Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/268

teresting evidence of the progress of the season. I should not have noticed it, if I had not carefully examined the fertile buds. It is like a crimson star first dimly detected in the twilight. The warmth of the day in this sunny hollow above the withered sedge has caused the stigmas to show their lips through the scaly shield. They do not project more than the thirtieth of an inch. Some not the sixtieth. The staminate catkins are also considerably loosened. Just as the turtles put forth their heads, so these put forth their stigmas in the spring. How many accurate thermometers there are on every hill and in every valley! Measure the length of the hazel stigmas and you can tell how much warmth there has been this spring. How fitly and exactly any season of the year may be described by indicating the condition of some flower. . . . . It is surprising that men can be divided into those who lead an in-door and those who lead an out-door life, as if birds and quadrupeds were to be divided into those that lived a within-nest or burrow life, and those that lived without their nests and holes chiefly. How many of our troubles are house-bred! He lives an out-door life, i. e., he is not squatted behind a door. It is such a questionable phrase as an "honest man," or the "naked eye," as if the eye which is not covered with a spy-glass should properly be called naked.