20 February 1860 – 26 February 1860

P. M.—TI see directly in front [of] the Depot Lee [?] house, on the only piece of bare ground I see hereabouts, a large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. ‘They must be picking up earth, sand, or the withered grass. They are so intent on it that they allow me to come quite near. This, then, is one use for the drifting of snow which lays bare some spots, however deep it may be elsewhere, — so that the birds, etc., can come at the earth. I never thought of this use before. First the snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here and there to ~ \ the ground; and so it will always be in some places, however deep it may have been. J. Farmer tells me that his grandfather once, when moving some rocks in the winter, found a striped squirrel frozen stiff. He put him in his pocket, and when he got home laid him on the hearth, and after a while he was surprised to see him running about the room as lively as ever he was. I notice a very pale pink reflection from snowy roofs and sides of white houses at sunrise. So both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree, which shows that they depend more on the twilight and the grossness of the atmosphere than on the angle at which the sunlight falls.

2 p.m. — Thermometer forty-six and snow rapidly melting. It melts first and fastest where the snow is so thin that it feels the heat reflected from the ground beneath. I see now, in the ruts in sand on hills in the road, those interesting mpples which I only notice to ad- vantage in very shallow running water, a phenomenon almost, as it were, confined to melted snow running in ruts in the road in a thaw, especially in the spring. | It is a spring phenomenon. The water, meeting with some slight obstacle, ever and anon appears to shoot across diagonally to the opposite side, while ripples from the opposite side intersect the former, producing count- ) less regular and sparkling diamond-shaped ripples. If you hold your head low and look along up such a stream in a right light, it is seen to have a regularly braided surface, tress-like, preserving its figures as if it were solid, though the stream is seen pulsing high through the middle ripples in the thread of the stream. The ripples are as rectilinear as ice-crystals. When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring. It was their very admiration of nature that made the ancients attribute those magnanimous qualities which are rarely to be found in man to the lion as her master- piece, and it is only by a readiness, or rather prepared- ness, to see more than appears in a creature that one can appreciate what is manifest. It is remarkable how many berries are the food of birds, mice, etc. Perhaps I may say that all are, how- ever hard or bitter. This I am inclined to say, judging of what I do not know from what J do. For example, mountain-ash, prinos, skunk-cabbage, sumach, choke- cherry, cornels probably, elder-berry, viburnums, rose hips, arum, poke, thorn, barberry, grapes, tupelo, am- phicarpeea, thistle-down, bayberry (?), Cornus florida, checkerberry, hemlock, larch, pines, etc., birch, alder, juniper. ‘he berries and seeds of wild plants generally, however little it is suspected by us, are the food of birds, squirrels, or mice.

2 p.m. — Thermometer 56°. Wind south. 3 p. M.— Thermometer 58° and snow almost gone. River rising. We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December (which was remarkably warm). aN I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd’s- purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., re- vealed. About 4 Pp. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. Thus the first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. The words “ pardall” and “‘libbard,” applied by Ges- ner to the same animal, express as much of the wild beast as any. I read in Brand’s “Popular Antiquities” that “Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the Saxons of the northern nations, the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence, as Olaus Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckoned their age by so many Iolas.” (Zola, to make merry. — Gothic.) So may we measure our lives by our joys. We have lived, not in proportion to the number of } years that we have spent on the earth, but in proportion | as we have enjoyed. } February is pronounced the coldest month in the | year. In B.’s “Popular Antiquities” is quoted this from ) the Harleian Manuscripts : — “Février de tous les mois, Le plus court et moins courtois.”’ In the same work it is said that this saying is still | current in the north of England: — “On the first of March, The crows begin to search.” Would it not apply to the crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water’s edge, a little later ? A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread. Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the moralist fables and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, — have been breathed on at least. A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

2 p.m. — Thermometer 42. A very spring- like day, so much sparkling light in the air. The clouds reflecting a dazzling brightness from their edges, and though it is rather warm (the wind raw) there are many, finely divided, in a stream southwest to northeast all the afternoon, and some most brilliant mother-o’-pearl. I never saw the green in it more dis- tinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow. Some of the finest imaginable rippling, and some fine strings of clouds, narrow ant-eater skeletons, stretching from southwest to northeast, with the wind, looking like a little cotton caught on a crooked telegraph-wire, the spine is so distinct. A great part of the very finely divided cloud, one stratum above another, had the appearance of a woven “ web, the fibres crossing each other in a remarkable man- ner right overhead.

P. M. — Round via Clamshell to Hubbard’s Bridge. Colder, and frozen ground; strong wind, northwest. I noticed yesterday in the street some dryness of stones at crossings and in the road and sidewalk here and there, and even two or three boys beginning to play at marbles, so ready are they to get at the earth. The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind? It is pleasant to see high dark-blue waves half a mile off running inces- santly along the edge of white ice. There the motion of the blue liquid is the most distinct. As the waves —————— — : 0 ee ee rise and fall they seem to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet. For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. A small one was conspicuous by the side of the road more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those plumes which have been appressed or con- tracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, 1 think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. ‘This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice.

Sunday. 2 p.m. — Thermometer 30; cold northwest wind. | The water is about six inches above Hoar’s steps. That well covers the meadows generally. Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday.