22 March 1852 – 28 March 1852

I heard, this forenoon, a pleasant jin- gling note from the slate-colored snowbird on the oaks in the sun on Minott’s hillside. Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward. Minott thinks that the farmers formerly used their meadow-hay better, gave it more sun, so that the cattle liked it as well as the English now. As I cannot go upon a Northwest Passage, then I will find a passage round the actual world where I am. Connect the Behring Straits and Lancaster Sounds of thought; winter on Melville Island, and make a chart of Banks Land; explore the northward-trending Wel- lington Inlet, where there is said to be a perpetual open sea, cutting my way through floes of ice.

‘The night of the 24th, quite a deep snow covered the ground.

Walden not melted about shore.

Sunday. A pleasant afternoon; cool wind but warm sun. Snow almost all gone. The yellow lily leaves are pushing up in the ditch beyond Hubbard’s Grove (this is not so warm a place as Heywood’s meadow under the causeway), hard-rolled and trian- gular, with a sharp point with which to pierce the mud; green at the tips and yellow below. The leaf is rolled in from both sides to the midrib. This is, perhaps, to be regarded as the most obvious sign of advancing spring, for the skunk-cabbage may be seen in warm weather in January. The latter is the first conspicu- ous growth on the surface. It now shows its agreeably variegated, not yet unfolded, leaves in the meadows. Saw dead frogs, and the mud stirred by a living one, in this ditch, and afterward in Conantum Brook a living frog, the first of the season; also a yellow-spotted tortoise by the causeway side in the meadow near Hub- bard’s Bridge. Fresh-looking caddis-worm cases in the ditch. The smoky maple swamps have now got a reddish tinge from their expanding buds. I have not noticed any new movements among the farmers, unless a little more activity in carting out manure and spreading it on their grass grounds. Observed a singular circle round the moon to-night between nine and ten, the moon being about half full, ay or in its first quarter, and the sky pretty clear, — a very bright and distinct circle about the moon, and a second, larger circle, less distinct, extending to the east of this, cutting the former and having the moon on its arcum- ference or at least where its circumference would be. The inner circle is very contracted and more distinct on its eastern side, included within the larger, and it appears to shed a luminous mist from all sides.’ 10.15 p. mM. — The geese have just gone over, making a great cackling and awaking people in their beds. They will probably settle in the river. Who knows but they had expected to find the pond open?