22 January 1855 – 28 January 1855

Heavy rain in the night and half of to-day, with very high wind from the southward, washing off the snow and filling the road with water. The roads are well-nigh impassable to foot-travellers. P. M.— To stone bridge, Loring’s Pond, Derby’s, and Nut Meadow. It is a good lichen day, for the high wind has strewn the bark over the fields and the rain has made them very bright. In some places for fifteen rods the whole road is like a lake from three to fifteen inches deep. It is very exciting to see, where was so lately only ice and snow, dark wavy lakes, dashing in furious tor- rents through the commonly dry channels under the causeways, to hear only the rush and roar of waters and look down on mad billows where in summer is commonly only dry pebbles. Great cakes of ice lodged and sometimes tilted up against the causeway bridges, over which the water pours as over a dam. After their passage under these commonly dry bridges the crowd- ing waters are at least six or eight inches higher than those of the surrounding meadow. What a tumult at the stone bridge, where cakes of ice a rod in diam- eter and a foot thick are carried round and round by the eddy in circles eight or ten rods in diameter, and rarely get a chance to go down-stream, while others are seen coming up edgewise from below in the midst of the torrent! The muskrats driven out of their holes by the water are exceedingly numerous, yet many of their cabins are above water on the south branch. Here there are none. We saw fifteen or twenty, at least, between Derby’s Bridge and the Tarbell Spring, either swim- ming with surprising swiftness up or down or across the stream to avoid us, or sitting at the water’s edge, or resting on the edge of the ice (one refreshed himself there after its cold swim regardless of us, probed its fur with its nose and scratched its ear like a dog) or on some alder bough just on the surface. They frequently swam toward an apple tree in the midst of the water in the vain hope of finding a resting-place and refuge there. I saw one, looking quite a reddish brown, busily feeding on some plant just at the water’s edge, thrust- ing his head under for it. But I hear the sound of Goodwin’s gun up-stream and see his bag stuffed out with their dead bodies. The radical leaves of the yellow thistle are now very fresh and conspicuous in Tarbell’s meadow, the rain having suddenly carried off the snow.

P. M.— The water is still higher than yesterday. I found [it] just over the Red Bridge road, near the bridge. The willow-row near there is not now bright, but a dull greenish below, with a yard at the ends of the twigs red. The water in many hollows in the fields has suddenly fallen away, run off, or soaked up, leaving last night’s ice to mark its height around the edges and the bushes. It has fallen two feet in many cases, leaving sometimes a mere feathery crys- tallization to supply its place. I was pleased to see the vapor of Sam Barrett’s fall and, after, the icy cases of the alder and willow stems below. But the river is higher than ever, especially the North River. I was obliged after crossing Hunt’s Bridge to keep on round to the railroad bridge at Loring’s before I could re- cross, it being over the road with a roar like a mill- dam this side the further stone bridge, and I could not get over dry for the feebleness and incontinuity of the fence. In front of G. M. Barrett’s was a great curving bay which crossed the road between him and Heywood’s, and by Fort Pond Bridge at Loring’s it had been over for ten rods in the night. A great cake a foot thick stands on end against the railroad bridge. I do not quite like to see so much bare ground in mid- winter. The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew. Yesterday I met Goodwin shooting muskrats and saw the form and bloody stains of two through his game-bag. He shot such as were close to the shore where he could get them, for he had no dog, the water being too cold, he said. I saw one poor rat lying on the edge of the ice reddened with its blood, half a dozen rods from the shore, which he had shot but was un- willing to wade for. It is surprising how much work will be accomplished in such a night as the last, so many a brook will have run itself out and now be found reduced within reason- able bounds. This settling away of the water leaves much crackling white ice in the roads.

