Another bright winter day.
P. M. —-To river to get some water asclepias to see what birds’ nests are made of.
The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock. As usual, just below a curve, in shallow water, with the added force of the Assabet.
The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.
Measure again the great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. The chopper, White, has taken off most of the limbs and just begun, tried his axe, on the foot of the tree. He will probably fall it on Monday, or the 21st.
At the smallest place between the ground and the limbs, seven feet from the ground, it is fifteen feet and two inches in circumference; at one foot from the ground on the lowest side, twenty-three feet and nine inches.
White is to have ten dollars for taking off the necessary limbs and cutting it down merely, help being found him. He began on Wednesday. Davis and the neighbors were much alarmed by the creaking in the late storms, for fear it would fall on their roofs. It stands two or three feet into Davis’s yard.
As I come home through the village at 8.15 P. M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full and not more than 18° from the zenith, the wind northwest, but not strong, and the air pretty cold, I see the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before. There were eight or ten courses of clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of blue sky they occupied the whole width of the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky. The four middle ones, occupying the greater part of the visible cope, were particularly distinct. They were all as regularly arranged as the lines on a melon, and with much straighter sides, as if cut with a knife.
I hear that it attracted the attention of those who were abroad at 7 P. M., and now, at 9 P. M., it is scarcely less remarkable. On one side of the heavens, north or south, the intervals of blue look almost black by contrast. There is now, at nine, a strong wind from the northwest. Why do these bars extend east and west? Is it the influence of the sun, which set so long ago? or of the rotation of the earth? The bars which I notice so often, morning and evening, are apparently connected with the sun at those periods.
Observe within the material of a robin’s nest, this afternoon, a cherry-stone.
Gather some dry water milkweed stems to compare with the materials of the bird’s nest of the 18th. The bird used, I am almost certain, the fibres of the bark of the stem, —not the pods,- -just beneath the epidermis; only the bird’s is older and more fuzzy and finer, like worn twine or string. The fibres and bark have otherwise the same appearance under the microscope.
I strip off some bark about one sixteenth of an inch wide and six inches long and, separating ten or twelve fibres from the epidermis, roll it in my fingers, making a thread about the ordinary size. This I can not break by direct pulling, and no man could. I doubt if a thread of flax or hemp of the same size could be made so strong. What an admirable material for the Indian’s fish-line!
I can easily get much longer fibres. I hold a piece of the dead weed in my hands, strip off a narrow shred of the bark before my neighbor’s eyes and separate ten or twelve fibres as fine as a hair, roll them in my fingers, and offer him the thread to try its strength. He is surprised and mortified to find that he cannot break it. Probably both the Indian and the bird discovered for themselves this same (so to call it) wild hemp.
The corresponding fibres of the mikania seem not so divisible, become not so fine and fuzzy; though somewhat similar, are not nearly so strong.
I have a hang-bird’s nest from the riverside, made almost entirely of this, in narrow shreds or strips with the epidermis on, wound round and round the twigs and woven into a basket. That is, this bird has used perhaps the strongest fibre which the fields afforded and which most civilized men have not detected.
Knocked down the bottom of that summer yellowbird’s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. It is chiefly of fern wool and also, apparently, some sheep’s wool (?), with a fine green moss (apparently that which grows on button-bushes) inmixed, and some milkweed fibre, and all very firmly agglutinated together. Some shreds of grape-vine bark about it. Do not know what portion of the whole nest it is.
The great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. See January 21, 1856 ("Four men, cutting at once, began to fell the big elm at 10 A. M., went to dinner at 12, and got through at 2.30 P. M"); January 22, 1856 ("Most were not aware of the size of the great elm till it was cut down. . . . I have attended the felling and, so to speak, the funeral of this old citizen of the town."); January 26, 1856 ("It was one hundred and thirty-two years old, or came up in the year 1724, just before Lovewell’s Fight.")
I see the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky. Compare January 19, 1859 ("Looking up, I perceive that almost the entire heavens are covered with a very beautiful mackerel sky.") See February 19, 1852 ("Considering the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds, by an ocular illusion the bars appearing to approach each other in the east and west horizons, I am prompted to ask whether the melons will not be found to be in this direction oftenest."); December 21, 1851 ("To-night, as so many nights within the year, the clouds arrange themselves in the east at sunset in long converging bars, according to the simple tactics of the sky. It is the melon-rind jig . . .converging bars inclose the day at each end as within a melon rind, and the morning and evening are one day"); December 29, 1859 ("The clouds were very remarkable this cold afternoon, about twenty minutes before sunset, consisting of very long and narrow white clouds converging in the horizon (melon-rind-wise) both in the west and east")
P. M. —-To river to get some water asclepias to see what birds’ nests are made of.
The only open place in the river between Hunt’s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick’s pasture just below the Rock. As usual, just below a curve, in shallow water, with the added force of the Assabet.
