A dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.

February 28. 

2 P. M. — Thermometer 52; wind easterly. To Conantum. 

I am surprised to see how my English brook cress has expanded or extended since I saw it last fall to a bed four feet in diameter, as if it had grown in the water, though it is quite dirty or muddied with sediment. Many of the sprigs turn upwards and just rest on the water at their ends, as if they might be growing. It has also been eaten considerably by some inhabitant of the water. I am inclined to think it must grow in the winter. 

What is that bluish bulb now apparently beginning to shoot in the water there, floating loose (not the water purslane )?

I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about. 

Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, it suggested so much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about [it], not without exaggeration, the human parents' care of their young these hard times. Johnny was promised many times, and now the work has been completed, — a perfect little idyl, as they say. The cap was large and round, big enough, you would say, for the boy's father, and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. The top of the cap was evidently the back of the woodchuck, as it were expanded in breadth, contracted in length, and it was as fresh and handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. 

As if he put his head into the belly of a woodchuck, having cut off his tail and legs and substituted a visor for the head. The little fellow wore it innocently enough, not knowing what he had on, forsooth, going about his small business pit-a-pat; and his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done. Such should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear. 

As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound, produced by the wind on some dry weeds at my elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still closed, — a distinct rattling din which drew my attention to it, — like a small Indian's calabash. Not a mere rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle, or a hundred rattles, beside. 

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season. 

I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base, as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few simple rules like this. 

C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp. 

One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. 

One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th, and says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck. 

It suggests from what point of view Gesner (or his translator) describes an animal, — how far he takes into account man's relation to it, — that he commonly gives the “epithets” which have been applied to it. He deals in description, and epithets are a short description. And the translator says to the reader, “All these rows and ranks of living four-footed beasts are as letters and midwives to save the reverence which is due to the Highest (that made them ) from perishing within you.” 

I hear this account of Austin: An acquaintance who had bought him a place in Lincoln took him out one day to see it, and Austin was so smitten with the quiet and retirement and other rural charms that he at once sold his house in Concord, bought a small piece of rocky pasture in an out-of-the way part of this out-of-the-way town and with the funds raised by the sale of his old house built him a costly stone house upon it. Now he finds that this retirement (or country life) is the very thing which he does not want, but, his property being chiefly invested in the house, he is caught in a trap, as it were, for he cannot sell it, though he advertises it every year.

As for society, he has none; his neighbors are few and far between, and he never visits them nor they him. They can do without him, being old settlers, adscripti glebae. 

He found one man in the next town who got his living by sporting and fishing, and he has built him a little hut and got him to live on his place for society and help fulness. He cannot get help either for the outdoor or indoor work. There are none thereabouts who work by the day or job, and servant-girls decline to come so far into the country. Surrounded by grain-fields, he sends to Cambridge for his oats, and, as for milk, he can scarcely get any at all, for the farmers all send it to Boston, but he has persuaded one to leave some for him at the depot half a mile off.

As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do. For our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed up with error than our sympathies are. 

As I go down the Boston road, I see an Irishman wheeling home from far a large damp and rotten pine log for fuel. He evidently sweats at it , and pauses to rest many times. He found, perhaps, that his wood-pile was gone before the winter was, and he trusts thus to contend with the remaining cold. I see him unload it in his yard before me and then rest himself. The piles of solid oak wood which I see in other yards do not interest me at all, but this looked like fuel. It warmed me to think of it. He will now proceed to split it finely, and then I fear it [will] require almost as much heat to dry it, as it will give out at last. 

How rarely we are encouraged by the sight of simple actions in the street! We deal with banks and other institutions, where the life and humanity are concealed, — what there is. I like at least to see the great beams half exposed in the ceiling or the corner.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1860


I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about See January 8, 1860 ("When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.]")

The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life,  -- his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done.See May 30, 1859 ("Its colors were gray, reddish brown, and blackish, the gray-tipped wind hairs giving it a grizzly look above, and when it stood up its distinct rust-color beneath was seen, while the top of its head was dark-brown, becoming black at snout, as also its paws and its little rounded ears."); April 29, 1855 ("See his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail, which is dark-brown. The general aspect is grizzly.")

