Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/144

130 them up you do not at once detect the entrance with your eye, but rather feel it with your finger on the side. They are lined with the finest of the grass. These were probably made when the snow was on the ground for their winter residence, while they gleaned the rye-field, and when the snow went off, they scampered to the woods. I think they were made by the Mus Leucopus, i. e., Arvida Emmonsii.

I look at many woodchuck's holes, but as yet they are choked with leaves. There is no sign that their occupants have come abroad.

March 13, 1859. I see a small flock of blackbirds flying over, some rising, others falling, yet all advancing together, one flock, but many birds, some silent, others tchucking,—incessant alternation. This harmonious movement, as in a dance, this agreeing to differ, makes the charm of the spectacle to me. One bird looks fractional, naked, like a single thread or raveling from the web to which it belongs. Alternation! Alternation! Heaven and Hell! Here again, in the flight of a bird, its ricochet motion is that undulation observed in so many materials, as in the mackerel sky.

If men were to be destroyed, and the books they have written be transmitted to a new race of creatures, a new world, what kind of record would be found in them of so remarkable a phenomenon as the rainbow?