Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/115

Rh evergreen, like the buttercup now beginning to start. Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, the pushing up of skunk cabbage spathes, and pads at the bottom of water. This is the order I am inclined to, though, perhaps any of these may take precedence of all the rest in any particular case. What is that dark pickle-green alga (?) at the bottom of this ditch, looking somewhat like a decaying cress, with fruit like a lichen?

At Nut Meadow Brook Crossing we rest awhile on the rail gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple marks on the sandy bottom where silver spangles shine in the sun with black wrecks of caddis casts lodged under each, the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom, the minnows already stemming the current with restless, wiggling tails, ever and anon darting aside, probably to secure some invisible mote in the water, whose shadows we do not at first detect on the sandy bottom, though, when detected, they are so much more obvious as well as larger and more interesting than the substance, in which each fin is distinctly seen, though scarcely to be detected in the substance, these are all very beautiful and exhilarating sights, a sort of diet drink to heal our winter