I am [reading] William Wood’s “New England’s Prospect.’”’ He left New England August 15th, 1633, and the last English edition referred to in this American one of 1764 is that of London, 1639. The wild meadow-grasses appear to have grown more rankly in those days. He describes them as “thick and long, as high as a man’s middle; some as high as the shoulders.” (Vzde Indian book.)? Strawber- ries too were more abundant and large before they were so cornered up by cultivation, “some being two inches about; one may gather half a bushel in a fore- noon;”’ and no doubt many other berries were far more abundant, as gooseberries, raspberries, and es- pecially currants, which last so many old writers speak of, but so few moderns find wild. We can perhaps imagine how the primitive wood looked from the sample still left in Maine. He says, “The timber of the country grows strait, and tall, some trees being twenty, some thirty foot high, before they spread forth their branches; generally the trees be not very thick, tho’ there be many that will serve for mill-posts, some being three foot and an half over.”’ One would judge from accounts that the woods were clearer than the primitive wood that is left, on account of Indian fires, for he says you might ride a-hunting in most places. “There is no underwood, saving in swamps,” which the Indian fires did not burn. (Vide Indian book.) “Here no doubt might be good done with saw mills; for I have seene of these stately high grown trees [he is speaking of pines particularly] ten miles together close by the river [probably Charles River]! side.” He says at first “fir and pine,” as if the fir once grew in this part of the State abundantly, as now in Maine and further west. Of the oaks he says, “These trees afford much mast for hogs, especially every third year.” Does not this imply many more of them than now? “The hornbound tree is a tough kind of wood, that requires so much pains in riving as is almost incredible, being the best to make bowls and dishes, not being subject to crack or leak,” and [he] speaks, both in prose and verse, of the vines being particu- larly inclined to run over this tree. If this is the true hornbeam it was probably larger then, but I am inclined to think it the tupelo, and that it was both larger and more abundant than commonly now, for he says it was good for bowls, and it has been so used since. Of the plums of the country he says, “'They be black and yellow, about the bigness of damsons, of a reasonable good taste.” Yet Emerson has not found the yellow plum, 2. e. Canada, growing wild in Massa- chusetts. Of quadrupeds no longer found in Concord, he names the lion, — that Cape Ann Lion “which some affirm that they have seen,” which may have been a cougar, for he adds, “ Plimouth men have traded for Lions skins in former times,” — bear, moose, deer, por- cupines, “the grim-fac’d Ounce, and rav’nous howl- ing Wolf,” and beaver. Martens. “For Bears they be common, being a black kind of Bear, which be most fierce in strawberry time, at which time they have young ones; at which time likewise they will go upright like a man, and climb trees, and swim to the islands;” etc. (Vide Indian book.) In the winter they lie in “the clifts of rocks and thick swamps.” ‘The wolves hunt these in packs and “tear him as a Dog will tear a Kid.” “They never prey upon the English cattle, or offer to assault the person of any man,” unless shot. Their meat “esteemed .. . above venison.” For moose and deer see Indian book. Complains of the wolf as the great devourer of bear, moose, and deer, which kept them from mul- 1855) “NEW ENGLAND’S PROSPECT” = 135 tiplying more. “Of these Deer [2. e. the small] * there be a great many, and more in the Massachusetts-Bay, than in any other place.” “Some have killed sixteen Deer in a day upon this island,” so called because the deer swam thither to avoid the wolves.” For porcupine and raccoon vide Indian book. Gray squirrels were evidently more numerous than now. I do not know whether his ounce or wild cat is the Canada lynx * or wolverine. He calls it wild cat and does not describe the little wildcat. (Vide Indian book.) Says they are accounted “very good meat. Their skins be a very deep kind of fur, spotted white and black on the belly.” Audubon and Bachman make the Lynx rufus black and white beneath. For wolf vide Indian book. He says: “These be killed daily in some places or other. . . . Yet is there