A MARCH CHRONICLE. 103 



ning to be bright with perch and bass, and with shad 

 from the southern rivers, and wild ducks are taking 

 the place of prairie-hens and quails. 



In the Carolinas, no doubt, the fruit-trees are in 

 bloom, and the rice-land is being prepared for the 

 seed. In the mountains of Virginia and in Ohio 

 they are making maple-sugar ; in Kentucky and Ten- 

 nessee they are sowing oats; in Illinois they are, 

 perchance, husking the corn which has remained on 

 the stalk in the field all winter. Wild geese and 

 ducks are streaming across the sky from the lower 

 Mississippi toward the great lakes, pausing a while 

 on the prairies, or alighting in the great corn-fields, 

 making the air resound with the noise of their wings 

 upon the stalks and dry shucks as they resume their 

 journey. About this time, or a little later, in the 

 still spring morning, the prairie-hens or prairie-cocks 

 set up that low musical cooing or crowing that defies 

 the ear to trace or locate. The air is filled with that 

 soft, mysterious undertone; and save that a bird is 

 seen here and there flitting low over the ground, the 

 sportsman walks for hours without coming any nearer 

 the source of the elusive sound. 



All over a certain belt of the country the rivers 

 and streams are roily, and chafe their banks. There 

 is a movement of the soils. The capacity of the 

 water to take up and hold in solution the salt and 

 earths, seemed never so great before. The frost has 

 relinquished its hold, and turned everything over to 

 Ue water. Mud is the mother now ; and out of it 

 creep the frogs, the turtles, the crawfish. 