The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.
Measure again the great elm in front of Charles Davis’s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. The chopper, White, has taken off most of the limbs and just begun, tried his axe, on the foot of the tree. He will probably fall it on Monday, or the 21st.
At the smallest place between the ground and the limbs, seven feet from the ground, it is fifteen feet and two inches in circumference; at one foot from the ground on the lowest side, twenty-three feet and nine inches.
White is to have ten dollars for taking off the necessary limbs and cutting it down merely, help being found him. He began on Wednesday. Davis and the neighbors were much alarmed by the creaking in the late storms, for fear it would fall on their roofs. It stands two or three feet into Davis’s yard.
As I come home through the village at 8.15 P. M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full and not more than 18° from the zenith, the wind northwest, but not strong, and the air pretty cold, I see the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before. There were eight or ten courses of clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of blue sky they occupied the whole width of the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky. The four middle ones, occupying the greater part of the visible cope, were particularly distinct. They were all as regularly arranged as the lines on a melon, and with much straighter sides, as if cut with a knife.
I hear that it attracted the attention of those who were abroad at 7 P. M., and now, at 9 P. M., it is scarcely less remarkable. On one side of the heavens, north or south, the intervals of blue look almost black by contrast. There is now, at nine, a strong wind from the northwest. Why do these bars extend east and west? Is it the influence of the sun, which set so long ago? or of the rotation of the earth? The bars which I notice so often, morning and evening, are apparently connected with the sun at those periods.
Observe within the material of a robin’s nest, this afternoon, a cherry-stone.
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| Robin's nest January 22,, 2020 |
Gather some dry water milkweed stems to compare with the materials of the bird’s nest of the 18th. The bird used, I am almost certain, the fibres of the bark of the stem, —not the pods,- -just beneath the epidermis; only the bird’s is older and more fuzzy and finer, like worn twine or string. The fibres and bark have otherwise the same appearance under the microscope.
I strip off some bark about one sixteenth of an inch wide and six inches long and, separating ten or twelve fibres from the epidermis, roll it in my fingers, making a thread about the ordinary size. This I can not break by direct pulling, and no man could. I doubt if a thread of flax or hemp of the same size could be made so strong. What an admirable material for the Indian’s fish-line!
I can easily get much longer fibres. I hold a piece of the dead weed in my hands, strip off a narrow shred of the bark before my neighbor’s eyes and separate ten or twelve fibres as fine as a hair, roll them in my fingers, and offer him the thread to try its strength. He is surprised and mortified to find that he cannot break it. Probably both the Indian and the bird discovered for themselves this same (so to call it) wild hemp.
The corresponding fibres of the mikania seem not so divisible, become not so fine and fuzzy; though somewhat similar, are not nearly so strong.
I have a hang-bird’s nest from the riverside, made almost entirely of this, in narrow shreds or strips with the epidermis on, wound round and round the twigs and woven into a basket. That is, this bird has used perhaps the strongest fibre which the fields afforded and which most civilized men have not detected.
Knocked down the bottom of that summer yellowbird’s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. It is chiefly of fern wool and also, apparently, some sheep’s wool (?), with a fine green moss (apparently that which grows on button-bushes) inmixed, and some milkweed fibre, and all very firmly agglutinated together. Some shreds of grape-vine bark about it. Do not know what portion of the whole nest it is.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1856
Birds' nests. See December 30, 1855 (“He who would study birds’ nests must look for them in November and in winter as well as in midsummer, for then the trees are bare and he can see them, and the swamps and streams are frozen and he can approach new kinds”)
There is given a list of those which are rare in that vicinity. Among them are the following which I do not know to grow here : Actæa rubra ( W.), ' Asclepias tuberosa, Alopecurus pratensis, ' Corallorhiza odontorhiza ( ? ) ( Nutt.), Drosera filiformis ( Nutt. ), Ledum latifolium, ' Malaxis lilifolia ( W.) ( what in Gray ? ), Sagina procumbens.
Among those rare there but common here are Calla Virginica, Glecoma hederacea, Iris prismatica, Lycopus Virginicus, Mikania scandens, Prunus borealis, Rhodora Canadensis, Xyris aquatica, Zizania aquatica.
They, as well as we, have Equisetum hyemale, Kalmia glauca, Liatris scariosa, Ulmus fulva, Linnæa borealis, Pyrola maculata, etc., etc. Bacon quotes White, who quotes Old Colony Memorial account of manners and customs, etc., of our ancestors.
Bacon says that the finest elm in Natick stands in front of Thomas F. Hammond's house, and was set out “about the year 1760.” “The trunk, five feet from the ground, measures fifteen and a half feet.”
G. Emerson gives a different account, q. v..
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