1 April 1861 – 7 April 1861

A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average. Pratt thought the cowslip was out the 4th.

Am surprised to find the river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow. But I read in Blodget that the equivalent in water is about one tenth. Say one ninth in this case, and you have one and one third inches, and this fallmg on an unfrozen surface, the river at the same time falling from a height, shows why it was no more retarded (far from being absolutely raised). There is now scarcely a button-ball to be seen on Moore’s tree, where there were many a month ago or more. The balls have not fallen entire, but been de- composed and the seed dispersed gradually, leaving long, stringy stems and their cores dangling still. It is the storms of February and March that disperse them. The (are they cinnamon ?) sparrows are the finest singers I have heard yet, especially in Monroe’s garden, where I see no tree sparrows. Similar but more pro- longed and remarkable and loud.

Sunday. Round the two-mile square. I see where the common great tufted sedge (Carex stricta) has started under the water on the meadows, now fast fallmg. The white maple at the bridge not quite out. See a water-bug anda frog. Hylas are heard to-day. I see where the meadow flood has gone down in a bay on the southeast side of the meadow, whither the foam had been driven. A delicate scum now left an inch high on the grass. It is a dirty white, yet silvery, and as thin as the thinnest foil, often unbroken and apparently air-tight for two or three inches across and al- most as light as gossamer. What is the material? It is a kind of paper, but far more delicate than man makes. Saw in a roadside gutter at Simon Brown’s barn a bird like the solitary tattler, with a long bill, which at length flew off to the river. But it may have been a small species of snipe.