6.30 a. m. — To Hill.
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| March 7, 2019 |
It is a shrike. While I am watching him eight or ten rods off, I hear robins down below, west of the hill. Then, to my surprise, the shrike begins to sing. It is at first a wholly ineffectual and inarticulate sound without any solid tone to it, a mere hoarse breathing, as if he were clearing his throat, unlike any bird that I know, — a shrill hissing. Then he uttered a kind of mew, a very decided mewing, clear and wiry, between that of a catbird and the note of the nuthatch, as if to lure a nuthatch within his reach; then rose into the sharpest, shrillest vibratory or tremulous whistling or chirruping on the very highest key. Tins high gurgling jingle was like some of the notes of a robin singing in summer. But they were very short spurts in all these directions, though there was all this variety.
Unless you saw the shrike it would be hard to tell what bird it was. This variety of notes covered considerable time, but were sparingly uttered with intervals. It was a decided chinking sound — the clearest strain — suggesting much ice in the stream. I heard this bird sing once before, but that was also in early spring, or about this time. It is said that they imitate the notes of the birds in order to attract them within their reach. Why, then, have I never heard them sing in the winter? (I have seen seven or eight of them the past winter quite near.) The birds which it imitated — if it imitated any this morning — were the catbird and the robin, neither of which probably would it catch, — and the first is not here to be caught. Hearing a peep, I looked up and saw three or four birds passing rather [sic], which suddenly descended and settled on this oak-top. They were robins, but the shrike instantly hid himself behind a bough and in half a minute flew off to a walnut and alighted, as usual, on its very topmost twig, apparently afraid of its visitors. The robins kept their ground, one alighting on the very point which the shrike vacated. Is not this, then, probably the spring note or pairing note or notes of the shrike ?
The first note which I heard from the robins, far under the hill, was sveet sveet, suggesting a certain haste and alarm, and then a rich, hollow, somewhat plaintive peep or peep-eep-eep, as when in distress with young just flown. When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look.
I hear several jays this morning.
I think that many of the nuts which we find in the crevices of bark, firmly wedged in, may have been placed there by jays, chickadees, etc., to be held fast while they crack them with their bills.
A lady tells me that she saw, last Cattle-Show Day,___ putting up a specimen of hairwork in a frame (by his niece) in the exhibition hall. I think it represented flowers, and underneath was written " this Hare was taken from 8 different heads." She made some sort of exclamation, betraying that there was some mistake in the writing, whereupon___took it down carried it off, but soon came back with a new description or label, "this hare was taken from 8 different heads," and thus it stood through the exhibition.
P. M. — To Ministerial Swamp.
I hear of two who saw bluebirds this morning, and one says he saw one yesterday.1 This seems to have been the day of their general arrival here, but I have not seen one in Concord yet.
It is a good plan to go to some old orchard on the south side of a hill, sit down, and listen, especially in the morning when all is still. You can thus often hear the distant warble of some bluebird lately arrived, which, if you had been walking, would not have been audible to you. As I walk, these first mild spring days, with my coat thrown open, stepping over tinkling rills of melting snow, excited by the sight of the bare ground, especially the reddish subsoil, where it is exposed by a cutting, and by the few green radical leaves, I stand still, shut my eyes, and listen from time to time, in order to hear the note of some bird of passage just arrived.
There are few, if any, so coarse and insensible that they are not interested to hear that the bluebird has come. The Irish laborer has learned to distinguish him and report his arrival. It is a part of the news of the season to the lawyer in his office and the mechanic in his shop, as well as to the farmer. One will remember, perchance, to tell you that he saw one a week ago in the next town or county. Citizens just come into the country to live put up a bluebird box, and record in some kind of journal the date of the first arrival observed, — though it may be rather a late one. The farmer can tell you when he saw the first one, if you ask him within a week.
I see a great many of those glow-worm-like caterpillars observed in the freshet in midwinter, on the snowy ice in the meadows and fields now; also small beetles of various kinds, and other caterpillars. I think this unusual number is owing to that freshet, which washed them out of their winter quarters so long ago, and they have never got back to them.
I also see — but their appearance is a regular early spring, or late winter, phenomenon — a great many of those slender black-bodied insects from one quarter to (with the feelers) one inch long, with six legs and long gray wings, two feelers before, and two forks or tails like feelers for convenience Perla. They are crawling slowly about over the snow.
I have no doubt that crows eat some of the above-named caterpillars, but do other birds?
