The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861 by Various
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page 15 of 293 (05%)
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impenetrable than ice. But the snow that actually falls during April is
usually only what Vermonters call "sugar-snow,"--falling in the night and just whitening the surface for an hour or two, and taking its name, not so much from its looks as from the fact that it denotes the proper weather for "sugaring," namely, cold nights and warm days. Our saccharine associations, however, remain so obstinately tropical, that it seems almost impossible for the imagination to locate sugar in New England trees; though it is known that not the maple only, but the birch and the walnut even, afford it in appreciable quantities. Along our maritime rivers the people associate April, not with "sugaring," but with "shadding." The pretty _Amelanchier Canadensis_ of Gray--the _Aronia_ of Whittler's song--is called Shad-bush or Shad-blow in Essex County, from its connection with this season; and there is a bird known as the Shad-spirit, which I take to be identical with the flicker or golden-winged woodpecker, whose note is still held to indicate the first day when the fish ascend the river. Upon such slender wings flits our New England romance! In April the creative process described by Thales is repeated, and the world is renewed by water. The submerged creatures first feel the touch of spring, and many an equivocal career, beginning in the ponds and brooks, learns later to ignore this obscure beginning, and hops or flutters in the dusty daylight. Early in March, before the first male canker-moth appears on the elm-tree, the whirlwig beetles have begun to play round the broken edges of the ice, and the caddis-worms to crawl beneath it; and soon come the water-skater _(Gerris)_ and the water-boatman _(Notonecta)_. Turtles and newts are in busy motion when the spring-birds are only just arriving. Those gelatinous masses in yonder wayside-pond are the spawn of water-newts or tritons: in the |
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