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96 on the water with a slanting flight, launch themselves, and sail along so stately. The pieces of ice, large and small, drifting along, help to conceal them. In the spaces of still, open water I see the reflection of the hills and woods, which for so long I have not seen, and it gives expression to the face of nature. The face of nature is lit up by these reflections in still water in the spring. Sometimes you see only the top of a distant hill reflected far within the meadow, where a dull, gray field of ice intervenes between the water and the shore.

March 9, 1855. To Andromeda Ponds. Scare up a rabbit on the hillside by these ponds which was gnawing a smooth sumach. See also where they have gnawed the red maple, sweet fern, Populus grandidentata, white and other oaks (taking off considerable twigs at four or five cuts), amelanchier, and sallow. But they seem to prefer the smooth sumach to any of them. With this variety of cheap diet they are not likely to starve. The rabbit, indeed, lives, but the sumach may be killed. I get a few drops of the sweet red-maple juice which has run down the main stem where a rabbit has nibbled a twig off close.

The heart-wood of the poison dog-wood, when I break it down with my hand, has a