fifty rods off. Here is the same chemistry that colors the leaf or fruit, coloring the bark. It is generally, probabhy always, the upper part of the twig, the more recent growth, that is the higher-colored, and more flower or fruit-like. So leaves are more ethereal, the higher up and farther from the root. In the bark of the twigs, indeed, is the more permanent flower or fruit. The flower falls in spring or summer, the fruit and leaves fall or wither in autumn, but the blushing twigs retain their color throughout the winter, and appear more brilliant than ever the succeeding spring. They are winter fruit. It adds greatly to the pleasure of late November, of winter, or of early spring walks to look into these mazes of twigs of different colors.
As I float by the Rock, I hear a rustling amid the oak leaves above that new water line, and there being no wind I know it to be a striped squirrel, and soon see its long unseen striped sides flirting about the instep of an oak. Its lateral stripes, alternate black and yellowish, are a type which I have not seen for a long time, = a punctuation, mark to indicate that a new paragraph commences in the revolution of the seasons.
March 17, 1860. p. m. To Walden and Goose Pond. I see a large flock of sheldrakes, which have probably risen from the pond, go
