March 10 — Poplar and willow catkins started; also equisetum (horsetail), saxifrage, and probably other water plants. The butter-cup found growing.

Shimmering in the air noticed, caused by evaporation; water in the brooks, "clear, placid, and silvery," both phenomena of spring.

March 12 — Poplar catkins in bloom.
First meadow-lark seen.

March 14 — Wild geese seen.
Fox-colored sparrows seen.

March 15 — Grass growing in water.
Wood, or croaking frog heard; "the earliest voice of the liquid pools."

March 16 — The first phebe bird heard. Gulls and sheldrakes seen.

March 17 — Grass green on south bank sides.
The first flicker and red-wing seen; also a striped squirrel; also some kind of fly.

March 18 — The skunk cabbage, in moist grounds, abundantly in bloom, attracting the first honey-bees, who, directed by a wonderful instinct, leave their homes and wing their way, perhaps for miles, to find this first flower. This seems all the more remarkable when it is considered that the honey-bee is an introduced, not a native insect.

March 19 — The first shiners seen in the brook.

March 20 — Pussy-willow catkins in full bloom.
"The tree-sparrow is perhaps the sweetest and most melodious warbler at present."
"The fishes are going up the brooks as they open."

March 21 — The garden chickweed in bloom.
The ground squirrel's first chirrup heard, a sure sign, according to some old worthies, of decided spring weather.
The hyla, or tree-frog, begins to peep.
"The woods are comparatively silent. Not yet the woodland birds, except (perhaps the woodpecker, so far as it migrates) only the orchard and river birds have arrived."

March 23 — The white maple in bloom and the aspen nearly so; the alders are generally in full bloom. "The crimson-starred flowers of the hazel begin to peep out."

March 24 — Shore-larks seen.

March 28 — Buff-edged butterflies seen.

March 31 — The small red butterfly seen.

April 5 — Swallows appear, pewee heard and snipe seen.

April 6 — Cowslips nearly in bloom.

April 7 — Gold-finches seen; also the purple finch.

April 8 — Pine warbler seen.
The epigaea (trailing arbutus) nearly in bloom. "The earliest peculiarly †woodland, herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum (or meadow rue), and, by the first of May, the violet."

†NOTE. — Further to the west and extending at least to Wisconsin, the following list of early woodland flowers may take the place of the above, bloom in the order given: Erigenia (or harbinger of spring), hepatica, bloodroot, and dog-tooth violet, or perhaps the dicentra, (Dutchman's breeches) may come before the last.
The skunk cabbage, which is not a woodland flower, and therefore not included in the above list, is the first flower probably in all New England and the northern states.


April 9 — ††Cowslips (not a woodland flower) in bloom, "the first conspicuous herbaceous flower, for that of the skunk cabbage is concealed in its spathe."