With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

June 2. 

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. 

Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. 

P. M. —With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. 

See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April. 

Returned by bridle-road. 

Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more.

English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.

Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat. 

5 P. M. —To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.

Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? 

White maple keys conspicuous. 

In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton ” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “ Philosophical Transactions ” at five hundred feet distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1856

Perez Blood (1785  - 1856) was an amateur astronomer living in Concord near the Carlisle border. In 1847 HDT and Emerson looked through Blood’s 85 power telescope and saw "Saturn’s rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the mountains in the dark portion . . ..”   On July 7, 1851 with Anthony Wright HDT looked through  Blood's telescope a second time, and concluded " I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye.” See September 29, 1854 (“ When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them . . . One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.”)

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. See June 3, 1855 ("Caraway in garden apparently three days out.")
Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars . . . See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. . . . Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark uses; fifty-odd dollars apiece.")

Ranunculus recurvatus [in prime] . . . See May 26, 1855 ("Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.")

To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. See May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden."); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime"): May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden");May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.")

White maple keys conspicuous. See June 6, 1855 ("The white maple keys are about half fallen.It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out."); June 2, 1855 ("From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropiawhich I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth. "); May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021