little hope of their utter de- struction.” “Travelling in the swamp by kennels.” Says the beaver are so cunning the English “seldom or never kill any of them, being not patient to lay a long siege” and not having experience. Eagles are probably less common; pigeons of course (vide Indian book); heath cocks all gone (price “four pence”); and turkeys (good cock, “four shillings”). Probably more owls then, and cormorants, etc., etc., sea-fowl generally (of humilities he “killed twelve score at two shots”), and swans. Of pigeons, “Many of them build among the pine trees, thirty miles to the north-east of our plantations; joining nest to nest, and tree to tree by their nests, so that the Sun never sees the ground in that place, from whence the Indians fetch whole loads of them.’’ And then for turkeys, tracking them in winter, or shooting them on their roosts at night. Of the crane, ‘‘ almost as tall as a man,”’ probably blue heron, — possibly the whooping crane or else the sandhill, — he says, “I have seen many of these fowls, yet did I never see one that was fat, though very sleaky;”’ neither did I. “There be likewise many Swans, which frequent the fresh ponds and rivers, seldom consorting themselves with ducks and geese; these be very good meat, the price of one is six shil- lings.” Think of that! They had not only brant and common gray wild geese, but “a white Goose,” probably the snow goose; “sometimes there will be two or three thousand in a flock;” continue six weeks after Michael- mas and return again north in March. Peabody says of the snow goose, “They are occasionally seen in Massachusetts Bay.” Sturgeon were taken at Cape Cod and in the Mer- rimack especially, “pickled and brought to England, some of these be 12, 14, and 18 feet long.” An abun- dance of salmon, shad, and bass, — ‘<The stately Bass old Neptune’s fleeting post, That tides it out and in from sea to coast ;” “one of the best fish in the country,” taken “some- times two or three thousand at a set,”’ “some four foot long,’ left on the sand behind the seine; sometimes used for manure. “Alewives . . . in the latter end of April come up to the fresh rivers to spawn, in such multitudes as is almost incredible, pressing up in such shallow waters as will scarce permit them to swim, having likewise such longing desire after the fresh water ponds, that no beatings with poles, or forcive agitations by other devices, will cause them to return to the sea, till they have cast their spawn.” “'The Oysters be great ones in form of a shoe-horn, some be a foot long; these breed on certain banks that are bare every spring tide. This fish without the shell is so big, that 1t must admit of a division before you can well get it into your mouth.” For lobsters, “their plenty makes them little esteemed and seldom eaten.” Speaks of “a great oyster bank” in the middle of Back Bay, just off the true mouth of the Charles, and of an- other in the Mistick. These obstructed the navigation of both rivers. Vide book of facts. P. M. — To Walden and Andromeda Ponds. The river is remarkably high for this season. Meeks, the carpenter, said that he could not get home to-night if he could not find Rhoades, with whom he rode into town, for the water was more than a foot deep over half the causeway. This was at 8 Pp. M. But the ice 1s not thick enough on the meadows, so I go to Walden a-skating. Yet, to my surprise, it is thinly frozen over those parts of the river which are commonly open even in the coldest weather (as at Cheney’s), probably because, it being spread over the meadows, there is not so much current there now. On the 19th Walden was covered with slosh four or five inches deep, but the rain of the 22d turned it all to water, — or chiefly, — leaving it pretty smooth in the main, but at different levels. Under the higher levels are many handsome white figures one to two feet long, where water has flowed, now empty and white, in form of trees or cladonia lichens, very hand- some. I saw a meadow full of lambkill turned reddish the other day, which looked quite handsome with the sun on it. Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me. They are filled with a dense bed of the small andromeda, a dull red mass as commonly seen, brighter or translucent red looking toward the sun, grayish looking from it, two feet or more high, as thick as a moss bed, springing out of a still denser bed of sphag- num beneath. Above the general level rise in clumps here and there the panicled andromeda, with brown clustered fruit, and the high blueberry. But I observe that the andromeda does not quite fill the pond, but there is an open wet place, with coarse grass, swamp loosestrife, and some button-bush, about a rod wide, surrounding the whole. Those little hummocks or paps of sphagnum, out of which the andromeda springs, as bouquets are tied up in the same to keep them fresh, are very beautiful. Now, where the frost has touched them, they are hoary protuberances, — perhaps in- clining to ridges, now frozen firmly, — green beneath and within; general aspect now perhaps pale withered brownish, the green only driven in a little deeper, spotted with more or less bright reddish stars; where drier, frequently beautiful crimson stars amid the hoary portions; a beautiful soft bed, of a myriad swelling bosoms, out of which the andromeda springs. I got a load once to stuff into the chinks in a well I was [walling up]— to keep the sand out, but, it being covered, it died, and I believe I only filled the water with motes and worms ever after. A beautiful pale- brown and hoary-red and crimson ground of swell- ing bosoms. Dr. Harris spoke of this andromeda as a rare plant in Cambridge. ‘There was one pond-hole where he had found it, but he believed they had de- stroyed it now getting out the mud. What can be ex- pected of a town where this is a rare plant? Here is Nature’s parlor; here you can talk with her in the lingua vernacula, if you can speak it, —if you have anything to say, —her little back sitting-room, her withdrawing, her keeping room. I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. I tried to think it the blood of wounded muskrats, but it could not be. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. As for vegetable pig- ments, there were button-bushes in and about it. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges like mother-o’-pearl or the inside of a conch. It was quite conspicuous fifteen rods off, and the color of spring-cranberry juice. This beautiful blushing ice! What are we coming to? Was surprised to see oak-balls on a bear scrub oak. Have them, then, on black, scarlet, red, and bear scrub. Saw a young (apparently) red oak (it did not taste bitter) (another in same state has an oak-ball on it!) ten feet high, the ends of whose twigs looked at first sight as if they had been twisted off by some hungry browsing bird, leaving the fibres streaming. These I found were the strong woody fibres of last year’s leaf-stalk, standing out white, in some cases two inches in all directions, from the ends of the twigs, in others rolled together like strong twine, and commonly this twine of different leaf-stalks with the flapping of the leaves twisted together; sometimes four or five leaf- stalks’ fibres, with wonderful regularity, as if braided, —like braided horse-tails. On other oaks the leaves still remained with their leaf-stalks thus reduced to fibres and twisted together. It was wonderful how they could have become so wonderfully knotted or braided together, but Nature had made up in assi- duity for want of skill. In one instance four leaf- stalks, reduced to fine white fibres and rolled and twisted into strong twine, had afterwards been closely braided together for half an inch in length and in the course of it tied twice round the twig. I think it must be that these leaves died (perhaps in the great drought of last year) while their fibres were still strongly united with their twigs and so preserving their flexibility without losing their connection, and so the wind flap- 74 ping the leaves, which hang short down, } i “ has twisted them together and commonly ff j 2) worn out the leaves entirely, without loosening or breaking the tough leaf-stalk. Here is self-registered the flutterings of a leaf in this twisted, knotted, and braided twine. So fickle and unpredictable, not to say insignificant, a motion does yet get permanently recorded in some sort. Not a leaf flut- ters, summer or winter, but its variation and dip and intensity are registered in THE Book. Old Wood in his “New England’s Prospect” says, Englishmanlike: “It is thought there can be no better water in the world, yet dare I not prefer it before good beer, as some have done, but any man will choose it before bad beer, whey, or buttermilk. Those that drink it be as healthful, fresh, and lusty, as they that drink beer.”

