Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/225

Rh white maple may, perhaps, be said to begin to blossom to-clay, the male, for the stamens, both anthers and filaments, are conspicuous on some buds. It has opened unexpectedly, and a rich sight it is, looking up through the expanded buds to the sky. This and the aspen are the first trees that ever grow large, I believe, which show the influence of the season thus conspicuously. From Nawshawtuck I see the snow is off the mountains. A large aspen by the island is unexpectedly forward. I already see the red anthers appearing. It will bloom in a day or two.

One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists, to be able to communicate with them.

The frost in swamps and meadows makes it good walking there still. Away, away to the swamps where the silver catkins of the swamp willow shine a quarter of a mile off, those southward penetrating vales of Rupert's Land. The birds, which are merely migratory or tarrying here for a season, are especially gregarious now, the redpoll, Fringilla hiemalis, fox-colored sparrow, etc. I judge by the dead bodies of frogs partially devoured in brooks and ditches that many are killed in their hibernacula.

Evelyn and others wrote when the language was in a tender, nascent state, and could be