C. saw a dozen robins to-day. See February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 25, 1859 ("I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago."); February 27, 1857 ("Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature.")

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season.C. saw a dozen robins to-day.One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th See . March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")

Says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck .See March 1, 1856 ("It is remarkable that though I have not been able to find any open place in the river almost all winter,. . . Coombs should (as he says) have killed two sheldrakes at the falls by the factory, a place which I had forgotten, some four or six weeks ago. Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening,. . .If there is a crack amid the rocks of some waterfall, this bright diver is sure to know it. Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up."); February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

It is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.SeeOctober 4, 1859 (“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are."); November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it ."); February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see");

The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue.

February 27.

 2 P. M. — Thermometer 50.

February 27, 2015

February 27, 2020

To Abner Buttrick' s Hill. 

The river has been breaking up for several days and I now see great cakes lodged against each of the bridges, especially at Hunt's and the North Bridge, where the river flows with the wind. 

For a week or more you could not go to Ball's Hill by the south side of the river. The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill [ Yes , and upward as far as Cardinal Shore, the reach above Hubbard 's Bridge being open; thence it is mackerelled up to the pond], except the masses of ice moving in it; but the ice generally rests on the bottom of the meadows, — such as was there before the water rose, — and the freshet is for the most part covered with a thin ice except where the wind has broke it up. 

The high wind for several days has prevented this water from freezing hard. 

There are many cranberries washed far on to a large cake of ice which stretches across the river at Hunt's Bridge. The wind subsiding leaves them conspicuous on the middle of the cake. 

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. 

Heywood says that when the ground is regularly descending from the north to the railroad, a low fence a quarter of a mile off has been found to answer perfectly; if it slopes upward, it must be very near the road. 

I walk down the river below Flint's on the north side. 

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. This is the blood of the earth, and we see its blue arteries pulsing with new life now. 

I see, from far over the meadows, white cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream, - a novel sight. They are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. 

For several days the earth generally has been bare. I see the tawny and brown earth, the fescue- and lichen-clad hills behind Dakin's and A. Buttrick's. 

Among the radical leaves most common, and therefore early-noticed, are the veronica and the thistle, - green in the midst of brown and decayed; and at the bottom of little hollows in pastures, now perhaps nearly covered with ice and water, you see some greener leafets of clover. 

I find myself cut off by that arm of our meadow sea which makes up toward A. Buttrick's. The walker now by the river valley is often compelled to go far round by the water, driven far toward the farmers' door-yards.

I had noticed for some time, far in the middle of the Great Meadows, something dazzlingly white, which I took, of course, to be a small cake of ice on its end, but now that I have climbed the pitch pine hill and can overlook the whole meadow, I see it to be the white breast of a male sheldrake accompanied perhaps by his mate (a darker one). They have settled warily in the very midst of the meadow, where the wind has blown a space of clear water for an acre or two. The aspect of the meadow is sky-blue and dark-blue, the former a thin ice, the latter the spaces of open water which the wind has made, but it is chiefly ice still. Thus, as soon as the river breaks up or begins to break up fairly, and the strong wind widening the cracks makes at length open spaces in the ice of the meadow, this hardy bird appears, and is seen sailing in the first widened crack in the ice, where it can come at the water. 

Instead of a piece of ice I find it to be the breast of the sheldrake, which so reflects the light as to look larger than it is, steadily sailing this way and that with its companion, who is diving from time to time. They have chosen the opening farthest removed from all shores. As I look I see the ice drifting in upon them and contracting their water, till finally they have but a few square rods left, while there are forty or fifty acres near by. This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.

