of trees. The seeds yield oil that is declared to be quite as good as olive oil for cooking, and for the table. Perfume is distilled from the flowers. Cattle browse on the twigs and leaves. The wood is the carver’s delight—soft, white, free from knots and imperfections. It is used for bureau drawers, carriage bodies, shoe soles, barrel staves and paper pulp. Its twigs make artist’s charcoal pencils.

Linden trees are planted for shade in many countries, and in Europe they are often cut into grotesque shapes of animals as they grow. They are clipped into hedges, as close as box or yew. In America they are usually allowed to grow naturally, as shade trees. European species are rather more symmetrical than our native kinds.

The Indians of the Northwest used the soft inner bark of the tamarack pine for food. They cut down the trees, strip them of bark, and scraped out this soft lining layer. With water, they mash it into a pulp, which they cook and then mould into large cakes. A hole is next dug in the ground, lined with stones, and a fire is built in it. When the stones are hot, all ashes are removed, and the cakes, wrapped in green skunk cabbage leaves, are laid in. A fire of damp moss is built on top, and thus the cakes are thoroughly, baked. To insure their keeping, they are next smoked in a close tent for a week or more. This dries and cures them so that they may be safely packed away for future use. These hard, dry cakes are afterward broken into pieces and boiled. When the mass softens and cools, it is ready to eat. The fat of different animals is used for butter on this strange Alaskan bread.

Everybody knows that trees bear fruits of many kinds that are useful as food for men and beasts. Spices, such as nutmegs, mace, cloves, and allspice, may be added to this list of fruits which we have as human foods.

The bark of birches is invaluable to the Indians for the making of their canoes, baskets, and all kinds of utensils. Huts and teepees are walled with it. Rope and coarse cloth are made out of the fibre of mulberry bark, and berry baskets out of the bark of the lodgepole pine. The fibrous roots of the larch tree furnished tough thread, with which the Indians sewed canoes of birch, and they made them water-tight with the gum of the balsam. The brown gum that oozes from wounds of the Western larch is sweet and starchy. The Indians discovered in it a valuable article of food.

One of the latest uses of wood is the making of paper, although the white hornet showed in its conical paper nest that this could be done. She has been making wooden paper for hundreds of years, scraping the wood from the surface of weathern-worn fence boards, and from the dead limbs of forest trees. Our newspapers are made of ground wood, cooked to a soft pulp, and rolled out into thin sheets. The high price of paper makes it worth while to gather up papers, bleach them, convert them into pulp, and roll them out again into sheets. Spruce wood and poplar are among the cheap woods which have come into demand at the paper mills. The forests of these trees, counted of little use for lumber, have become valuable because the paper mills can use them.

Look about the room, and a dozen articles, beside the chairs and table, are products of wood, or in some way owe a debt to trees. The paint that covers the window sash and frames was mixed with turpentine, which is obtained from the pitchy sap of pine trees. The shades and curtains are coloured. Dyes of many kinds are extracted from the various dyewoods, trees that grow in tropical forests. The newspaper and the books on the shelves are made of wood pulp. The lacquered box from Japan is a handsome thing. The lacquer varnish is the sap of a certain Oriental sumach tree. The perfume of the gloves in the box is made from the fragrant gum of an Oriental sweet gum tree. The skin out of which the gloves were made was tanned, not with bark, but with the acorn cups, or galls, of a European oak.

The shoes on your feet are made of leather. The hemlock trees that grow on the hills were stripped of their bark by peelers in early spring. Black oak and chestnut oak are also stripped in our woods. Carloads of bark are shipped to the tanneries to be used in the tanning of skins which changes them into leather.