Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/109

Rh snow is melted look through this air as if I were under the influence of some intoxicating liquor. The earth is not quite steady nor palpable to my sense,—a little idealized.

March 9, 1853. Minott thinks, and quotes some old worthy as authority for saying, that the bark of the striped squirrel is one of the first sure signs of decided spring weather.

March 9, 1854. Saw this morning a muskrat sitting "in a round form on the ice," or rather motionless, like the top of a stake or a mass of muck on the edge of the ice. He then dove for a clam, whose shells he left on the ice beside him. Boiled a handful of rock tripe (Umbilicaria Muhlenbergii) (which Tuckerman says "was the favorite rock tripe in Franklin's journey") for more than an hour. It produced a black puff, looking somewhat like boiled tealeaves, and was insipid, like rice or starch. The dark water in which it was boiled had a bitter taste, and was slightly gelatinous. The puff was not positively disagreeable to the palate.

To Great Meadows. Saw several flocks of large grayish and whitish or speckled ducks, I suppose the same that P. calls sheldrakes. They, like ducks, commonly incline to fly in a line about an equal distance apart. I hear the common sort of quacking from them. It is pleasant to see them at a distance alight