C. saw a skater-insect on E. Hubbard's Close brook in woods to-day.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1860

The river has been breaking up for several days . . .  The channel is now open, at least from our neighborhood all the way to Ball's Hill. Compare  February 27, 1856 ( the river has been frozen solidly for seven weeks.") and February 27, 1852 ("The main river is not yet open but in very few places, but the North Branch, which is so much more rapid, is open near Tarbell's and Harrington's, where I walked to-day, and, flowing with full tide bordered with ice on either side, sparkles in the clear, cool air, This restless and now swollen stream has burst its icy fetters, and as I stand looking up it westward for half a mile, where it winds slightly under a high bank, its surface is lit up here and there with a fine-grained silvery sparkle which makes the river appear something celestial"). See also A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau,  Ice out

I noticed yesterday that the skunk-cabbage had not started yet at Well Meadow, and had been considerably frost-bitten. See February 13, 1851 ("Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water. The tops of the spathes were frost- bitten, but the fruit sound. There was one partly expanded.The first flower of the season; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is [a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany all its parts, the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes fætidus.");  February 18, 1851 (" See the skunk-cabbage in flower.”); March 18, 1860 (“Skunk-cabbage, now generally and abundantly in bloom all along under Clamshell.”); March 21, 1858 (“The skunk-cabbage at Clamshell is well out, shedding pollen. The date of its flowering is very fluctuating.”); March 26, 1857 (“At Well Meadow Head, am surprised to find the skunk-cabbage in flower, . . .The first croaking frogs, the hyla, the white maple blossoms, the skunk-cabbage, and the alder’s catkins are observed about the same time.”); March 30, 1856 ("I am surprised to see the skunk cabbage, with its great spear-heads open and ready to blossom (i. e. shed pollen in a day or two)"); April 7, 1855 ("The skunk-cabbage open yesterday, — the earliest flower this season.")

White cakes of ice gliding swiftly down the stream are whiter than ever in this spring sun. The abundance of light as reflected from clouds and the snow, etc., etc. is more springlike than anything of late. See March 1, 1855 ("Banks of snow by the railroad reflect a wonderfully dazzling white due to the higher sun.")

The sudden apparition of this dark-blue water on the surface of the earth is exciting. I must now walk where I can see the most water, as to the most living part of nature. See February 12, 1860 ("Where the agitated surface of the river is exposed,[I see] the blue-black water.That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? How its darkness contrasts with the general lightness of the winter! It has more life in it than any part of the earth's surface. It is where one of the arteries of the earth is palpable, visible. . . .It excites me to see early in the spring that black artery leaping once more through the snow-clad town. All is tumult and life there, not to mention the rails and cranberries that are drifting in it. Where this artery is shallowest, i. e., comes nearest to the surface and runs swiftest, there it shows itself soonest and you may see its pulse beat. These are the wrists, temples, of the earth, where I feel its pulse with my eye. The living waters, not the dead earth. It is as if the dormant earth opened its dark and liquid eye upon us.") Compare March 12, 1854 ("A new feature is being added to the landscape, and that is expanses and reaches of blue water. This great expanse of deep-blue water, deeper than the sky, why does it not blue my soul as of yore? It is hard to soften me now. The time was when this great blue scene would have tinged my spirit more.")

This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of. See March 1, 1856 ("Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening, which I had forgotten, while the ice everywhere else was from one to two feet thick, and the snow sixteen inches on a level. , , , Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

Cold and strong northwest wind

February 26. 

Sunday 2 P. M. — Thermometer 30; cold northwest wind. 

The water is about six inches above Hoar's steps.  That well covers the meadows generally. 

Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1860

Cold and strong northwest wind this and yesterday. See February 26, 1855 ("Still clear and cold and windy. . . . This and the last two or three days have been very blustering and unpleasant, though clear. . . .Those great cakes of ice which the last freshet floated up on to uplands now lie still further from the edge of the recent ice.") See also February 9, 1856 ("How much the northwest wind prevails in the winter! Almost all our storms come from that quarter, and the ridges of snow-drifts run that way."); February 10, 1860 ("A very strong and a cold northwest wind to-day, shaking the house, — thermometer at 11 a. m., 14°, — consumes wood and yet we are cold, and drives the smoke down the chimney."); February 17, 1860 ("Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. . . .thermometer 14º."); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February is Mid-Winter and April 15, 1860 ("Strong northwest wind and cold.. . .We are continually expecting warmer weather than we have”)

High dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice.

February 25. 

P. M. - Round via Clamshell to Hubbard's Bridge. 

Colder, and frozen ground; strong wind, northwest. 

I noticed yesterday in the street some dryness of stones at crossings and in the road and sidewalk here and there, and even two or three boys beginning to play at marbles, so ready are they to get at the earth. 

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind? 

It is pleasant to see high dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice. There the motion of the blue liquid is the most distinct. As the waves rise and fall they seem to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. 

The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet. 

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. 

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. A small one was conspicuous by the side of the road more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. 

Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, I think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1860

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind. See 

February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? "); February 25, 1851 ("The waves on the meadows make a fine show."); March 29, 1852 ("The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind.") See alsoo A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. see February 24, 1857 ("I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. “); March 10, 1854 ("See a skunk in the Corner road, which I follow. . .. It is a slender black (and white) animal, with its back remarkably arched, standing high behind and carrying its head low; runs, even when undisturbed, with singular teeter or undulation, like the walking of a Chinese lady. Very slow; I hardly have to run to keep up with it. It has a long tail, which it regularly erects when I come too near and prepares to discharge its liquid. It is white at the end of the tail, and the hind head and a line on the front of the face, — the rest black, except the flesh-colored nose (and I think feet). . . .I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Skunks Active

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind . . .those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. See February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually"); February 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove.");  February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 2, 1860 ("I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.")

This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice. See February 20, 1852 ("No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common.  . . .The mole goes behind and beneath, rather than before and above.")

A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air.

February 24.

2 P.M. - Thermometer 42. 

A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. The clouds reflecting a dazzling brightness from their edges, and though it is rather warm (the wind raw) there are many, finely divided, in a stream southwest to northeast all the afternoon, and some most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. I never saw the green in it more distinct. This on the thin white edges of clouds as if it were a small piece of a rainbow. 

Some of the finest imaginable rippling, and some fine strings of clouds, narrow anteater skeletons, stretching from southwest to northeast, with the wind, looking like a little cotton caught on a crooked telegraph-wire, the spine is so distinct. 

A great part of the very finely divided cloud, one stratum above another, had the appearance of a woven web, the fibres crossing each other in a remarkable manner right overhead. 

The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 24, 1860

Thermometer 42. A very spring-like day, so much sparkling light in the air. See February 24, 1852 ("I am reminded of spring by the quality of the air."); February 24, 1857 ("A fine spring morning. . . It seems to be one of those early springs of which we have heard but have never experienced") See also January 8, 1860 (“After December all weather that is not wintry is springlike.”); February 8, 1860 ("February may be called earine (springlike)."); February 12, 1856 ("The thermometer at 8.30 A. M., 42°. . . .How different the sunlight over thawing snow . . .I experience a springlike melting in my thoughts. "); February 14, 1857 ("It is a fine, somewhat springlike day. . .the thermometer in the shade north of house standing 42°."); February 18, 1857 ("The snow is nearly all gone, and it is so warm and springlike that I walk over to the hill, listening for spring birds."); February 22, 1855 ("Remarkably warm and pleasant weather, perfect spring."); . February 25, 1857 ("The thermometer is at 65° at noon") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February Belongs to Spring

Most brilliant mother-o'-pearl. See note to January 22, 1854 ("Once or twice of late I have seen the mother-o'-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown.")

The river risen and musquash begun to be killed. See March 5, 1860 ("George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.") See also October 29, 1857 ("Tthe river is very high for the season and all over the meadow in front of the house, and still rising. Many are out (as yesterday) shooting musquash."); January 29, 1859 ("Many are out in boats, steering outside the ice of the river over the newly flooded meadows, shooting musquash."); February 17, 1857 ("Thermometer at 1 p.m., 60°. The river is fairly breaking up, and men are out with guns after muskrats."); March 17, 1859 ("River risen still higher. . . . A great many musquash have been killed within a week. ") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

February 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 24

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  A very spring-like day.

