THE SKIRMISH LINE OF SPRING 41 



on skis on April 15th.) ! But, of course, we usually can 

 count on them some time in March. On March 21, 

 1913, for instance, I find this entry in my diary: 



It has been a warm day. The thermometer was 58 at 

 ten o'clock to-night. The Hylas sang for the first time this 

 season. I heard them at half -past five, just as I was straight- 

 ening up my back after chopping out a stump. As usual, 

 they were singing in the meadow across the road, and a strong 

 south wind, blowing a gray storm-wrack overhead, brought 

 the sound plainly, but robbed it of its peculiar Spring quality. 

 However, the wind died at sunset, the moon came out, and we 

 sat on the veranda after dinner for the first time since last 

 Summer. Then the song of the frogs drifted to us with the 

 chime of distance, beating in its peculiar wave-like rhythm (or 

 is that rhythm a trick of the ear?) upon our consciousness, and 

 mingling with the fragrance of damp earth. "Spring!" we 

 said. 



The Hylas are like a small boy with a pair of skates 

 any water will do for them. I learned to skate on the 

 frozen gutter beside the road. The Hylas in our mead- 

 ows are often thickest and most tuneful in a little swale 

 of surface water which winds through the grass just at 

 this flood time, and by May is quite gone. It looks from 

 a distance like a brook, but in reality it is only a shallow 

 depression, with grass and elm leaves at the bottom, 

 the still, melted-snow water filling it, quite clear, but 

 that peculiar brown of water which has stood over dead 

 leaves. It has come with the advent of Spring; soon it 

 will be gone. Yet it is stirring with life for the short 

 period of its existence, and shrilly vocal. 



