2 April 1860 – 8 April 1860

Cold and windy. 2 p.m.— Thermometer 31°, or fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. I had expected rain to succeed the thick haze. It was cloudy behind the haze and rained a little about 9 p.m., but, the wind having gone northwest (from southwest), it turned to snow. The shrubs whose buds had begun to unfold yesterday are the spireea, gooseberry, lilac, and Missouri currant, — the first much the most forward and green, the rest in the order named. Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st.

Wednesday morning. Lodged at Sanborn’s last night after his rescue, he being away. It is warmer, an April-like morning after two colder and windy days, threatening a moist or more or less showery day, which followed. The birds sing quite numerously at sunrise about the villages, — robins, tree sparrows, and methinks I heard the purple finch. The birds are eager to sing, as the flowers to bloom, after raw weather has held them in check.

P. M.— Row to Clamshell and walk be- yond. Fair but windy and cool.

Rainy, more or less, — April weather. I am struck by the fact that at this season all vege- table growth is confined to the warm days; during the cold ones it is stationary, or even killed. Vegetation thus comes forward rather by fits and starts than by a steady progress. Some flowers would blossom to- morrow if it were as warm as to-day, but cold weather intervening may detain them a week or more. ‘The spring thus advances and recedes repeatedly, — its pendulum oscillates, — while it is carried steadily for- ward. Animal life is to its extent subject to a similar law. It is in warm and calm days that most birds arrive and reptiles and insects and men come forth. A toad has been seen dead on the sidewalk, flattened.

The purple finch, — if not before. P. M. — To Annursnack. This is the Rana halecina day, — awakening of the meadows, — though not very warm. The thermometer in Boston to-day is said to be 49. Probably, then, when it is about 50 at this season, the river being low, they are to be heard in calm places. Fishes now lie up abundantly in shallow water in the sun, — pickerel, and I see several bream. What was lately motionless and lifeless ice is a transparent liquid in which the stately pickerel moves along. A novel sight is that of the first bream that has come forth from I know not what hibernaculum, moving gently over the still brown river-bottom, where scarcely a weed has started. Water is as yet only melted ice, or like that of November, which is ready to become ice.