Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/114

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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

had at first heard their day, day, day, ungratefully. "Ah ! you but carry my thoughts back to winter!" But anon I found that they, too, had become spring birds. They had changed their note. Even they feel the influence of spring.

I see cup lichens (cladonias) with their cups beset inside and out with little leaflets like shell work.

March 10, 1853. This is the first really spring day. The sun is brightly reflected from all surfaces, and the north side of the street begins to be a little more passable to foot travelers. You do not think it necessary to button up your coat.

p. m. To Second Division Brook. As I stand looking over the river, looking from the bridge into the flowing, eddying tide, the almost strange chocolate-colored water, the sound of distant crows and cocks, is full of spring. As Anacreon says "the works of men shine," so the sounds of men and birds are musical. Something analogous to the thawing of the ice seems to have taken place in the air. At the end of winter there is a season in which we are daily expecting spring, and finally, a day when it arrives. . . . . The radical leaves of innumerable plants (as here a dock in and near the water) are evidently affected by the spring influences. Many plants are to some extent