I see what are probably the anther cells distinctly in the large buds of the poplar, which for a long time have shown their wool one sixth of an inch long. Also similar cells in the alder catkins, but greener and less springlike. The birch ones are the yellowest.
At Walden. — The bubbles which I made under the ice by casting on stones here night before last, or forty- eight hours ago, nearly half a foot in diameter, still remain. . . .
I inferred, therefore, that all those infinite minute bubbles I had seen first on the under side of the ice were now frozen in with it, and that each, in its proportion or degree, like the large ones, had operated like a burning-glass on the ice beneath it to rot it. And probably it is the expanding and shrinking of the air in them, as well as in the water, which cracks the ice and makes the whooping sound.
Perhaps those minute bubbles that are seen one above another in the freshest ice have been frozen in like the largest, as they successively rose from the bottom while the ice was freezing.
It has been supposed that Walden ice does not keep so well because it has more air in it, there being no outlet or stream to carry it off. There may be some thing in this. Let me look at the fresh ice of a pond that has a stream, and see if there are fewer bubbles under it. Of course, large bubbles would be very obvious under transparent or black ice.
H.D. Thoreau, Journal, January 8, 1853
Probably it is the expanding and shrinking of the air in them, as well as in the water, which cracks the ice and makes the whooping sound. See Walden ("The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. . . .The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering")
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 8
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 © 2009-2023
No comments:
Post a Comment