Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/19

Rh about equidistant from the two banks. It is a convenient, expression for which I think we have no equivalent.

February 24, 1858. I see rhodora in bloom in a pitcher with water andromeda. Went through that long swamp northeast of Boaz's Meadow. Interesting and peculiar are the clumps and masses of panicled andromeda, with light brown stems, topped uniformly with very distinct, yellow-brown recent shoots, ten or twelve inches long, with minute red buds sleeping close along them. This uniformity in such masses gives a pleasing tinge to the swamp's surface. Wholesome colors which wear well. I see quite a number of emperor moths' cocoons attached to this shrub, some hung round with a loose mass of leaves as big as my two fists. What art in the red-eye to make these two adjacent maple twigs serve for the rim of its pensile basket, inweaving them! Surely it finds a place for itself in nature, between the two twigs of a maple. On the side of the meadow moraine, just north of the bowlder field, I see barberry bushes three inches in diameter and ten feet high. What a surprising color this wood has. It splits and splinters very much when I bend it. I cut a cane, and, shaving off the outer bark, find it of imperial yellow, as if painted,—fit for a Chinese mandarin.