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 ©  2009-2024

May we measure our lives by our joys.

February 23. 

2 P. M. — Thermometer 56°. Wind south. 

3 P. M. — Thermometer 58° and snow almost gone. River rising. 

We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December (which was remarkably warm). 

I walk over the moist Nawshawtuct hillside and see the green radical leaves of the buttercup, shepherd's purse (circular), sorrel, chickweed, cerastium, etc., revealed. 

About 4 P. M. a smart shower, ushered in by thunder and succeeded by a brilliant rainbow and yellow light from under the dark cloud in the west. Thus the first remarkable heat brings a thunder-shower. 

The words “pardall” and “libbard,” applied by Gesner to the same animal, express as much of the wild beast as any. 

I read in Brand's “Popular Antiquities  that “Bishop Stillingfleet observes, that among the Saxons of the northern nations, the Feast of the New Year was observed with more than ordinary jollity: thence , as Olaus Wormius and Scheffer observe, they reckoned their age by so many Iolas.” (Iola, to make merry. – Gothic.) 

So may we measure our lives by our joys. We have lived, not in proportion to the number of years that we have spent on the earth, but in proportion as we have enjoyed. 

February is pronounced the coldest month in the year. In B.'s “Popular Antiquities” is quoted this from the Harleian Manuscripts:

"Février de tous les mois, 

Le plus court et moins courtois.”

In the same work it is said that this saying is still current in the north of England: 

“On the first of March, 

The crows begin to search.”

Would it not apply to the crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water's edge, a little later? 

A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. It is like giving a man a stone when he asks you for bread. 

Ultimately the moral is all in all, and we do not mind it if inferior truth is sacrificed to superior, as when the moralist fables and makes animals speak and act like men. It must be warm, moist, incarnated, — have been breathed on at least. 

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, February 23. 1860

We have not had such a warm day since the beginning of December. See February 23, 1856 ("At 2 P. M. the thermometer is 47°. Whenever it is near 40 there is a speedy softening of the snow") and note to 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 the green radical leaves of the  shepherd's purse. January 23, 1855 ("The radical leaves of the shepherd’s-purse, seen in green circles on the water-washed plowed grounds, remind me of the internal heat and life of the globe, anon to burst forth anew."); March 8, 1859 ("The shepherd's-purse radical leaves are particularly bright")

Crows searching for their food in our meadows, along the water's edge, a little later? See March 5, 1859 ("I see crows walking about on the ice half covered with snow in the middle of the meadows, where there is no grass, apparently to pick up the worms and other insects left there since the midwinter freshet"); March 22, 1855 ("I have noticed crows in the meadows ever since they were first partially bare, three weeks ago."); March 22, 1856 ("Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water—this and brooks —before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish?")

A fact stated barely is dry. It must be the vehicle of some humanity in order to interest us. See December 16, 1837 ("The fact will one day flower out into a truth."); November 9, 1851 ("Facts should be material to the mythology which I am writing; I would so state facts that they shall be significant, shall be myths or mythologic.”); June 19, 1852 (“Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samara?, tinged with his expectation.”)

The berries and seeds of wild plants.

February 21. 

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

2 P. M. — Thermometer forty-six and snow rapidly melting. It melts first and fastest where the snow is so thin that it feels the heat reflected from the ground beneath. 

I see now, in the ruts in sand on hills in the road, those interesting ripples which I only notice to advantage in very shallow running water, a phenomenon almost, as it were, confined to melted snow running in ruts in the road in a thaw, especially in the spring. 

It is a spring phenomenon. The water, meeting with some slight obstacle, ever and anon appears to shoot across diagonally to the opposite side, while ripples from the opposite side intersect the former, producing countless regular and sparkling diamond-shaped ripples.  

