executed engravings of some old broken shells picked up on the road.
There are several men of whose comings and goings the town knows little,—I mean the trappers. They may be seen coming from the woods and river, perhaps with nothing in their hands, and you do not suspect what they have been about. They go about their business in a stealthy manner for fear that any should see where they set their traps, for the fur-trade still flourishes here. Every year they visit the out-of-the-way swamps and meadows and brooks to set and examine their traps for musquash and mink, and the owners of the land commonly know nothing of it. But few as the trappers are here, it seems by G———'s accounts that they steal one another's traps.
All the criticism I got on my lecture on "Autumnal Tints at Worcester," on the 22d, was that I presumed my audience had not seen so much of them as they had. But after reading it I am more than ever convinced that they have not seen much of them, that there are very few persons who do see much of nature.
February 25, 1860. The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind? It is pleas-
