EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 79 
are, why the developments should be so paltry. 
These facts appear to float in the atmosphere 
insignificant as the sporules of fungi and im¬ 
pinge on my thallus. Some neglected surface 
of my mind affords a basis for them, and hence 
a parasitic growth. We should wash ourselves 
clean of such news. Methinks I should hear 
with indifference if a trustworthy messenger 
were to inform me that the sun drowned him¬ 
self last night. 
March 7, 1853. What is the earliest sign of 
spring ? The motion of worms and insects ? 
The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of 
buds ? Do not the insects awake with the flow 
of the sap ? Bluebirds, etc., probably do not 
come till the insects come out. Or are there 
earlier signs in the water, the tortoises, frogs, 
etc. ? The little cup and cocciferse lichens mixed 
with other cladonias of the reindeer moss kind 
are full of fresh fruit fco-day. The scarlet apo- 
thecia of the cocciferse on the stumps and earth 
partly covered with snow with which they con¬ 
trast, I never saw more fresh and brilliant. But 
they shrivel up and lose their brightness by the 
time you get them home. The only birds I see 
to-day are the lesser red-polls. I have not seen 
a fox-colored sparrow or a Fringilla hiemalis. 
March 7, 1854. P. m. To Anursnack. 
Heard the first bluebird, something like pe-a - 
