Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/156

142 the nest of what he called a "field mouse," from his description probably the meadow mouse. It was made of grass, etc., and while he stood over it, the mother, not regarding him, came and carried off the young, one by one, in her mouth, being gone some time in each case before she returned, and finally she took the nest itself.

March 15, 1857. To Hubbard's Close and Walden. I see in the ditches in Hubbard's Close the fine green tips of the spires of grass just rising above the surface of the water in one place, as if unwilling to trust itself to the frosty air. Favored by the warmth of the water and sheltered by the banks of the ditch it has advanced thus far. But generally I see only the placid and frost-bitten tips of grass which apparently started during that warm spell in February. The surface of the ditches is spotted with these pale and withered frost-bitten blade-lets. It was the first green blush (nay, it is purple or lake often, and a true blush) of spring, of that Indian spring we had in February. To be present at the instant when the springing grass at the bottoms of ditches lifts its spear above the surface and bathes in the spring air. Many a first faint crop mantling the pools thus early is mown down by the frost before the villager suspects that vegetation has reawakened.

The trout darts away in the hazy brook there