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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 42, April, 1861 by Various
page 15 of 293 (05%)
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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