Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/131

Rh one another who should be most bold. For four or five minutes at least they kept up an incessant chirruping or squeaking bark, vibrating their tails and their whole bodies, and frequently changing their position or point of view, making a show of rushing forward, or perhaps darting off a few feet like lightning, and barking still more loudly, i. e., with a yet sharper exclamation, as if frightened by their own motions, their whole bodies quivering, their heads and great eyes on the qui vive. You are uncertain whether it is not partly in sport, after all.

March 11, 1861. The seed of the willow is exceedingly minute, as I measure, from one twentieth to one twelfth of an inch in length and one fourth as much in width. It is surrounded at base by a tuft of cotton-like hairs, about one quarter of an inch long rising around and above it, forming a kind of parachute. These render it more buoyant than the seeds of any other of our trees, and it is borne the furthest horizontally with the least wind. It falls very slowly even in the still air of a chamber, aud rapidly ascends over a stove. It floats more like a mote than the seed of any other of our trees, in a meandering manner, and being enveloped in this tuft of cotton, the seed is hard to detect. Each of the numerous little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, which form the