P. M. — To Andromeda Ponds. This morning was a perfect hunter’s morn, for it snowed about three quarters of an inch last evening, covering land and ice. Is not good skating a sign of snow? In the swamps, however, where there was wa- ter oozed out over the ice, there is no snow, but frozen slosh to-day, 2. e. a rotten, roughish, dull-white ice. It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. You dispense with gloves. I see « mice-tracks in the fields and mea- dows like this: ~ four together, rabbit-like, four or five inches | apart and one and a quarter broad. Are they the ‘* same withthe > 2 ~*# ? I think so. I see rabbit-tracks, pretty large, maybe white ones, two feet 9@@ apart. [suspect thatin each case they arecom- @ 9 ing down the page.! In the partridge-tracks the side toes are more spread ay ES. than in crows; and I believe the hind one is not so long. Both trail the middle toe. The partridge-track looks like this: I see the tracks apparently of many hunt- ers that hastened out this morning. ee | I have come ( pot with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice. It is covered with snow. I push it away with my hands and feet. At first 1 detect no rose tint, and suspect it may have disappeared, — faded or bleached out, — or it was adream. But the surrounding snow and the little body of the ice I had laid bare was what hindered. At length I detect a faint tinge; I cut down a young white oak and sweep bare a larger space; I then cut out a cake. The redness 1s all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope, as if it had dried on. Little balloons, with some old paint almost scaled off their spheres. It has no beauty nor brightness thus seen, [no] more than brick-dust. And this it is which gave the ice so delicate a tinge, seen through that inch of clear white ice. What is it? Can it be blood? I find an abundance of the seeds of sweet-gale frozen in In windrows on the ice of the river meadows as I return, which were washed out by the freshet. I color my fingers with them.<« And thus they are planted, then, —somewhat, perhaps, in waving lines, as they wash up. Returning over the fields, the shallow pools made by the rain and thaw, whose water has almost entirely settled away, — and the ice rests on the ground, — where they are bare of snow, now that the sun is about a quarter of an hour high, looking east are quite green. For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in. Sagard says of the hares (lvévres) of the Huron coun- try, “Les sapiniéres and little woods are the places of their retreat.’’ Such is their taste now. Says the muskrats “feed on ’herbe on land and the white of the joncs at the bottom of the lakes and rivers.” A pine cone blossoms out now fully in about three days, in the house. ‘They begin to open about half- way up. They are exceedingly regular and handsome; the scales with shallow triangular or crescent-shaped extremities, the prickle pointing downward, are most open above, and are so much recurved at the base of the cone that they lie close together and almost flat there, or at right =” End of scale on side of cone. angles with the stem, like a shield of iron scales, mak- ing a perfectly regular figure of thirteen (in one instance) curved rays, thus: — only far more regular. There are just thirteen rays in each of the three I have! !! ‘These vary in their roundness or the flatness of the cone; so the white pine cones in their length. I find just five such rays (the number of the needles in a fascicle) in each white pine cone I have, and each goes round once. A larch cone has five rows. Four hemlock cones have five each, like white pine, but little twisted.

This morning it snows again, —a fine dry snow with no wind to speak of, giving a wintry aspect to the landscape. What a Proteus is our weather! Let me try to re- member its freaks. We had remarkably steady sleigh- ing, on a little snow some six inches deep, from the 5th of December all through the month, and some way into January. It came damp and froze up solid. Yet there was none in Boston the while. There was, how- ever, a little rain near the end of December, and oc- casional slight flurries of snow. January 6th, after some comparatively pleasant days, there was a raw northerly wind and fine drifting or driving snow in the afternoon, as I walked over the Great Meadows, forming shallow drifts on the ice, but it soon stopped. January 7th, I was surprised when I opened the door in the afternoon by the warm south wind and sudden softening and melting of the snow. It was a January thaw without rain, the manure beginning to wash off the ice in the streets. The winter’s back was broken, and I dreamed of spring, etc., ete. January 8th, the same. The ice in roads washed bare, the brooks full of melted snow; but it is still clear wea- ther and warm.

