Thoreau writes in his journal:
Rain, dissolving the snow and raising the river . . . So the relaxed and loosened (?) alder catkins and the extended willow catkins and poplar catkins are the first signs of reviving vegetation which I have witnessed. Minott thinks, and quotes some old worthy as authority for saying, that the bark of the striped squirrel is the, or a, first sign of decided spring weather.
Concord, Mass. William Ellery Channing writes in his journal:
Twigs of willow young bright yellow (William Ellery Channing notebooks and journals. Houghton Library, Harvard University).
