EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 189 
on the sides of hills and ledges. You smell the 
summer from afar. The warmth makes a man 
young again. There is also some dryness, al¬ 
most dustiness, in the roads. The mountains 
are white with snow. When the wind is north¬ 
west, it is now wintry, but now it is more west¬ 
erly. The edges of the mountains now melt 
into the sky. It is affecting to be put into com¬ 
munication with such distant objects by the 
power of vision, actually to look into such lands 
of promise. In this spring breeze, how full of 
life the silvery pines, probably the under sides 
of their leaves. The canoe-birch sprouts are 
red or salmon-colored like those of the common, 
but soon they cast off their salmon-colored jack¬ 
ets, and come forth with a white, but naked 
look, all dangling with ragged reddish curls. 
What is that little bird that makes so much 
use of these curls in its nest lined with coarse 
grass ? 
In a stubble field started up a bevy (about 
twenty) of quail which went off to some young 
pitch pines with a whirr like a shot, the plump 
round birds. The red polls are still numerous. 
(Have not seen them again, March 28th.) 
March 20, 1855. It is remarkable by what 
a gradation of days which we call pleasant and 
warm, beginning in the last of February, we 
come at last to real summer warmth. At first 