A fine snow falling, spoiling all prospect of skating on this broad ice. Is not good skating the surest sign of snow or foul weather ? To continue the 26th: — P. M. — To Walden. A thick, driving snow, something like, but less than, that of the 19th. There is a strong easterly wind and the snow is very damp. In the deepest hollows on the Brister Hill path it has already lodged handsomely. Suppose you descend into the deepest circular one, far beneath the sweep of the blustering wind, where the flakes at last drop gently to their resting-places, There is a level, white circular floor, indicating ice be- neath, and, all around, the white pines, under an ac- cumulating snowy burthen, are hung with drooping white wreaths or fans of snow. The snow on pitch pines takes the forms of large balls, on white pines often of great rolling-pins. Already the trees are bend- ing in all directions into the paths and =|) =. hollows as here. The birches here are “~~ bowed inward to the open circle of the pond-hole, their tops apparently buried in the old snow. Nothing can be prettier than the snow on the leafless shrub oaks, the twigs are so small and numerous, little snowy arms crossing each other at every imaginable angle, like a whirligig. It is surprismg what a burden of snow al- ready rests on little bare twigs hardly bigger than a knitting-needle, both as they stand perpendicularly and horizontally. The great damp flakes come and soon bridge across the interval, even two inches over, between the forks of such twigs where they are hori- zontal, one sticking to another. It rests on such hori- zontal twigs commonly in the form of a prism resting on one corner <7 (vertical section where no wind). And in many places, where the wind is felt, the little walls of snow are built out at an angle with the per- pendicular, in the direction whence the snow comes: (a vertical section orend). Damp as itis, it [is] y like swan’s-down, as if it lay as light as well as thick. As it is with these shrub oaks, so with the largest trees in the stiller parts of the woods, and even the lowest dead limbs of the white pines are not prevented by the upper from bearing their part of the burden. I am afraid I have not described vividly enough the aspect of that Lodging Snow of the 19th and to-day partly. Imagine the innumerable twigs and boughs of the forest (as you stand in its still midst), crossing each other at every conceivable angle on every side from the ground to thirty feet in height, with each its zigzag wall of snow four or five inches high, so innumerable at different distances one behind another that they completely close up the view like ey ay° 2 vo. aoa a loose-woven downy screen, into which, however, stooping and winding, you ceaselessly advance. The wintriest scene, — which perhaps can only be seen in perfection while the snow is yet falling, before wind and thaw begin. Else you miss, you lose, the delicate touch of the master. A coarse woof and warp of snowy batting, leaving no space for a bird to perch. I see where a partridge has waddled through the snow still falling, making a continuous track. I look in the direction to which it points, and see the bird just skimming over the bushes fifteen rods off. The plumes of pitch pines are first filled up solid, then they begin to make great snowy casse-tétes, or pestles. In the fields the air is thick with driving snow. You can only see a dozen rods into its woof and warp. It fills either this ear or that and your eyes with hard, cutting, blinding scales if you face it. It is forming shelly drifts behind the walls, and stretches in folds across the roads; but in deep, withdrawn hollows in the woods the flakes at last come gently and deviously down, lodging on every twig and leaf, and forming deep and downy and level beds between and on the ice of the pools. The lowermost twigs support not less snow but more. In many places where you knew there was a thrifty young wood, there appears to be none, for all is bent down and almost completely buried in the snow, and you are stepping over them. The pitch pines are most round-headed, and the young white oaks are most leaved at top, and hence suffer most. What changes in the aspect of the earth! one day russet hills, and muddy. ice, and yellow and greenish pools in the fields; the next all painted white, the fields and woods and roofs laid on thick. The great sloshy pools in the fields, freezing as they dried away, look like bread that has spewed in the baking, the fungi of a night, an acre in extent; but trust not your feet on it, for the under side is not done; there the prin- ciple of water still prevails. Methinks that after any great storm in winter, whether of snow or rain, the equilibrium of the air is again disturbed and there comes a high wind shaking down the snow and drying up the water.

