Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/133

Rh separate plants. The greater part of the white willows set out on our causeways are sterile only. You can easily distinguish the fertile ones at a distance when the pods are bursting. It is said that no sterile weeping willows have been introduced into this country, so that it cannot be raised from the seed. Of two of the indigenous willows common along the bank of our river I have detected but one sex.

The seeds of the willow thus annually fill the air with their lint, being wafted to all parts of the country, and though apparently not more than one in many millions gets to be a shrub, yet so lavish and persevering is nature that her purpose is completely answered.

March 12, 1842. Consider what a difference there is between living and dying. To die is not to begin to die and continue, it is not a state of continuance, but of transientness; whereas to live is a condition of continuance, and does not mean to be born merely. There is no continuance of death. It is a transient phenomenon. Nature presents nothing in a state of death.

March 12, 1852. According to Linnæus very many plants become perennial and arborescent in warm regions which with us are annual, for duration often depends more on the locality than on the plant. So is it with men. Under