EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS. 213 
Their yellow pollen is shaken down and colors 
my coat like sulphur as I pass through them. 
I go to look for mud-turtles in Hey wood’s 
Meadow. The alder catkins just burst open are 
prettily marked spirally by .streaks of yellow, 
contrasting with alternate rows of rich reddish- 
brown scales, which make one revolution in the 
length of the catkin. I hear in Hey wood’s 
north meadow the most unmusical low croak 
from one or two frogs, though it is half ice 
there yet. A remarkable note with which to 
greet the new year, as if one’s teeth slid off 
with a grating sound in cracking a nut, but not 
a frog nor a dimple to be seen. 
Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look 
at nature directly, but only with the side of his 
eye. He must look through and beyond her. 
To look at her is as fatal as to look at the head 
of Medusa. It turns the man of science to 
stone. I feel that I am dissipated by so many 
observations. I should be the magnet in the 
midst of all this dust and filings. I knock the 
back of my hand against a rock, and as I 
smooth back the skin I find myself prepared 
to study lichens there. I look upon man but 
as a fungus. I have almost a slight, dry head¬ 
ache as the result of all this observation. How 
to observe is how to behave. Oh, for a little 
Lethe. To crown all, lichens which are so thin 
