I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections

November 27. 

Mr. Wesson says that he has seen a striped squirrel eating a white-bellied mouse on a wall — had evidently caught it; also that the little dipper is not a coot, - but he appears not to know a coot, and did not recognize the lobed feet when I drew them. Says the little dipper has a bill like a hen, and will not dive at the flash so as to escape, as he has proved. 

Says that a loon can run but little way and very awkwardly, falling on its belly, and cannot rise from the ground. Makes a great noise running on the water before it rises. 

Standing before Stacy's large glass windows this morning, I saw that they were gloriously ground by the frost. I never saw such beautiful feather and fir like frosting. His windows are filled with fancy articles and toys for Christmas and New-Year's presents, but this delicate and graceful outside frosting surpassed them all infinitely.

I saw countless feathers with very distinct midribs and fine pinnae. The half of a trunk seemed to rise in each case up along the sash, and these feathers branched off from it all the way, sometimes nearly horizontally. Other crystals looked like pine plumes the size of life. If glass could be ground to look like this, how glorious it would be! You can tell which shopman has the hottest fire within by the frost being melted off. I was never so struck by the gracefulness of the curves in vegetation, and wonder that Ruskin does not refer to frostwork. 

P. M. – Rode to the kiln and quarry by William Farrar's, Carlisle, and to gorge behind Melvin's. 

The direction of the strata at this quarry is like that of Curly-pate and the Easterbrooks quarries, east-northeast by west-southwest, though the latter are very nearly two miles southeast. 

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory near the wall, in the rocky ravine just above the trough. Its trunk was covered with loose scales unlike the hickories near it and as much as the shagbark; but probably it is a shaggy or scaly-barked variety of Carya glabra. [Carya glabra – pignut hickory]

It may be well to observe it next fall. The husk is not thick, like that of the shagbark, but quite thin, and splits into four only part way down. The shell is not white nor sharply four-angled like the other, but it is rather like a pignut. 

The stratification trends there as at Curly-pate, or perhaps more north and south. 

That trough placed on the side of the rocky valley to catch the trickling spring for the sake of the cattle, with a long slab cover to the trough that leads to it to fend off the feet of cattle that come to drink, is an agreeable object and in keeping with the circumstances, amid the hickories and perhaps ash trees. It reminds me of life sometimes in the pasture, — that other creatures than myself quench their thirst at this hillside. 

I think that Ruskin is wrong about reflections in his “Elements of Drawing,” page 181.* He says the reflection is merely the substance “reversed” or “topsy turvy,” and adds, “Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.”

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, November 27, 1857

Was struck by the appearance of a small hickory See November 25, 1851 ("Saw a tree on the turnpike full of hickory-nuts which had an agreeable appearance")

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Ruskin is wrong about reflections . . .He says . . . 'Whatever you can see from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection.' See  November 30, 1853 ("Though frequently we could not see the real bush in the twilight against the dark bank, in the water it appeared against the sky");November 2, 1857 ("The water tells me how it looks to it seen from below.”) ; October 14, 1857 (“[T]he reflection is never a true copy or repetition of its substance, but a new composition”)

See also, on reading Ruskin, October 6, 1857 (“How much is written about Nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is”); October 29, 1857 (“The love of Nature and fullest perception of the revelation which she is to man is not compatible with the belief in the peculiar revelation of the Bible which Ruskin entertains.”)

Note.  On November 16th HDT wrote Blake:

"Have you ever read Ruskin's books? If not, I would recommend you to try the second and third volumes (not parts) of his “Modern Painters.” I am now reading the fourth, and have read most of his other books lately. They are singularly good and encouraging, though not without crudeness and bigotry. The themes in the vol-umes referred to are Infinity, Beauty, Imagination, Love of Nature, etc., all treated in a very living manner. I am rather surprised by them."

* "If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water actually reversed (not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then, whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection, always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed."