February 14.
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| Pico, February 14, 2017 |
Higginson told me yesterday of a large tract near Fayal and near Pico (Mountain), covered with the reindeer (?) (as I suggested and he assented) lichens, very remarkable and desolate, extending for miles, the effect of an earthquake, which will in course of time be again clothed with a larger vegetation.
Described at length remarkable force of the wind on the summit of Pico.
Told of a person in West Newbury, who told him that he once saw the moon rising out of the sea from his house in that place, and on the moonlight in his room the distinct shadow of a vessel which was somewhere on the sea between him and the moon!!
It is a fine, somewhat springlike day.
The ice is softening so that skates begin to cut in, and numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°. So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 14, 1857
Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow... So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat. See February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. "); See also January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.”); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? "); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active
Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow... So it appears that they must often thaw in the course of the winter, and find nothing to eat. See February 12, 1857 ("The caterpillar, which I placed last night on the snow beneath the thermometer, is frozen stiff again, this time not being curled up, the temperature being -6° now. Yet, being placed on the mantelpiece, it thaws and begins to crawl in five or ten minutes, before the rear half of its body is limber. "); See also January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway.”); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? "); March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,Signs of the Spring: insects and worms come forth and are active
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