EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 107 
were not. I go looking deeper for tortoises, 
when suddenly my eye rests on these black cir¬ 
cling apple-seeds in some smoother bay. 
The red squirrel should be drawn with a 
pine cone. 
J- F- gave me to-day a part of the 
foot, probably of a pine marten, which he found 
two or three days ago in a trap he had set in 
his brook under water for a mink, baited with 
a pickerel. It is colored above with glossy 
dark brown hair, and contains but two toes 
armed with fine and very sharp talons, much 
curved. There may be a third without the 
talon. It had left thus much in the trap and 
departed. 
March 10, 1859. There are some who never 
do nor say anything, whose life merely excites 
expectation. Their excellence reaches no fur¬ 
ther than a gesture or mode of carrying them¬ 
selves. They are a sash dangling from the 
waist, or a sculptured war-club over the shoul¬ 
der. They are like fine-edged tools gradually 
becoming rusty in a shop window. I like as 
well, if not better, to see a piece of iron or 
steel, out of which many such tools will be 
made, or the bushwhack in a man’s hand. 
When I meet gentlemen and ladies I am re¬ 
minded of the extent of the habitable and un¬ 
inhabitable globe. I exclaim to myself: Sur- 
