Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/22

8 to see high, dark blue waves half a mile off, running incessantly along the edge of white ice. There the motion of the blue liquid is the most distinct.

As the waves rise and fall they seem to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February.

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. A small one was conspicuous by the side of the road, more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those plumes which have been oppressed or contracted by snow and ice, are not only dried, but opened and spread by the wind. Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh, and since frozen at the andromeda ponds, I think must be mole tracks, and those "nicks" on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh and at length in ice.

February 26, 1840. The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion or