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EARLY SPRING IN MASSACHUSETTS.

themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love.

March 28, 1857. At Lee's Cliff and this side, I see half a dozen buff-edged butterflies, Vanessa antiopa, and pick up three dead or dying—two together, the edges of their wings gone. Several are fluttering over the dry rock débris under the cliff, in whose crevices probably they have wintered. Two of the three I pick up are not dead, though they will not fly. Verily their day is a short one. What has checked their frail life? Within the buff-edge is black with bright sky-blue spots. Those little oblong spots on the black ground are light as you look directly down on them, but from one side they change through violet to a crystalline rose purple. . . . . The broad buff edge of the Vanessa antiopa's wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray-brown underside of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves. . . . . When I witness the first plowing and planting I acquire a long lost confidence in the earth that it will nourish the seed that is committed to its bosom. I am surprised to be reminded that there is warmth is it. We have not only warmer skies then but a warmer earth. The