19 March 1860 – 25 March 1860

Early willows in their silvery state. 2 p.M.— Thermometer 51; wind easterly, blowing slightly. To Everett’s Spring. ) Going along the Turnpike, I look over to the pitch pines on Moore’s hillside, — ground bare as it has been since February 23, except a slight whitening or two, — and it strikes me that this pine, take the year round, is the most cheerful tree and most living to look at and have about your house, it is so sunny and full of light, in harmony with the yellow sand there and the spring sun. The deciduous trees are apparently dead, and the white pine is much darker, but the pitch pine has an ingrained sunniness and is especially valuable for imparting warmth to the landscape at this season. Yet men will take pains to cut down these trees and set imported larches in their places! The pitch pine shines in the spring somewhat as the osiers do. I see in the ditch by the Turnpike bridge a painted tortoise, and, I think, a small shiner or two, also several suckers which swiftly dart out of sight, rippling the water. We rejoice to see the waters inhabited again, for a fish has become almost incredible. Myriads of water-bugs of various sizes are now gyrating, and they reflect the sun like silver. Why do they cast a double orbicular Ee) > shadow on the bottom ? I see some monstrous yellow lily roots in the ditch there just beyond the bridge on the right hand, — great branching roots, three or four of them from one base, two feet long (or more) and as big as my arm, all covered with muddy sediment. I know of no herbaceous plant which suggests so much vigor. ‘They taper at the ex- : th es. tremity, down (or up) to the “SSSEsea tr oes green leaf-bud, and, regu- me larly marked as they are with the bases of the leaf-stalks, they look like pineapples there. Holding by an alder, I get my hand covered with those whitish lice, which I suppose will cover themselves with down. ; The Rana halecina sits on the bank there. The Alnus incana is out,' near Everett’s Spring, but not the Alnus serrulata, 7. e. the smaller one, which grows south of scouring-rush. The plants which have grown the most there — and they are very conspicuous now — are the forget-me-not, the Ranunculus repens (much more than any bulbosus), and a common sedge which already y/ AY bev} gins to yellow the top of some A / ( LA tussocks. ! : The lower part of the hill at Minott’s is decidedly green now. The road and paths are perfectly dry and settled in the village, except a very little frost still coming out on the south side the street.

Worm-piles in dooryard this morning. A foggy morning; turns to some April-like rain, after east wind of yesterday. A. Buttrick says he saw and heard woodcocks the 5th of March this year, or much earlier than ever before. Thinks they are now laying. His dog put them up at the brushy point below Flint’s,— one pair there. Is an- other pair at Hunt’s Pond, another at Eleazer Davis’s Hill. He says that he caught three skunks and a crow last week in his traps baited with muskrat for mink. Says a fox will kill a skunk and eat him greedily before he smells, but nothing will eat a mink. 2 p. M. — Thermometer about 49. This is a slight, dripping, truly April-like rain. You hardly know whether to open your umbrella or not. More mist than rain; no wind, and the water perfectly smooth and dark, but ever and anon the cloud or mist thickens and darkens on one side, and there is a sudden rush of warm rain, which will start the grass. I stand on Hunt’s Bridge and, looking up-stream, see now first, in this April rain, the water being only rippled by the current, those alternate dark and light patches on the surface, all alike dimpled with the falling drops. (‘The ground now soaks up the rain as it falls, the frost being pretty commonly out.) It reminds me of the season when you sit under a bridge and watch the dimples made by the rain. I see where some one has lately killed a striped snake. The white maple by the bridge is abundantly out, and of course did not open this rainy day. Yesterday, at least, it began. I observed on the 18th a swarm of those larger tipu- lide, or fuzzy gnats, dancing in a warm sprout-land, about three feet above a very large white pine stump which had been sawed off quite smoothly and was con- spicuous. They kept up their dance directly over this, only swaying to and fro slightly, but always recovering their position over it. This afternoon, in the sprinkling rain, I see a very small swarm of the same kind dancing in like manner in a garden, only a foot above the ground but directly over a bright tin dish, — apparently a mus- tard-box, — and I suspect that they select some such conspicuous fixed point on the ground over which to hover and by which to keep their place, finding it for their convenience to keep the same place. These gyrate in the air as water-bugs on the water." ~ Methinks this gentle rainy day reminds me more of summer than the warmest fair day would. A. Buttrick said to-day that the black ducks come when the grass begins to grow in the meadows, 1. e. in the water. Perhaps calm weather and thermometer at about 50, the frost being commonly out and ground bare, may be called an April-like rain. | The 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th were very pleasant and warm days, the thermometer standing at 50°, 55°, 56°, 56°, and 51° (average 533°), — quite a spell of warm weather (succeeding to cold and blus- tering), in which the alders and white maples, as well as many more skunk-cabbages, bloomed, and the hazel catkins became relaxed and elongated. A. Buttrick says he has seen ground squirrels some time. I hear that the first alewives have been caught in the Acushnet River. Our own mistakes often reveal to us the true colors of objects better than a conscious discrimination. Coming up the street the other afternoon, I thought at first that Isaw a smoke in Mr. Cheney’s garden. It was his white tool-house.

