HENRY D. THOREAU 39 



plants growing under water, and noted the radical 

 leaves of various weeds that keep green all winter 

 under the snow. He felt for them with benumbed 

 fingers amid the wet and the snow. The first sight 

 of bare ground and of the red earth excites him. 

 The fresh meadow spring odor was to him like the 

 fragrance of tea to an old tea-drinker. In early 

 March he goes to the Corner Spring to see the tufts 

 of green grass, or he inspects the minute lichens 

 that spring from the bark of trees. "It is short 

 commons," he says, "and innutritious. " He brings 

 home the first frog-spittle he finds in a ditch and 

 studies it in a tumbler of water. The first water- 

 beetle that appears he makes a note of, and the first 

 skunk-cabbage that thrusts its spathe up through 

 the mould is of more interest to him than the latest 

 news from Paris or London. "I go to look for 

 mud-turtles in Heywood's meadow," he says, March 

 23, 1853. The first water-fowl that came in the 

 spring he stalked like a pot-hunter, crawling through 

 the swamps and woods or over a hUl on his stomach 

 to have a good shot at them with his — journal. 

 He is determined Nature shall not get one day the 

 start of him; and yet he is obliged to confess that 

 "no mortal is alert enough to be present at the first 

 dawn of spring ; " still he will not give up trying. 

 "Can you be sure," he says, "that you have heard 

 the first frog in the township croak ? " A lady 

 offered him the life of Dr. Chalmers to read, but he 

 would not promise. The next day she was heard 

 through a partition shouting to some one who was 



