EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
61 
March 4,1854. p. M. To Walden. In tlie 
meadow I see some still fresh and perfect 
pitcher plant leaves, and everywhere the green 
and reddish radical leaves of the golden sene- 
cio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me 
back or forward to an incredible season. Who 
would believe that under the snow and ice lie 
still, or in mid-winter, some green leaves which 
bruised yield the same odor that they do when 
their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in 
June. Nothing so realizes the summer to me 
now. In the dry pastures under the Cliff Hill, 
the radical leaves of the Johnswort are now re¬ 
vealed everywhere in pretty radiating wreaths 
flat on the ground. These leaves are recurved, 
reddish above, green beneath, and covered with 
dewy drops. I see now-a-days, the ground being 
laid bare, great cracks in the earth revealed, a 
third of an inch wide, running with a crink¬ 
ling line for twenty rods or more through the 
pastures and under the walls, frost cracks of 
the past winter. Sometimes they are revealed 
through ice four or five inches thick over them. 
I observed to-day where a crack had divided a 
piece of bark lying over it with the same ir- * 
regular and finely meandering lines, sometimes 
forking. 
March 4, 1855. P. M. Though there is a 
cold and strong wind, it is very warm in the 