The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives, and the physiologist must not presume to explain their growth according to mechanical laws, or as he might explain some machinery of his own making. We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable. If we do, we shall discover nothing but surface still. The ultimate expression or fruit of any created thing is a fine effluence which only the most ingenuous worshipper perceives at a reverent distance from its surface even. The cause and the effect are equally evanescent and intangible, and the former must be investigated in the same spirit and with the same reverence with which the latter is perceived. Science is often like the grub which, though it may have nestled in the germ of a fruit, has merely blighted or consumed it and never truly tasted it. Only that intellect makes any progress toward conceiving of the essence which at the same time perceives the effluence. The rude and ignorant finger is probing in the rind still, for in this case, too, the angles of incidence and excidence [sic] are equal, and the essence is as far on the other side of the surface, or matter, as reverence detains the worshipper on this, and only reverence can find out this angle instinctively. Shall we presume to alter the angle at which God chooses to be worshipped?
Accordingly, I reject Carpenter's explanation of the fact that a potato vine in a cellar grows toward the light, when he says, " The reason obviously is, that, in con sequence of the loss of fluid from the tissue of the stem, on the side on which the light falls, it is contracted, whilst that of the other side remains turgid with fluid; the stem makes a bend, therefore, until its growing point becomes opposite to the light, and then increases in that direction." (C.'s "Vegetable Physiology," page 174.)
There is no ripeness which is not, so to speak, some thing ultimate in itself, and not merely a perfected means to a higher end. In order to be ripe it must serve a transcendent use. The ripeness of a leaf, being perfected, leaves the tree at that point and never returns to it. It has nothing to do with any other fruit which the tree may bear, and only the genius of the poet can pluck it.
The fruit of a tree is neither in the seed nor the timber, — the full-grown tree, — but it is simply the highest use to which it can be put.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1859
The first note which I heard from the robins, far under the hill, was sveet sveet, suggesting a certain haste and alarm . . When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look.See March 8, 1855 (" I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, ");.March 18, 1858 ("The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first."); March 24, 1858 ("The robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress”)
The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives, and the physiologist must not presume to explain their growth according to mechanical laws, or as he might explain some machinery of his own making. We must not expect to probe with our fingers the sanctuary of any life, whether animal or vegetable. If we do, we shall discover nothing but surface still. The ultimate expression or fruit of any created thing is a fine effluence which only the most ingenuous worshipper perceives at a reverent distance from its surface even. The cause and the effect are equally evanescent and intangible, and the former must be investigated in the same spirit and with the same reverence with which the latter is perceived. Science is often like the grub which, though it may have nestled in the germ of a fruit, has merely blighted or consumed it and never truly tasted it. Only that intellect makes any progress toward conceiving of the essence which at the same time perceives the effluence. The rude and ignorant finger is probing in the rind still, for in this case, too, the angles of incidence and excidence [sic] are equal, and the essence is as far on the other side of the surface, or matter, as reverence detains the worshipper on this, and only reverence can find out this angle instinctively. Shall we presume to alter the angle at which God chooses to be worshipped?
Accordingly, I reject Carpenter's explanation of the fact that a potato vine in a cellar grows toward the light, when he says, " The reason obviously is, that, in con sequence of the loss of fluid from the tissue of the stem, on the side on which the light falls, it is contracted, whilst that of the other side remains turgid with fluid; the stem makes a bend, therefore, until its growing point becomes opposite to the light, and then increases in that direction." (C.'s "Vegetable Physiology," page 174.)
There is no ripeness which is not, so to speak, some thing ultimate in itself, and not merely a perfected means to a higher end. In order to be ripe it must serve a transcendent use. The ripeness of a leaf, being perfected, leaves the tree at that point and never returns to it. It has nothing to do with any other fruit which the tree may bear, and only the genius of the poet can pluck it.
The fruit of a tree is neither in the seed nor the timber, — the full-grown tree, — but it is simply the highest use to which it can be put.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 7, 1859
The first note which I heard from the robins, far under the hill, was sveet sveet, suggesting a certain haste and alarm . . When you first see them alighted, they have a haggard, an anxious and hurried, look.See March 8, 1855 (" I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood, ");.March 18, 1858 ("The robin does not come singing, but utters a somewhat anxious or inquisitive peep at first."); March 24, 1858 ("The robin's peep, which sounds like a note of distress”)
The mystery of the life of plants is kindred with that of our own lives.See November 30, 1858 (“ But in my account of this bream I cannot go a hair’s breadth beyond the mere statement that it exists, — the miracle of its existence, my contemporary and neighbor, yet so different from me! I can only poise my thought there by its side and try to think like a bream for a moment. I can only think of precious jewels, of music, poetry, beauty, and the mystery of life. I only see the bream in its orbit, as I see a star, but I care not to measure its distance or weight. The bream, appreciated, floats in the pond as the centre of the system, another image of God. Its life no man can explain more than he can his own. I want you to perceive the mystery of the bream.”)
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