All follow the sun.

April 23.

Vegetation starts when the earth's axis is sufficiently inclined; i.e. it follows the sun.

Insects and all the smaller animals (as well as many larger) follow vegetation.

The fishes, the small fry, start probably for this reason; worms come out of the trees; buffaloes finally seek new pastures; water-bugs appear on the water, etc., etc. 

Next, the large fish and fish hawks, etc., follow the small fry; flycatchers follow the insects and worms. Indians follow the buffaloes; trout, suckers, etc., follow the water-bugs, etc.; reptiles follow vegetation, insects, and worms; birds of prey, the flycatchers, etc. 

Man follows all, and all follow the sun.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 23, 1852

Vegetation starts when the earth's axis is sufficiently inclined . . . Man follows all, and all follow the sun. See September 13, 1852 ("How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts! . . .As the planet in its orbit and around its axis, so do the seasons . . . The plant waits a whole year, and then blossoms the instant it is ready and the earth is ready for it, without the conception of delay.”); September 18, 1852("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”); March 18, 1856 (“Two little water-bugs . . . here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun.”); April 24, 1854 ("The summer approaches by almost insensibly increasing lieferungs of heat, each awakening some new bird or quadruped or reptile. Each creature awaits with confidence its proper degree of heat"); April 26, 1854 ("The buds start, then the insects, then the birds."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the new warmth of the sun; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, As the Seasons Revolve