Colder and overcast. Did not Jook at thermometer; probably not far from 40°.

Colder yet, and a whitening of snow, some of it in the form of pellets, — like my pellet frost! — but melts about as fast as it falls. At 4 p.Mm., 28; probably about 30 at 2 p. M. | Fair Haven Pond was seen entirely open the 20th. (I saw it the 15th, and thought it would open in four or five days; the channel was not then open.) Say, then, 20th. Channel open, say 17th. The phenomena of an average March are increas- ing warmth, melting the snow and ice and, gradually, the frost in the ground; cold and blustering weather, with high, commonly northwest winds for many days together; misty and other rains taking out frost, and whitenings of snow, and winter often back again, both its cold and snow; bare ground and open waters, and more or less of a freshet; some calm and pleasant days reminding us of summer, with a blue haze or a thicker mist wreathing the woods at last, in which, perchance, we take off our coats awhile and sit without a fire a day; ways getting settled, and some greenness appearing on south bank; April-like rains, after the frost is chiefly out; plowing and planting of peas, etc., just beginning, and the old leaves getting dry in the woods. Vegetation fairly begins,—conferva and mosses, grass and carex, etc.,—and gradually many early herbaceous plants start, and noticed radical leaves; Stellaria media and shepherd’s-purse bloom; maple and buttonwood sap (6th) flow; spirzeas start, cladonias flush; and beomyces handsome; willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy; osiers, etc., look bright, white maple and elm buds expand and open, oak woods thin-leaved; alder and hazel catkins become relaxed and elongated. First perceptible greenness on south banks, 22d. The skunk-cabbage begins to bloom (23d); plant peas, etc., 26th; spring rye, wheat, lettuce; maple ee swamps red-tinged (?) 28th, and lake grass; and perchance the gooseberry and lilac begin to show a little green. That is, one indigenous native flower blooms. (Vide if the early sedge does.) About twenty-nine migratory birds arrive (including hawks and crows), and two or three more utter their spring notes and sounds, as nuthatch and chickadee, turkeys, and woodpecker tapping, while apparently the snow bunting, lesser redpoll, shrike, and doubtless several more — as owls, crossbills (?) — leave us, and woodcocks and hawks begin to lay. Many insects and worms come forth and are active, — and the perla insects still about ice and water, — as tipula, grubs, and fuzzy caterpillars, minute hoppers on grass at springs; gnats, large and small, dance in air; the common and the green fly buzz outdoors; the gyrinus, large and small, on brooks, etc., and skaters; spiders shoot their webs, and at last gossamer floats; the honey- bee visits the skunk-cabbage; fishworms come up, sow-bugs, wireworms, etc.; various larve are seen in pools; small green and also brown grasshoppers begin to hop, small ants to stir (25th); Vanessa Antiopa out 29th; cicindelas run on sand; and small reddish butter- flies are seen in wood-paths, etc., etc., etc. Skunks are active and frolic; woodchucks and ground squirrels come forth; moles root; musquash are commonly drowned out and shot, and sometimes erect a new house, and at length are smelled; and foxes have young (?).