If you hold your head low and look along up such a stream in a right light, it is seen to have a regularly braided surface, tress-like, preserving its figures as if it were solid, though the stream is seen pulsing high through the middle ripples in the thread of the stream. The ripples are as rectilinear as ice-crystals.

When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts, know that then is to be seen this braid of the spring. 

It was their very admiration of nature that made the ancients attribute those magnanimous qualities which are rarely to be found in man to the lion as her masterpiece, and it is only by a readiness, or rather preparedness , to see more than appears in a creature that one can appreciate what is manifest. 

It is remarkable how many berries are the food of birds, mice, etc. Perhaps I may say that all are, however hard or bitter. This I am inclined to say, judging of what I do not know from what I do. For example, mountain-ash, prinos  skunk-cabbage, sumach, choke cherry, cornels probably, elder-berry, viburnums, rose hips, arum, poke, thorn, barberry , grapes, tupelo, amphicarpæa, thistle-down, bayberry(?), Cornus florida, checkerberry, hemlock, larch, pines, etc., birch, alder, juniper. The berries and seeds of wild plants generally, however little it is suspected by us, are the food of birds, squirrels, or mice .

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 21, 1860

When you see the sparkling stream from melting snow in the ruts. See February 16, 1856 ("I hear the eaves running before I come out, and our thermometer at 2 P. M. is 38°. The sun is most pleasantly warm on my cheek; the melting snow shines in the ruts.");  March 8, 1853 ("The melting snow, running and sparkling down-hill in the ruts, was quite springlike."); March 9, 1859 ("A true spring day, not a cloud in the sky. The earth shines, its icy armor reflecting the sun, and the rills of melting snow in the ruts shine, too.")

It is remarkable how many berries are the food of birds. See August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them."); September 1, 1859 ("If you would study the birds now, go where their food is, i. e. the berries, especially to the wild black cherries, elder-berries, poke berries, mountain-ash berries, and ere long the barberries,. . .The cherry-birds and robins seem to know the locality of every wild cherry in the town. You are as sure to find them on them now, as bees and butterflies on the thistles.")

Both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning.

February 20.

 P. M. – I see directly in front [of] the Depot Lee [?] house, on the only piece of bare ground I see hereabouts, a large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. They must be picking up earth, sand, or the withered grass. They are so intent on it that they allow me to come quite near This, then is one use for the drifting of snow which lays bare some spots, however deep it may be elsewhere, — so that the birds, etc., can come at the earth. I never thought of this use before. 

First the snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here and there to the ground; and so it will always be in some places, however deep it may have been. 

J. Farmer tells me that his grandfather once, when moving some rocks in the winter, found a striped squirrel frozen stiff. He put him in his pocket, and when he got home laid him on the hearth, and after a while he was surprised to see him running about the room as lively as ever he was. 

I notice a very pale pink reflection from snowy roofs and sides of white houses at sunrise. So both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree, which shows that they depend more on the twilight and the grossness of the atmosphere than on the angle at which the sunlight falls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 20, 1860

A large flock of lesser redpolls feeding. See February 12, 1860 ("On the east side of the pond, under the steep bank, I see a single lesser redpoll picking the seeds out of the alder catkins, and uttering a faint mewing note from time to time on account of me, only ten feet off. It has a crimson or purple front and breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the lesser redpoll.

The snow fell deep and level on the 18th, then, the 19th, came high wind and plowed it out here  See February 19, 1860 ("Snow maybe near a foot deep, and now drifting.")

Both the pink and the green are phenomena of the morning, but in a much less degree. See notes to January 31, 1859 ("Also the pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . .Perhaps the green seen at the same time in ice and water is produced by the general yellow or amber light of this hour, mingled with the blue of the reflected sky."); and   December 29, 1859 ("I went to the river immediately after sunrise. I could [see] a little greenness in the ice, and also a little rose-color from the snow, but far less than before the sun set. Do both these phenomena require a gross atmosphere? . . .To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them. ")

Snow now drifting.

