Thoreau writes in his journal:
P.M.—To Second Division Brook . . . I see many middling-sized black spiders on the edge of the snow, very active. By John Hosmer’s ditch by the riverside I see the skunk-cabbage springing freshly . . . Many plants are to some extent evergreen, like the buttercup now beginning to start. Methinks the first obvious evidence of spring is the pushing out of the swamp willow catkins, then the relaxing of the earlier alder catkins, then the pushing up of skunk-cabbage spathes . . . At Nut Meadow Brook crossing we rest awhile on the rail, gazing into the eddying stream. The ripple-marks on the sandy bottom, where silver spangles shine in the river with lack wrecks of caddis-cases lodged under each shelving sand, the shadows of the invisible dimples reflecting prismatic colors on the bottom, the minnows already stemming the current with restless, wiggling tails, ever and anon darting aside, probably to secure some invisible mote in the water, whose shadows we do not at first detect on the sandy bottom . . . I am surprised to find on the rail a young tortoise . . . The early poplars are pushing forward their catkins, though they make not so much display as the willows. Still in some parts of the woods it is good sledding. At Second Division Brook, the fragrance of the senecio, which is decidedly evergreen, which I have bruised, is very permanent and brings round the year again. It is a memorable sweet meadowy fragrance. I find a yellow-spotted tortoise (Emys guttata) in the brook . . . Minott says that old Sam Nutting, the hunter,—Fox Nutting, Old Fox, he was called,—who died more than forty years ago (he lived in Jacob Baker’s house, Lincoln; came from Weston) and was some seventy years old then, told him that he had killed no only bear about Fair Haven among the walnuts, but moose!
Concord, Mass. William Ellery Channing writes in his journal:
Cabbage, ranunculus, alder. Little spotted tortoise, minnows shadows tail, wiggles head upstream, insects, snow-spiders, synecio [?] smells like sweet-brier. 2 division brook, populus tremuloides. Much ice & snow in the woods, large spotted turtle. Caltha, tadpoles.
(William Ellery Channing notebooks and journals. Houghton Library, Harvard University)
