This morning I find a little hole, three quarters of an inch or an inch over, above my small tortoise eggs, and find a young tortoise coming out (apparently in the rainy night) just beneath. It is the Sternotherus odoratus — already has the strong scent — and now has drawn in its head and legs. I see no traces of the yolk, or what-not, attached. It may have been out of the egg some days. Only one as yet. I buried them in the garden June 15th.
I am affected by the thought that the earth nurses these [turtle] eggs.
They are planted in the earth, and the earth takes care of them; she is genial to them and does not kill them. It suggests a certain vitality and intelligence in the earth, which I had not realized.
This mother is not merely inanimate and inorganic. Though the immediate mother turtle abandons her offspring, the earth and sun are kind to them. The old turtle on which the earth rests takes care of them while the other waddles off. Earth was not made poisonous and deadly to them.
The earth has some virtue in it; when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles’ eggs, they hatch in due time. Though the mother turtle remained and brooded them, it would still nevertheless be the universal world turtle which, through her, cared for them as now.
Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1854
See May 4, 1852 ("the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.") See also Nature is Genial to Man
I am affected by the thought that the earth nurses these [turtle] eggs.
They are planted in the earth, and the earth takes care of them; she is genial to them and does not kill them. It suggests a certain vitality and intelligence in the earth, which I had not realized.
This mother is not merely inanimate and inorganic. Though the immediate mother turtle abandons her offspring, the earth and sun are kind to them. The old turtle on which the earth rests takes care of them while the other waddles off. Earth was not made poisonous and deadly to them.
The earth has some virtue in it; when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles’ eggs, they hatch in due time. Though the mother turtle remained and brooded them, it would still nevertheless be the universal world turtle which, through her, cared for them as now.
Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 9, 1854
See May 4, 1852 ("the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise.") See also Nature is Genial to Man
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