Thoreau journal thought for the day

[1853] April 8. 6 A.M. – To Abel Hosmer's ring-post.
The ground sprinkled, salted, with little snowlike pellets on tenth of an inch in diameter, from half an inch to one inch apart, sometimes cohering starwise together. As if it had spit so much snow only. I think it one form of frost merely, or frozen dew. Noticed the like a week or two ago. It was gone in half an hour, when I came back. What is the peculiar state of atmosphere that determines these things? The spearer's light last night shone into my chamber on the wall and awakened me.
Saw and heard my small pine warbler shaking out his trills, or jingle, even like money coming to its bearings. They appear much the smaller from perching high in the tops of white pines and flitting from tree to tree at that height.
Is not my night-warbler the white-eyed vireo? - not yet here. Heard the field sparrow again.
The male Populus grandidentata appears to open very gradually, beginning sooner than I supposed. It shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. There is a female on the left, on Warren's Path at Deep Cut.
Is not the pollen of the P. tremuliformis like rye meal? Are not female flowers of more sober and modest colors, as the willows for instance? The hylas have fairly begun now.