Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I recommence life.

January 23.

 8 a. m. — On river. 

Walking on the ice by the side of the river this very pleasant morning, I see many minnows (may be dace) from one and a half to four inches long which have come out, through holes or cracks a foot wide more or less, where the current has worn through and shows the dark stream, and the water has flown over the adjacent ice, sinking it down so as to form a shallow water four or five feet wide or more, and often several rods long, and four or five inches deep on the side next the crack, or deepest side. This water has a yellowish color, and a fish or anything else in it is at once seen. 

I think that they come out into this thin water over lying the ice for the sake of the sun's warmth. Much heat must be reflected from the icy bottom this sunny morning, — a sort of anticipation of spring to them. 

This shallow surface water is also thinly frozen over, and I can sometimes put my hand close over the minnow. When alarmed they make haste back to the dark water of the crack, and seek the depths again.

Each pleasant morning like this all creatures recommence life with new resolutions, — even these minnows, methinks.

That snow which in the afternoons these days is thawing and dead — in which you slump — is now hard and crisp, supporting your weight, and has a myriad brilliant sparkles in the sunlight.

When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe, and a hound's track will sometimes have spread to a foot in diameter (when there is a thin snow on ice), with all the toes distinct, looking like the track of a behemoth or megalonyx.

Minott says that pigeons alight in great flocks on the tops of hemlocks in March, and he thinks they eat the seed. (But he also thought for the same reason that they ate the white pine seed at the same season, when it is not there! They might find a little of the last adhering to the pitch.)

Says he used to shoot the gray squirrel thus: he put his hat or coat upon a stick while the squirrel hung behind an upright limb, then, going round to the side, he shot him, for the squirrel avoided exposing himself to the coat as much as to the man.

He has stood on the steep hill southwest side of Moore's Swamp and seen two foxes chase a white rabbit all about it. The rabbit would dodge them in the thicket, and now and then utter a loud cry of distress. The foxes would burst out on the meadow and then dash into the thicket again. This was when the wood had been cut and he could see plainly. 

He says that the white rabbit loves to sit concealed under the over arching cinnamon ferns (which he calls "buck-horns") on the sunny side of a swamp, or under a tuft of brakes which are partly fallen over. 

That a hound in its head long course will frequently run over the fox, which quickly turns and gets off three or four rods before the former can stop himself.


For Spring and Blossoming vide Pliny, vol. ii, page 163.


H.D. Thoreau, Journal, January 23, 1860.


Each pleasant morning like this all creatures recommence life.See December 26, 1853 ("The sight of the pure and trackless road up Brister's Hill, with branches and trees supporting snowy burdens bending over it on each side, would tempt us to begin life again.")

When a thaw comes, old tracks are enlarged in every direction, so that an ordinary man's track will look like the track of a snow-shoe See January 8, 1860 ("There are a man's tracks, perhaps my own, along the pond-side there, looking not only larger than reality, but more elevated . . .they look like white stepping-stones"); January 12, 1854 ("I see my snowshoe tracks quite distinct, though made January 2d. Though they pressed the snow down four or five inches, they consolidated it, and it now endures and is two or three inches above the general level there, and more white.");
January 25, 1857 (" I see the track of a fox or dog across the meadow, made some time ago. Each track is now a pure white snowball rising three inches above the surrounding surface,")

Minott says that a hound in its head long course will frequently run over the fox, which quickly turns and gets off three or four rods before the former can stop himself. See January 22, 1860 ("Minott says that a hound which pursues a fox by scent cannot tell which way he is going; that the fox is very cunning and will often return on its track over which the dog had already run. It will ascend a high rock and then leap off very far to one side; so throw the dogs off the scent for a while and gain a breathing-spell."); January 30, 1855 (" Minott . . .told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox