6 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
February 25, 1859. Measure your health by 
your sympathy with morning and spring. If 
there is no response in you to the awakening of 
nature, if the prospect of an early morning 
walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of 
the first bluebird does not thrill you, know that 
the morning and spring of your life are past. 
Thus may you feel your pulse. I heard this 
morning a nuthatch in the elms on the street. 
I think they are heard oftener at the approach 
of spring, just as the phebe note of the chicka¬ 
dee is, and so their quah quah is a herald of 
the spring. 
A good book is not made in the cheap and 
off-hand manner of many of our scientific re¬ 
ports, ushered in by the message of the Pres¬ 
ident communicating it to Congress, and the 
order of Congress that many thousand copies 
be printed with the letters of instruction from 
the Secretary of the Interior (or rather ex¬ 
terior) ; the bulk of the book being a jour¬ 
nal of a picnic or sporting expedition by a 
brevet lieutenant-colonel, illustrated by photo¬ 
graphs of the traveler’s footsteps across the 
plains, and an admirable engraving of his na¬ 
tive village as it appeared on his leaving it, and 
followed by an appendix on the paleontology 
of the route by a distinguished savant who was 
not there; the last illustrated by very finely 
