EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 71 
pressions of all creatures. When only the snow 
had begun to melt and no rill of song had 
broken loose, a note so dry and fettered still, so 
inarticulate and half thawed out that you might 
and would commonly mistake for the tapping 
of a woodpecker. As if the young nuthatch in 
its hole had listened only to the tapping of 
woodpeckers and learned that music, and now 
when it would sing and give vent to its spring 
ecstasy, it can modulate only some notes like 
that. That is its theme still. That is its rul¬ 
ing idea of song and music. Only a little clan¬ 
gor and liquidity added to the tapping of the 
woodpecker. It was the handle by which my 
thoughts took firmly hold on spring. This 
herald of spring is commonly unseen, it sits so 
close to the bark. 
March 5, 1860. The old naturalists were 
so sensitive and sympathetic toward nature that 
they could be surprised by the ordinary events 
of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, 
and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were 
not incredible. The greatest and saddest de¬ 
fect is not credulity, but an habitual forgetful¬ 
ness that our science is ignorance. 
As we sat under Lupine promontory the 
other day, watching the ripples that swept over 
the flooded meadows, and thinking what an eli¬ 
gible site that would be for a cottage, C—— de* 
