178 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
bles. There was nothing but these two dis¬ 
tinct black manikins and the branch of the elm 
over our heads to be seen. The bubbles rap¬ 
idly burst and succeeded one another. 
March 19, 1854. Cold and windy. The 
meadow ice bears where the water is shallow. 
.... Saw in Mill Brook three or four shiners 
(the first), poised over the sand, with a dis¬ 
tinct longitudinal, light-colored line midway 
along their sides and a darker line below it. 
This is a noteworthy and characteristic linea¬ 
ment, a cypher, a hieroglyphic, or type of 
spring. You look into some clear, sandy-bot- 
tomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper 
bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not 
far off, and see indistinctly poised over the 
sand, on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, 
scarcely to be distinguished from the sand be¬ 
hind it, as if it were transparent, or as if the 
material of which it was builded had all been 
picked up from there, chiefly distinguished by 
the lines I have mentioned. 
March 19, 1856. .... the snow was con¬ 
stantly sixteen inches deep at least on a level 
in open land from January 13 to March 13. 
March 19, 1858. P. m. To Hill and Grackle 
Swamp. Another pleasant and warm day. 
Painted my boat this P. M. These spring im¬ 
pressions (as of the apparent waking up of the 
