A pleasant day. No snow yet (since that first whitening which lasted so long), nor do I see any ice to speak of.
Hear and see, of birds, only a tree sparrow in the willows on the Turnpike.
Met Goodwin going out with his gun. He shot (evidently) some crossbills once in Roxbury. He sometimes gets a skunk drowned in his muskrat or mink traps, and so can get at their secretion without being disturbed by the scent. He, too, has heard that it is a sure cure for the phthisic.
The fields and woods seem now particularly empty and bare. No cattle in pasture; only here and there a man carting or spreading manure.
Every larger tree which I knew and admired is being gradually culled out and carried to mill. I see one or two more large oaks in E. Hubbard’s wood lying high on stumps, waiting for snow to be removed.
I miss them as surely and with the same feeling that I do the old inhabitants out of the village street. To me they were something more than timber; to their owner not so.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 3, 1855
Hear and see, of birds, only a tree sparrow. See December 3, 1853 ("Two tree sparrows on Monroe's larch by the waterside. Larger than chip-birds, with more bay above and a distinct white bar on wings, not to mention bright-chestnut crown and obscure spot on breast; all beneath pale-ash.")
Large oaks culled from E. Hubbard's wood. See March 11, 1852 ("The woods I walked in in my youth are cut off. Is it not time that I ceased to sing?"); January 22, 1852 ("I love to look at Ebby Hubbard's oaks and pines on the hillside from Brister's Hill. Am thankful that there is one old miser who will not sell nor cut his woods."); January 9, 1855 ("This winter I hear the axe in almost every wood of any consequence left standing in the township."); October 20, 1860 ("I examine Ebby Hubbard's old oak and pine wood. The trees may be a hundred years old."); November 2, 1860 ("Ebby Hubbard's [wood]was never cut off but only cut out of.")
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