At 4.30 P.M. to West Meadow Field . . .

  I hear the booming of snipe this evening, and Sophia says she heard them on the 6th. The meadows having been bare so long, they may have begun yet earlier. Persons walking up or down our village street in still evenings at this season hear this singular winnowing sound in the sky over the meadows and know not what it is. This “booming” of the snipe is our regular village serenade. I heard it this evening for the first time, as I sat in the house, through the window . . .

  R. Rice tells me that he has seen the pickerel-spawn hung about in strings on the brush, especially where a tree had fallen in . . .