Discusssng experimental science.

March 20. 

Dine with Agassiz at R. W. E.’s. 

He thinks that the suckers die of asphyxia, having very large air-bladders and being in the habit of coming to the surface for air. But then, he is thinking of a different phenomenon from the one I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter.

He says that the Emyspicta does not copulate till seven years old, and then does not lay till four years after copulation, or when eleven years old. 

The Cistuda Blandingii (which he has heard of in Massachusetts only at Lancaster) copulates at eight or nine years of age. He says this is not a Cistuda but an Emys. 

He has eggs of the serpentina from which the young did not come forth till the next spring. 

He thinks that the Esquimau dog is the only indigenous one in the United States. 

He had not observed the silvery appearance and the dryness of the lycoperdon fungus in water which I showed. 

He had broken caterpillars and found the crystals of ice in them, but had not thawed them. 

When I began to tell him of my experiment on a frozen fish, he said that Pallas had shown that fishes were frozen and thawed again, but I affirmed the contrary, and then Agassiz agreed with me. 

Says Aristotle describes the care the pouts take of their young. I told him of Tanner’s account of it, the only one I had seen. 

The river over the meadows again, nearly as high as in February, on account of rain of the 19th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal , March 20, 1857

He thinks that the suckers die of asphyxia. . . a different phenomenon from the one I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter.  See March 28, 1857 ("When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring."); March 19, 1857 ("I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker."); April 14, 1856 ("I see the first dead sucker"); April 10, 1855("Saw a tolerably fresh sucker floating."); May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!")

The dryness of the lycoperdon fungus in water which I showed. See February 8, 1857 ("To my surprise, when held under water it looked like a mass of silver or melted lead, it was so coated with air,. . .It was impossible to wet. It seems to be encased in a silvery coat of air which is water-tight.")

He had broken caterpillars and found the crystals of ice in them, but had not thawed them. 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. ")

My experiment on a frozen fish . . . See January 4, 1856 ("[T]hinking of what I had heard about fishes coming to life again after being frozen, on being put into water, I thought I would try it. . . . ")

Aristotle describes the care the pouts take of their young. See July 15, 1856 ("I saw a school of a thousand little pouts about three quarters of an inch long without any attending pout, and now have no doubt that the pout I had caught (but let go again) was tending them . . ")