February 19.

Snow maybe near a foot deep, and now drifting.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 19, 1860


See February 19, 1852 ("Everywhere snow, gathered into sloping drifts about the walls and fences . . . cold, unvaried snow, stretching mile after mile, and no place to sit."); February 19, 1856 (" I think if the drifts could be fairly measured it might be found to be seventeen or eighteen inches deep on a level. ")

The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.

February 18.

A snow-storm, falling all day; wind northeast. The snow is fine and drives low; is composed of granulated masses one sixteenth to one twentieth of an inch in diameter. Not in flakes at all. I think it is not those large-flaked snow-storms that are the worst for the traveller, or the deepest.

It would seem as if the more odd and whimsical the conceit, the more credible to the mass. They require a surprising truth, though they may well be surprised at any truth. For example, Gesner says of the beaver: “The biting of this beast is very deep, being able to crash asunder the hardest bones, and commonly he never loseth his hold until he feeleth his teeth gnash one against another. Pliny and Solinus affirm, that the person so bitten cannot be cured, except he hear the crashing of the teeth, which I take to be an opinion without truth.”

Gesner (unless we owe it to the translator) has a livelier conception of an animal which has no existence, or of an action which was never performed, than most naturalists have of what passes before their eyes. The ability to report a thing as if [it] had occurred, whether it did or not, is surely important to a describer. They do not half tell a thing because you might expect them to but half believe it.

I feel, of course, very ignorant in a museum. I know nothing about the things which they have there, — no more than I should know my friends in the tomb. I walk amid those jars of bloated creatures which they label frogs, a total stranger, without the least froggy thought being suggested. Not one of them can croak. They leave behind all life they that enter there, both frogs and men.

For example, Gesner says again, “The tree being down and prepared, they take one of the oldest of their company, whose teeth could not be used for the cutting, (or, as others say, they constrain some strange beaver whom they meet withal, to fall flat on his back),... and upon his belly lade they all their timber, which they so ingeniously work and fasten into the compass of his legs that it may not fall, and so the residue by the tail draw him to the water side, where those buildings are to be framed, and this the rather seemeth to be true, because there have been some such taken that had no hair on their backs, but were pilled, which being espied by the hunters, in pity of their slavery or bondage, they have let them go away free.” Gives Albertus and Olaus Magnus as authorities for this.

Melvin tells me that he went a day or two ago to where G. M. Barrett had placed a dead cow of his, and that he found the snow thickly tracked by foxes to within five feet around the carcass, and they appeared to have sat down there, but so suspicious of some trick were they that they had not touched it.

Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts. The history of the sky for that after noon will be but the development of that cloud.

I think that the most important requisite in describing an animal, is to be sure and give its character and spirit, for in that you have, without error, the sum and effect of all its parts, known and unknown. You must tell what it is to man. Surely the most important part of an animal is its anima, its vital spirit, on which is based its character and all the peculiarities by which it most concerns us. Yet most scientific books which treat of animals leave this out altogether, and what they describe are as it were phenomena of dead matter. What is most interesting in a dog, for example, is his attachment to his master, his intelligence, courage, and the like, and not his anatomical structure or even many habits which affect us less.

If you have undertaken to write the biography of an animal, you will have to present to us the living creature, i. e., a result which no man can understand, but only in his degree report the impression made on him.

Science in many departments of natural history does not pretend to go beyond the shell; i. e., it does not get to animated nature at all. A history of animated nature must itself be animated.

The ancients, one would say, with their gorgons, sphinxes, satyrs, mantichora, etc., could imagine more than existed, while the moderns cannot imagine so much as exists.

In describing brutes, as in describing men, we shall naturally dwell most on those particulars in which they are most like ourselves, — in which we have most sympathy with them.

We are as often injured as benefited by our systems, for, to speak the truth, no human system is a true one, and a name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it. As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but so soon as we have learned to distinguish them, the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.

