To Fair Haven Hill.

December 1.

Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet. This the largest I know.

Examine the young hickories on Fair Haven Hill slope to see how old they are. These hickories are most numerous in openings four or five rods over amid the pines, and are also found many rods from the pines in the open pasture, and also especially along walls, though yet very far from other trees of any kind. I infer that animals plant them, and perhaps their growing along walls may be accounted for in part by the fact that the squirrels with nuts oftenest take that road.

What is most remarkable is that they should be planted so often in open land, on a bare hillside, where oaks rarely are. I do not know of a grove of oaks springing up in this manner, with broad intervals of bare sward between them, and away from pines.

How is this to be accounted for? It may be that they are more persistent at the root than oaks, and so at last succeed in becoming trees in these localities, where oaks fail.

It will be very suggestive to a novice just to go and dig up a dozen seedling oaks and hickories and see what they have had to contend with. Theirs is like the early career of genius.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 1, 1860

Measure a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard's swamp 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet. This the largest I know. See November 14, 1860 ("The red maple on south edge of Trillium Wood is six feet three inches in circumference at three feet"); November 16, 1860 ("To Inches Woods . . . we next went west by south through a maple and yellow birch swamp, in which a black oak eight feet and four twelfths [ in ] circumference, a red maple six feet and a half, a black birch seven feet, a black birch eight feet.")

What is most remarkable is that they should be planted so often in open land, on a bare hillside, where oaks rarely are. See October 26, 1860 ("Are not hickories most commonly found on hills? There are a few hickories in the open land which I once cultivated there, and these may have been planted there by birds or squirrels"); December 2, 1860 ("It may be that when pine and oaks and hickories, young and old, are cut off and the land cleared, the two former are exterminated but the hickories are tough and stubborn and do not give up the ground"); December 3, 1860 ("I am inclined to think now that both oaks and hickories are occasionally planted in open land a rod or two or more beyond the edge of a pine or other wood, but that the hickory roots are more persistent under these circumstances and hence oftener succeed there. ")