and abundant, all surrounded and hemmed in by snow which has covered the ground since Christmas, and stretches as far as you can see on every side. The spring advances in spite of snow and ice and cold even. The ground under the snow has long since felt the influence of the spring sun whose rays fell at a more favorable angie. The tufts or tussocks next the edge of the snow were crowned with dense phalanxes of spears of the stiff, triangularish sedge grass five inches high, but quite yellow, with a very slight greenness at the tip, showing that they pushed up through the snow, and, though it had melted, had not yet acquired color. In warm recesses in meadows and clefts, in rocks in the midst of ice and snow, nay, even under the snow, vegetation commences and steadily advances.
March 30, 1858. p. m. To my boat at Cardinal Shore and thence to Lee's Cliff. . . . . Landing at Bittern Cliff I went round through the woods to get sight of ducks on the pond. Creeping down through the woods I reached the rocks and saw fifteen or twenty sheldrakes scattered about. The full-plumaged males, conspicuously black and white, and often swimming in pairs, appeared to be the most wary, keeping farthest out. Others, with much less white, and duller black, were very busily fishing
