Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/116

102 discontent. Have the minnows played thus all winter? The equisetum at the bottom has freshly grown several inches. Then should I not have given the precedence on the other page to this and some other water plants? I suspect that I should, and the flags appear to be starting. I am surprised to find on the rail a young tortoise $1 1⁄16$ inches long in the shell, which has crawled out to sun or perchance is on its way to the water. I think it must be the Emys guttata, for there is a large and distinct yellow spot on each dorsal and lateral plate, and the third dorsal plate is hexagonal and not quadrangular as that of the Emys picta is described as being, though in my specimen I can't make it out to be so. Yet the edges of the plates are prominent as described in the Emys sculpta, which, but for the spots, two yellow spots on each side of the hind head, and one fainter on the top of the head, I should take it to be. It is about seven eighths of an inch wide, very inactive. When was it hatched and where?

What is the theory of these sudden pitches of deep shelving places in the sandy bottom of the brook. It is very interesting to walk along such a brook as this in the midst of the meadow, which you can better do now before the frost is quite out of the sod, and gaze into the deep holes in its irregular bottom and the dark gulfs