Jan. 14, 1852. . . . I love to see now a cock of deep, reddish meadow hay full of ferns and other meadow plants of the coarsest kind. My imagination supplies the green and the hum of bees. What a memento of summer such a haycock! To stand beside one covered with snow in winter through which the dry meadow plants peep out! And yet our hopes survive. . . .
As usual, there was no blueness in the ruts and crevices of the snow to-day. What kind of atmosphere does this require? When I observed it the other day, it was a rather moist air, some snow falling, the sky completely overcast, and the weather not very cold. It is one of the most interesting phenomena of the winter.
Jan. 14, 1854. If the writers of the brazen age are most suggestive to thee, confine thyself to them, and leave those of the Augustan age to dust and the bookworms. . . .
Cato makes the vineyard of first importance to a farm; second, a well-watered garden; third, a willow plantation (salictum); fourth, an olive yard (oletum); fifth, a meadow, or grass ground (pratum); sixth, a grain field or tillage (campus frumentarius); seventh, a wood for fuel (?) (silva cœdua); Varro speaks of planting and cultivating this; eighth, an arbustum; Columella says it is a plantation of elms, and for
