13 March 1854 – 19 March 1854

'To Boston. C. says he saw skater insects to-day. Harris tells me that those gray insects within the little log forts under the bark of the dead white pine, which I found about a week ago, are Rhagium lineatum. Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. Best military spy- glass with six slides, which shuts up to about same size, fifteen dollars, and very powerful. Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark(e? )' uses; fifty-odd dollars apiece, the larger. It takes two to- gether, one called the flint. These French glasses all one quality of glass. My glass tried by Clark and ap- proved. Only a part of the object (?) glass available. Bring the edge of the diaphragm against middle of the light, and your nail on object glass in line with these shows what is cut off. Sometimes may enlarge the hole in diaphragm. But, if you do so, you may have to enlarge the hole in diaphragm near small end, which must be exactly as large as the pencil of light there. As the diameter of the pencil is to the diameter of the available portion of the object glass, so is the power, —so many times it magnifies. A good glass because the form of the blurred object is the same on each side of the focus, — 7. e., shoved in or drawn out. C. was making a glass for Amherst College.

A. M.— Threatening rain after clear morning. Great concert of song sparrows in willows and alders along Swamp Bridge Brook by river. Hardly hear a distinct strain. Couples chasing each other, and some tree sparrows with them. R. W. E. saw a small bird in the woods yesterday which reminded him of the parti-colored warbler. P. M. — To Great Meadows. Raw thickening mists, as if preceding rain. Counted over forty robins with my glass in the meadow [Alvan Clark’s name lacks the final “e.’’]

Pleasant morning, unexpectedly. Hear on the alders by the river the Jil? Lill lll lill of the first F. hyemalis, mingled with song sparrows and tree spar- rows. The sound of Barrett’s sawmill in the still morn- ing comes over the water very loud. I hear that pecu- liar, interesting loud hollow tapping of a woodpecker from over the water. T am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness. J. Farmer tells me his dog started up a lark last winter completely buried in the snow. Painted my boat.

A. M.— Another fine morning.

Friday. A remarkably warm day for the season; too warm while surveying without my great- coat; almost like May heats. 4p. mM. — To Cliffs. The grass is slightly greened on south bank-sides, — on the south side of the house. It begins to be windy. Saw a small gyrinus at the brook bridge behind Hub- bard’s Grove. The first tinge of green appears to be due to moisture more than to direct heat. It is not on bare dry banks, but in hollows where the snow melts last that it is most conspicuous. Fair Haven is open for half a dozen rods about the shores. If this weather holds, it will be entirely open in a day or two.

Saturday. Very high wind this forenoon; began by filling the air with a cloud of dust. Never felt it shake the house so much; filled the house with dust through the cracks; books, stove, papers covered ! Were they not females of the others? with it. Blew down Mr. Frost’s chimney again. Took up my boat, a very heavy one, which was lying on its bottom in the yard, and carried it two rods. The white caps of the waves on the flooded meadow, seen from the window, are a rare and exciting spectacle, — such an angry face as our Concord meadows rarely exhibit. Walked down the street to post-office. Few inhabitants out more than in a rain. Elms bending and twisting and thrashing the air as if they would come down every moment. I was cautious about passing under them. Yet scarcely a rotten limb in the street. The highest winds occur neither in summer, when the trees are covered with leaves, nor in winter, when they may be covered with ice. Saw a flattened toad on the sidewalk. Could it have been last year’s ?? P. M. — Walked round by the west side of the river to Conantum. Wind less violent. C. has already seen a yellow- spotted tortoise in a ditch. (Two sizable elms by river in Merrick’s pasture blown down, roots being rotted off on water side.) The willow catkins this side M. Miles’s five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit. Old barn blown down on Conantum. It fell regularly, like a weak box pushed over, without moving its bottom, — the roof falling upon it a little Ss to leeward. The hay is left exposed, but does not blow away. ‘The river was at its height last night. Before this we saw many robins and sparrows under Clamshell * Guess not. Hill for shelter. Birds seek warm and sheltered places in such weather. It is very cold and freezing, this wind. The water has been blown quite across the Hubbard’s Bridge causeway in some places and incrusted the road with ice. Before looking this way we had seen the whitened shore from Lupine Hill. It is blown and dashes against the willows and incrusts them with ice, sometimes j to the height of three feet, with icicles shaped like bulls’ horns, especially observable where many osiers stand together, and from the more horizontal osiers, etc., depend icicles, five or six inches long, very regularly, look- ing exactly like coarse rakes, apparently not the result of melting but of the spray and water blown or dashed upon them: only more regular. A ~/ IT] ]}) very wintry sight. The water is in many places blown a rod on to the shore and frozen. Saw where a woodchuck (probably) had dug out quite a pile of gravel in the side of a hill.

Sunday. Cold and windy. The meadow ice bears where shallow. William Rice 2d (?) saw a woodchuck last Sunday. Met his father in Walden Woods, who described a flock of crows he had just seen which followed him “eying down, eying down.” Saw in Mill Brook behind Shannon’s three or four shiners ! (the first), poised over the sand with a dis- tinct longitudinal light-colored line midway along their sides and a darker line below it. This is a note- worthy and characteristic lineament, or cipher, or hieroglyphic, or type, of spring. You look into some clear, sandy-bottomed brook, where it spreads into a deeper bay, yet flowing cold from ice and snow not far off, and see, indistinctly poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner, scarcely to be distinguished fromthe sands behind it, as if it were transparent, or as [if] the material of which it was builded had all been picked up from them. Chiefly distinguished by the lines I have mentioned. Goodwin killed a pigeon yesterday. Flint’s Pond almost entirely open, — much more than Fair Haven.