188 EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
progress which his life makes be the apology 
for abruptness. Is not my life riveted to¬ 
gether ? has not it sequence ? Do not my 
breathings follow each other naturally? 
March 20, 1853. I notice the downy, swad¬ 
dled plants now and in the fall, the fragrant 
life-everlasting and the ribwort, innocents born 
in a cloud. Those algae I saw the other day 
in John Hosmer’s ditch were more like sea¬ 
weed than anything else I have seen in the 
country. They made me look at the whole 
earth as a seashore, reminded me of Nereids, 
sea-nymphs, Tritons, Proteus, etc., etc., made 
the ditches tabulate in an older than the arrow- 
headed character. Better learn this strange 
character which nature uses to-day than the 
Sanskrit, “books in the brooks.” .... 
It is evident that the English do not enjoy 
that contrast between winter and summer that 
we do, that there is too much greenness and 
spring in the winter, there is no such wonder¬ 
ful resurrection of the year. Birds kindred 
with our first spring ones remain with them all 
wunter, and flowers answering to our earliest 
spring ones put forth there in January. They 
have no winter in our sense, only a winter like 
our spring. The peculiarity of to-day is that 
now first you perceive that dry, warm, summer- 
presaging scent from dry oaks and other leaves, 