2 p. mM. — 40°; rather windy. Small dark- based cumuli spring clouds, mostly in rows parallel with the horizon. I see one field which was plowed before the 18th and spring rye sowed. The earlier the better, they say. Some fields might have been plowed earlier, but the ground was too wet. Farmer says that some fifty years ago he plowed and sowed wheat in January, and never had so good a crop. I hear that Coombs has killed half a dozen ducks, Sse = see — one of them a large gray duck in Goose Pond. He tells me it weighed five and a half pounds, — while his black - ducks weigh only three and a half, — and was larger than a sheldrake and very good to eat. Simply gray, and was alone, and had a broad flat bill. Was it the gadwall ? or a kind of goose? It will be seen by the annexed scrap’ that March is the fourth coldest month, or about midway between December and November. The same appears from the fifteen years’ observation at Mendon. (‘‘ American Almanac,” page 86.) The descent to extreme cold occupies seven months and is therefore more gradual (though a part of it is more rapid) than the ascent to extreme heat, which takes only five months. The mean average temperature of the coldest month (February) being 23.25, and of the warmest (July) being 72.35, the whole ascent from extreme cold to extreme heat is 49.10°, and in March (32.73) we have accomplished 8.48°, or a little less than one sixth the ascent. (Accord- ing to the Mendon fifteen years’ average the whole ascent is 47.5, and in March we have advanced 9.2, a little more than one fifth.) It appears (from the scrap) that December, January, and February, the three winter months, differ very little in temperature, and the three summer months and September are next most alike, though they differ considerably more. (Same from Mendon tables.) The greatest or abruptest change is from November to December (in Mendon tables from September to October), the next most abrupt from April to May (in Mendon tables from March to April). The least change (according to the above tables) is from December to January. (According to Mendon tables, the same from December to January as from January to February.) The three spring months, and also October and November, are transition months, in which the temperature rapidly changes.

Cold and rather blustering again, with flurries of snow. The boatman, when the chain of his boat has been broken with a stone by some scamp, and he cannot easily transport his boat to the blacksmith’s to have it mended, gets the latter to bend him a very stout iron wire in the form of an S, then, hooking this to the two broken ends and setting it upright on a rock, he ham- mers it down till it rests on itself in the form of an 8, which is very difficult to pry open. 2 p.m. — About 39. To Copan. I see a male frog hawk beating a hedge, scarcely rising more than two feet from the ground for half a mile, quite below the level of the wall within it. How unlike the hen-hawk in this! ; They are real wind-clouds this afternoon; have an - electric, fibry [sic] look. Sometimes it is a flurry of snow falling, no doubt. Peculiar cold and windy cumuli are mixed with them, not black like a thunder- cloud, but cold dark slate with very bright white crowns and prominences. I find on Indian ground, as to-day on the Great Fields, very regular oval stones like large pebbles, ~ sometimes five or six inches long, water-worn, of course, and brought hither by the Indians. They commonly show marks of having been used as hammers. Often in fields where there is not a stone of that kind in place for a mile or more. From Holbrook’s clearing I see five large dark-colored ducks, probably black ducks, far away on the meadow, with heads erect, necks stretched, on the alert, only one in water. Indeed, there is very little water on the meadows. For length of neck those most wary look much like geese. They appear quite large and heavy. They probably find some sweet grass, etc., where the water has just receded. There are half a dozen gulls on the water near. They are the large white birds of the meadow, the whitest we have. As they so commonly stand above water on a piece of meadow, they are so much the more conspicuous. They are very conspicuous to my naked eye a mile off, or as soon as I come in sight of the meadow, but I do not detect the sheldrakes around them till I use my glass, for the latter are not only less conspicuously white, but, as they are fishing, sink very low in the water. Three of the gulls stand together on a piece of meadow, and two or three more are standing solitary half immersed, and now and then one or two circle slowly about their companions. The sheldrakes appear to be the most native to the river, briskly moving along up and down the side of the stream or the meadow, three-fourths immersed and with heads under water, like cutters collecting the rev- enue of the river bays, or like pirate crafts peculiar to the stream. They come the earliest and seem to be most at home. The water is so low that all these birds are collected near the Holt. The inhabitants of the village, poultry- fanciers, perchance, though they be, [know not] these active and vigorous wild fowl (the sheldrakes) pursuing their finny prey ceaselessly within a mile of them, in March and April. Probably from the hen-yard fence with a good glass you can see them at it. They are as much at home on the water as the pickerel is within it. Their serrated bill reminds me of a pickerel’s snout. You see a long row of these schooners, black above with a white stripe beneath, rapidly gliding along, and occasionally one rises erect on the surface and flaps its wings, showing its white lower parts. ‘They are the duck most common and most identified with the stream at this season. They appear to get their food wholly within the water. Less like our domestic ducks. I saw two red squirrels in an apple tree, which were rather small, had simply the tops of their backs red and the sides and beneath gray! Fox-colored sparrows go flitting past with a faint, sharp chip, amid some oaks. According to a table in the “American Almanac ” for *49, page 84, made at Cambridge, from May, ’47, to May, *48, the monthly mean force of the wind for the twelve months (I putting January, February, March, and April, 48, before May, etc., of ’47), numbering them 1, 2, 3, etc., from the highest force downward, was — i 5 1848 1847 (ag Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dee. 6 5 3 3 3 Q 1 4 4 6 5 4 For quantity of clouds, they stood — 4 9 1 aC oe 5 8 6 o* it ‘& 1 For depth of rain in inches, — 7 6 9S IB 10» "2 8 3 bo tt oft 5 That is, for force of wind, March, April, and May were equal, and were inferior to July and June; for quantity of clouds March and May were equal, and were preceded by December, November, September, January, June, and August. For depth of rain, Septem- ber stood first, and March ninth, succeeded only by May, October, and April. The wind’s force was observed at * sunrise, 9 A. M., 3 P.M., and 9 P.M., and in March the greatest force was at 3 p.M., the least at 9 P.M. So, for the whole year the greatest force was at 3 P. M., but the least at sunrise and 9 p.m. both alike. The clouds were observed at the same time, and in March there was the greatest quantity at 9 p. m. and the least at sunrise, but for the year the greatest quantity at 3 p. M. and the least at sunrise and 9 a. M. alike.

