Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/328

314 Feb. 2, 1858. As I return from the post-office I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow,  and see him perched on the top most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn, and drabbled, and solitary in the rain.

Feb. 2, 1860. 6° at about 8  2  to Fair Haven Pond. The river, which was breaking up, is frozen over again. The new ice over the channel is of a yellow tinge, and is covered with handsome rosettes two or three inches in diameter where the vapor which rose through froze and crystallized. This new ice for forty rods together is thickly covered with these rosettes, often as thick as snow, an inch deep. The frozen breath of the river at a myriad breathing holes.

It is remarkable that the straw-colored sedge of the meadows, which in the fall is one of the least noticeable colors, should now, that the landscape is mostly covered with snow, be perhaps the most noticeable of all objects in it for its color, and an agreeable contrast to the snow.

I see where some meadow mouse (if not mole) just came to the surface of the snow, enough to break it with his back for three or four inches, then put his head out, and at once withdrew it.

We walked as usual in the fresh track of a