This morning winter had everything in the valley. The snow drifted about in the frosty wind like meal, and the falls were muffled in thick sheets of frozen spray. Thus do winter and spring leap into the valley by turns, each remaining long enough to form a small season or climate of its own, or going and coming squarely in a single day. Whitney says that the bottom has fallen out of the rocks here (which I most devoutly disbelieve). Well, the bottom frequently falls out of these winter clouds and climates. It is seldom that any long transition slant exists between dark and bright days in this narrow world of rocks. I know that you are enchanted with the April loveliness of your new home. You enjoy the most precious kind of sunshine, and by this time flower-patches cover the hills about Oakland like colored clouds. I would like to visit these broad outspread blotches of social flowers that are so characteristic of your hills, but far rather would I see and feel the flowers that are now at Fountain Lake and the lakes of Madison. Mrs. Hutchings thought of sending you a bulb of the California lily by mail but found it too large. She wished to be remembered to you. Your Squirrel is very happy. She is a rare creature. I hope to see you and the Doctor soon in the valley. I have a great deal to say to you which I will not try to write. Remember me most cordially to the Doctor and to Allie and all the boys. I am much obliged to you for those botanical notes, etc., and I am ever most Cordially yours, JOHN MUIR. Here is a moss with a globular capsule and a squinted, cowl-shaped calyptra. Do you know it? Yosemite, May 17th, 1870. Our valley is just gushing, throbbing full of open, absorbable beauty, and I feel that I must tell you about it. I am lonely among my enjoyments; the valley is full of visitors, but I have no one to talk to. The season that is with us now is about what corresponds to full-fledged spring in Wisconsin. The oaks are in full leaf and have shoots long enough to bend over and move in the wind. The good old bracken is waist-high already, and almost all the rock ferns have their outermost fronds unrolled. Spring is in full power and is steadily reaching higher like a shadow and will soon reach the topmost horizon of rocks. The buds of the poplar opened on the 19th of last month, those of the oaks on the 24th.