7 March 1853

by layman k

What is the earliest sign of spring?  The motion of worms and insects?  The flow of sap in trees and the swelling of buds?  Do not the insects awake with the flow of the sap?  Bluebirds, etc., probably do not come till insects come out. Or are there earlier signs in the water? — the tortoises, frogs, etc.

from the journals of Henry David Thoreau