EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 117 
one another who should be most bold. For 
four or five minutes at least they kept up an 
incessant chirruping or squeaking bark, vibrat¬ 
ing their tails and their whole bodies, and fre¬ 
quently changing their position or point of view, 
making a show of rushing forward, or perhaps 
darting off a few feet like lightning, and bark¬ 
ing still more’loudly, i. 0 ., with a yet sharper 
exclamation, as if frightened by their own mo¬ 
tions, their whole bodies quivering, their heads 
and great eyes on the qui vive. You are uncer¬ 
tain whether it is not partly in sport, after ail. 
March 11, 1861. The seed of the willow is 
exceedingly minute, as I measure, from one 
twentieth to one twelfth of an inch in length 
and one fourth as much in width. It is sur¬ 
rounded at base by a tuft of cotton-like hairs, 
about one quarter of an inch long rising around 
and above it, forming a kind of parachute. 
These render it more buoyant than the seeds of 
any other of our trees, and it is borne the fur¬ 
thest horizontally with the least wind. It falls 
very slowly even in the still air of a chamber, 
aud rapidly ascends over a stove. It floats 
more like a mote than the seed of any other of 
our trees, in a meandering manner, and being 
enveloped in this tuft of cotton, the seed is hard 
to detect. Each of the numerous little pods, 
more or less ovate and beaked, which form the 