Yesterday’s driving easterly snow-storm turned to sleet in the evening, and then to rain, and this morning it is clear and pretty cold, the wind westerly, the snow settled to three or four inches on a level, with a frozen crust and some water beneath in many places. It seems as if the sky could not bear to look down on smooth ice, and so made haste to cover it up. One is educated to believe, and would rejoice if the rising generation should find no occasion to doubt, that the State and the Church are on the side of moral- ity, that the voice of the people is the voice of God. Harvard College was partly built by a lottery. My father tells me he bought a ticket in it. Perhaps she thus laid the foundation of her Divinity School. Thus she teaches by example. New England is flooded with the “ Official Schemes of the Maryland State Lotteries,” and in this that State is no less unprincipled than in her slaveholding. Maryland, and every fool who buys a ticket of her, is bound straight to the bottomless pit. The State of Maryland is a moral fungus. Her offense is rank; it smells to heaven. Knowing that she is do- ing the devil’s work, and that her customers are ashamed to be known as such, she advertises, as in the case of private diseases, that “the strictest confidence will be observed.” “Consolidated” Deviltry! P. M. — Up meadow to Cliffs and Walden road. A cold, cutting southwesterly wind. The crust bears where the snow is very shallow, but lets you through to water in many places on the meadow. The river has not yet fallen much. The muskrats have added to their houses in some places. So they still use them. Started a hare among shrub oaks. It had been squatting in a slight hollow, rather concealed than sheltered. They always look poverty-stricken. Some ice organ-pipes at the Cliffs. They appear to be formed of successive rings about half an inch thick and diameter lessening with more or less regularity to the point: 5s Sometimes the point split in two. Then the rocks are incased with ice under which water flows, — thin sheets of rippling water frozen as it flowed, — and, with the sun, again apparently thaw- ing beneath and giving room to a new sheet of water, for under the south side of the rocks it melts almost every day. I came upon a fox’s track under the north end of the Cliffs and followed it. It was made last night, after the sleet and probably the rain was over, before it froze; it must have been at midnight or after. The tracks were commonly ten or twelve inches apart and each one and three quarters or two inches wide. Some- times there was a longer interval and two feet fell nearer together, as if in a canter. It had doubled directly on its track in one place for a rod or two, then went up the north end of the Cliff where it is low and went along southward just on its edge, ascending gradually. In one place it had made water like a dog, and I per- ceived the peculiar rank fox odor without stooping. It did not wind round the prominent rocks, but leaped upon them as if to reconnoitre. Its route was for the most part a little below the edge of the Cliff, occa- sionally surmounting it. At length, after going perhaps half a mile, it turned as if to descend a dozen rods beyond the juniper, and suddenly came to end. Looking closely I found the entrance (apparently) to its hole, under a prominent rock which seemed to lie loose on the top of the ledge and about two feet from the nearest track. By stooping it had probably squeezed under this and passed into its den beneath. I could find no track leading from it. Their tracks are larger than you would expect, as large as those of a much heavier dog, I should think. What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning! With what relish they must relate their midnight adventures to one another there in their dens by day, if they have society! I had never asso- ciated that rock with a fox’s den, though perhaps I had sat on it many a time. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etc., etc. They are the only outlaws, the only Robin Hoods, here nowadays. Do they not stand for gypsies and all outlaws? Wild dogs, as Indians are wild men. People will tell you of the Cold Winter, clear bright days when for six weeks the eaves did not run once. As I went through the woods toward the railroad, the sun setting, there were many small violet-colored, 1. e. lilac-tinted, clouds scattered along the otherwise clear western horizon. I often see the mincing tracks of a skunk. I came upon the track of a woodchopper, who had gone to his work early this morning across Fair Haven Pond. It suggested his hard work and little pecuniary gain, but simple life and health and contentment. As I took the back track on his trail, comparing his foot and stride with mine, I was startled to detect a slight aberration, as it were sliding in his tread, or as if he had occasionally stopped and made a fresh impress not exactly coincident with the first. In short, I dis- covered ere long that he had had a companion; per- chance they were two thieves trying to pass for one, thought I; but the truth was the second, to save his strength in this long walk to his work through the crusty snow, had stepped with more or less precision in the tracks of his predecessor. The snow was three or four inches deep. I afterwards used the track of a horse in like manner to my advantage; so that my successor might have thought that a sleigh had gone along drawn by a man.

Sunday. Grew warmer toward night and snowed; but this soon turned to heavy rain in the night, which washed all the snow off the ice, leaving only bare ground and ice the county over by next morn- ing.