Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/238

224 The links should be gold also. Better that the good be not united than that a bad man be admitted into their society. When men can select, they will. If there be any stone in the quarry better than the rest they will forsake the rest because of it. Only the good will be quarried.

March 24, 1853. In many cases I find that the willow cones are a mere dense cluster of loose leaves, suggesting that the scales of cones of all kinds are only modified leaves, a crowding and stinting of the leaves, as the stem becomes a thorn, and in this view those conical bunches of leaves of so many of the pine family have relation to the cones of the tree in origin as well as in form. The leaf, perchance, becomes calyx, cone, husk, and nut-shell.

March 24, 1855. Passing up the Assabet by the hemlocks where there has been a slide and some rocks have slid down into the river, I think I see how rocks came to be found in the midst of rivers. Rivers are continually changing their channels, eating into one bank and adding their sediment to the other, so that frequently where there is a great bend, you see a high and steep bank or hill on one side which the river washes, and a broad meadow on the other. As the river eats into the hill, especially in freshets, it undermines the rocks, large and small, and they slide down alone or with the