Cold and blustering. 2 p.m. — 35°. To Well Meadow and Walden. See first cloud of dust in street. One early willow on railroad, near cowcatcher, just sheds pollen from one anther, but probably might find another more forward. I notice on hillside in Stow’s wood-lot on the west of the Cut what looks like a rope or hollow semicylinder of sawdust around a large white pine stump, just over its instep. ‘There are two or three mouse-holes between the prongs, and the mice haveevidently had a gallery through this dust. Much of it isvery coarse and fibry [szc],—fibres of wood an inch or more long mixed with finer. This is probably the work of the mice in the winter on the roots below, making rooms for themselves. Some of the fine dust is formed into a pellet a quarter of an inch wide and flat, of a regular form, half as thick as wide. If not so large O) you might think they had passed through the creature. The ring of this dust or chewings is not more than two inches wide, and yet it is a hollow semicylinder, more or less regular. I think that I can explain it thus: The mice — of course deer mice — had a gallery in the snow around the stump, from hole to hole. When they began to gnawaway the stumpunderground they brought up their gnawings, and, of course, had no place to cast them but in the gallery through which they ran. Can it be that they eat any of this wood? The gnawings and dust were abundant and fresh, while that made by worms under the bark was old and dirty and could not have been washed into this position, though some of it might have been made by worms beneath the ground. At Well Meadow I notice, as usual, that the common eress has been eaten down close, and the uncertain coarse sedge there, etc. The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds have just begun to appear, but not yet any hellebore. The senecio is considerably grown, and I see many little purplish rosettes of Viola pedata leaves in sandy paths well grown. One Caltha palustris flower, just on the surface of the water, is perfectly out.’ See no ducks on Fair Haven Pond, but, sailing over it and at length hovering very long in one place with head stretched downward, a fish hawk. It is hard descending steep north hillsides as yet, because the ground is yet frozen there and you cannot get a hold by sinking your heels into it.