A fine clear morning. The ground white with frost, and all the meadows also, and a low mist curling over the smooth water now in the sunlight, which gives the water a silver-plated look. The frost covers the willows and alders and other trees on the sides of the river fifteen or twenty feet high. Quite a wintry sight.

  When taking the brain out of my duck yesterday, I perceived that the brain was the marrow of the head, and it is probably only a less sentient brain that runs down the backbone,—the spinal marrow.

  P.M.—Up Assabet to G. Barrett’s meadow.

  Hear at a distance in the sprout-lands the croaks of frogs from some shallow pool. Saw six muskrats’ bodies, just skinned, on the bank,—two large yellowish, fatty-looking masses of (I suppose) musk on each side the lower part of the abdomen. Every part of the animal now emits a very strong scent of musk. A foot which I brought home (together with a head) scented me all over. The fore feet are small and white on the palm, while the hind ones are black. All the skin being stripped off except on the nose and feet, the fore feet look like hands clothed in gauntlets of fur.