EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 113 
gradual, but sure, like the expanding of a 
flower. This is the first song I have heard. 
P. m. To Cliffs. River higher than at any¬ 
time in the winter, I think.Musk-rats 
are driven out of their holes. Heard one’s 
lond plash behind Hubbard’s. It comes up 
brown, striped with wet. I could detect its 
progress beneath, in shallow water, by the bub¬ 
bles which came up.From the hill, the 
river and meadow is about equally water and 
ice, — rich, blue water, and islands or conti¬ 
nents of white ice, no longer ice in place. The 
distant mountains are all white with snow, 
while our landscape is nearly bare. 
Another year I must observe the alder and 
willow sap as early as the middle of February 
at least.Nowadays, where snow-banks 
have partly melted against the banks by the 
roadside in low ground, I see in the grass nu¬ 
merous galleries where the mice or moles have 
worked in the winter. 
March 11, 1855. At this season, before 
grass springs to conceal them, I notice those 
pretty little roundish shells on the tops of hills ; 
one to-day on Anursnack. 
I see pitch pine needles looking as if white¬ 
washed, thickly covered on each of the two 
slopes of the needle .with narrow white oyster- 
shell-like latebrae or chrysalids of insects. 
8 
