98 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
as if dried (for it is nearly cold enough to 
freeze), like the first crystals that shoot and 
set on water when freezing.C. says he 
saw yesterday the slate-colored hawk, with a 
white bar across tail, meadow hawk, L e., frog 
hawk. Probably it finds moles and mice. 
March 9, 1859.At Corner Spring 
Brook the water reaches up to the crossing, and 
stands over the ice there, the brook being open 
and some space each side of it. When I look 
from forty to fifty rods off at the yellowish 
water coyering the ice about a foot here, it is 
decidedly purple (though, when I am close by 
and looking down on it, it is yellowish merely), 
while the water of the brook and channel, and 
a rod on each side of it, where there is no ice 
beneath, is a beautiful very dark blue. These 
colors are very distinct, the line of separation 
being the edge of the ice on the bottom; and 
this apparent juxtaposition of different kinds of 
water is a very singular and pleasing sight. 
You see a light purple flood about the color of 
a red grape, and a broad channel of dark pur¬ 
ple water, as dark as a common blue-purple 
grape, sharply distinct across its middle. 
March 10, 1852. I was reminded this morn¬ 
ing before I rose, of those undescribed ambrosial 
mornings of summer which I can remember, 
when a thousand birds were heard gently twit- 
