meadow described day before yesterday) are not repeated the same year, at least not with the same force, for the next day the same phenomenon does not surprise us, our appetite has lost its edge. The other day the face of the meadow wore a peculiar appearance as if it were beginning to wake up under the influence of the southwest wind and the warm sun, but it cannot again this year present precisely that appearance to me. I have taken a step forward to a new position and must see something else. We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
I see little swarms of those fine fuzzy gnats in the air. It is their wings which are most conspicuous when they are in the sun. Their bodies are comparatively small and black, and they have two mourning plumes on their fronts. Are not these the winter gnat? They keep up a circulation in the air like water bugs on the water. Sometimes there is a globular swarm two feet or more in diameter suggesting how genial and habitable the air has become. They people a portion of the otherwise vacant air, being apparently for and of the sunshine, in which they are most conspicuous. . . . .
By the river I see distinctly red-wings and hear their conqueree. They are not associated with grackles. They are an age before their
