18 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
I no hopes to sparkle on the surface of life’s 
current ? It is worth while to have our faith 
revived by seeing where a river swells and 
eddies about a half-buried rock. 
February 27, 1853. A week or two ago I 
brought home a handsome pitch pine cone, 
which had freshly fallen, and was closed per¬ 
fectly tight. It was put into a table-drawer. 
To-day I am agreeably surprised that it has 
there dried and opened with perfect regularity, 
filling the drawer; and from a solid, narrow 
and sharp cone has become a broad, rounded, 
open one, — has, in fact, expanded into a coni¬ 
cal flower with rigid scales, and has shed a 
remarkable quantity of delicate winged seeds. 
Each scale, which is very elaborately and per¬ 
fectly constructed, is armed with a short spine 
pointing downward, as if to protect its seeds 
from squirrels and birds. That hard, closed 
cone, which defied all violent attempts to open 
it, and could only be cut open, has thus yielded 
to the gentle persuasion of warmth and dryness. 
The expanding of the pine cones, that, too, is 
a season. 
February 27, 1854. .... I remarked yes¬ 
terday the rapidity with which water flowing 
over the icy ground sought its level. All that 
rain would hardly have produced a puddle in 
midsummer, but now it produces a freshet, and 
will perhaps break up the river. 
