182 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS, 
light appears to flash upward from the base of 
the tree incessantly. In the intervals of the 
flash it is often as if the tree were withdrawn 
altogether from sight. I see one large pine 
wood over whose whole top these cold electric 
flashes are incessantly passing off harmlessly 
into the air above. I thought at first of some 
fine spray dashed upward, but it is rather like 
broad flashes of pale cold light. Surely you 
can never, under other circumstances, see a 
pine wood so expressive, so speaking. This re¬ 
flection of light from the waving crests of the 
earth is like the play and flashing of electricity. 
No deciduous tree exhibits these fine effects of 
light. Literally, incessant sheets not of heat, 
but of cold lightning, you would say, were flash¬ 
ing there. Seeing some just over the roof of a 
house which was far on this side, I thought at 
first that it was something like smoke even, 
though a rare kind of smoke, that went up 
from the house. In short, you see a play of 
light over the whole pine, similar in its cause 
to that seen on a waving field of grain, but far 
grander in its effects. Seen at mid-day even, 
it is still the light of dewy morning alone that 
is reflected from the needles of the pine. This 
is the brightening and awakening of the pines, 
a phenomenon, perchance, connected with the 
flow of sap in them. I feel somewhat like the 
