64 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
as yet. As I sit under their boughs looking 
into the sky, I suddenly see the myriad black 
dots of the expanded buds against the sky. 
Their sap is flowing. The elm buds, too, I 
find are expanded, though on earth are no 
signs of spring. I find myself inspecting lit¬ 
tle granules, as it were, on the bark of trees, 
little shields or apothecia springing from a 
thallus, and I call it studying lichens. That 
is merely the prospect which is afforded me. 
It is short commons and innutritious. Surely 
I might take wider views. The habit of look¬ 
ing at things microscopically, as the lichens 
on the trees and rocks, really prevents my see¬ 
ing aught else in a walk. Would it not be 
noble to study the shield of the sun on the 
thallus of the sky, cerulean, which scatters its 
infinite sporules of light through the universe. 
To the lichenist is not the shield (or rather the 
apothecium) of a lichen disproportionately large 
compared with the universe ? 
March 5, 1853. F. Browne showed me some 
lesser red polls which he shot yesterday. They 
turn out to be very falsely called the chest¬ 
nut frontleted bird of the winter. 44 Linaria 
minor. Ray. Lesser Red-poll. Linnet. From 
Pennsylvania and New Jersey to Maine, in 
winter; inland to Kentucky. Breeds in Maine, 
Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador, and 
