Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°.
The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats, and even boats. Some are apprehending loss of fruit from this warm weather. It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least.
P. M. — To the old Hunt house.
The bricks of the old chimney which has the date on it vary from eight to eight and one half inches in length, but the oldest in the chimney in the rear part are nine to nine and one fourth long by four and one fourth plus wide and two and one fourth to two and one half thick. This the size also of the bricks in clay behind the boarding of the house. There is straw in the clay and also in the lime used as plastering in both these chimneys. That on the first has a singular blue color.
This house is about forty-nine feet on the front by twenty. The middle of door about twenty-five and a half feet from east end. House from fourteen to fifteen feet high. There was a door at the west end within Abel Hunt's remembrance; you can see where. The rear part has a wholly oak frame, while the front is pine. But I doubt if it is older, because the boards on the main part are feather-edged even within this part, as if they had once been on the outside.
E. Hosmer says that his father said that Dr. Lee told him that he put on the whole upper, i.e. third, story of the Lee house. Says his old house where Everett lives was dated 1736.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1857
Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. See February 1, 1857 ("Thermometer at 42°."); February 7, 1857 ("Another warm day, . . . The thermometer was at 52° when I came out at 3 p.m.") ; 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."); February 14, 1857 ("Numerous caterpillars are now crawling about on the ice and snow, the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°"); February 16, 1857 (“A wonderfully warm day (the third one); about 2 p.m., thermometer in shade 58.”); February 18, 1857 ("Thermometer at 1 p.m., 65.”); February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°); February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon.") See also February 8. 1860 ("40° and upward may be called a warm day in the winter. We have had much of this weather for a month past, reminding us of spring."); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring. Compare February 6, 1855 ("They say it did not rise above -6° to-day."); February 6, 1855 ("The coldest morning this winter. Our thermometer stands at -14° at 9 A.M"); February 7, 1854 ("This morning was one of the coldest in the winter."); February 7, 1855 ("The coldest night for a long, long time."); February 7, 1855 ("Thermometer at about 7.30 A. M. gone into the bulb, -19° at least. The cold has stopped the clock."); February 8, 1861 ("Coldest day yet; -22 ° at least (all we can read), at 8 A. M., and, (so far) as I can learn, not above -6 ° all day."); February 11, 1855 (“Smith’s thermometer early this morning at -22°; ours at 8 A. M. -10°.”); February 11, 1858 ("At 8 P. M. it is 11° and windy. I think it is the coldest day of this winter. "); February 25, 1855 ("Thermometer at 7° at 7.30 A.M.”); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter
The river is fairly breaking up . . . It is as open as the 3d of April last year, at least. See April 3, 1856 ("The river is now generally and rapidly breaking up. It is surprising what progress has been made since yesterday. It is now generally open about the town.”);April 7, 1856 ("Surprised to find the river not broken up just above this [Hubbard] bridge and as far as we can see, probably through Fair Haven Pond. Probably in some places you can cross the river still on the ice. “) See also February 21, 1857 ("The river for some days has been open and its sap visibly flowing, like the maple.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ice-out
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