I think, therefore, that the best and most harmless names are those which are an imitation of the voice or note of an animal, or the most poetic ones. But the name adheres only to the accepted and conventional bird or quadruped, never an instant to the real one.

There is always something ridiculous in the name of a great man, — as if he were named John Smith. The name is convenient in communicating with others, but it is not to be remembered when I communicate with myself.

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith to-day.

When the ancients had not found an animal wild and strange enough to suit them, they created one by the mingled [traits] of the most savage already known, - as hyenas, lionesses, pards, panthers, etc., etc., - one with another. Their beasts were thus of wildness and savageness all compact, and more ferine and terrible than any of an unmixed breed could be. They allowed nature great license in these directions. The most strange and fearful beasts were by them supposed to be the off spring of two different savage kinds. So fertile were their imaginations, and such fertility did they assign to nature.

In the modern account the fabulous part will be omitted, it is true, but the portrait of the real and living creature also. The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1860

Gesner (unless we owe it to the translator) has a livelier conception of an animal which has no existence than most naturalists have of what passes before their eyes See February 17, 1860 ("Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The History of Four-footed Beasts”")

Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P.M. there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts. Compare October 28, 1852 ("The clouds lift in the west, — indeed the horizon is now clear all around. Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. . .”); August 25, 1852 ("What a salad to my spirits is this cooler, darker day!”); April 15, 1856 (" By 9 A. M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed."); See also February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.")

A name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it. As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. See February 12, 1860 ("Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us. "). See also Walking (1861) The names of men are meaningless. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. Compare January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .")

“The History of Four-footed Beasts”

February 17.

P. M. — Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow. 

3 P. M., thermometer 14º. A perfectly clear sky except one or two little cloud flecks in the southwest, which, when I look again after walking forty rods, have entirely dissolved. 

When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink, and even from white board fences. 

Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows. 

I hear that some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week!! It was probably a shrike . 

Minott says that he hears that Heard's testimony in regard to Concord River in the meadow case was that “it is dammed at both ends and cursed in the middle,” i.e. on account of the damage to the grass there. 

We cannot spare the very lively and lifelike descriptions of some of the old naturalists.  They sympathize with the creatures which they describe. 

The artist too has done his part equally well.

Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The History of Four-footed Beasts” says of the antelopes that “they are bred in India and Syria , near the river Euphrates," and then — which enables you to realize the living creature and its habitat — he adds, "and delight much to drink of the cold water thereof." 

The beasts which most modern naturalists describe do not delight in anything, and their water is neither hot nor cold. Reading the above makes you want to go and drink of the Euphrates yourself, if it is warm weather. 

I do not know how much of his spirit he owes to Gesner, but he proceeds in his translation to say that "they have horns growing forth of the crown of their head, which are very long and sharp; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the shields of his soldiers, and fought with them very irefully: at which time his company slew as he travelled to India, eight thousand five hundred and fifty, which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and seldom seen to this day.” 

Now here something is described at any rate; it is a real account, whether of a real animal or not. You can plainly see the horns which "grew forth” from their crowns, and how well that word “irefully” describes a beast' s fighting! And then for the number which Alexander's men slew “as he travelled to India,” — and what a travelling was that, my hearers! - eight thousand five hundred and fifty, just the number you would have guessed after the thousands were given, and [an] easy one to remember too. 

He goes on to say that “their horns are great and made like a saw, and they with them can cut asunder the branches of osier or small trees , whereby it cometh to pass that many times their necks are taken in the twists of the falling boughs , whereat the beast with repining cry, bewrayeth him self to the hunters, and so is taken.” 

The artist too has done his part equally well, for you are presented with a drawing of the beast with serrated horns, the tail of a lion, a cheek tooth (canine?) as big as a boar's, a stout front, and an exceedingly “ireful” look, as if he were facing all Alexander's army. 

Though some beasts are described in this book which have no existence as I can learn but in the imagination  of the writers, they really have an existence there, which is saying not a little, for most of our modern authors have not imagined the actual beasts which they presume to describe.

The very frontispiece is a figure of “the gorgon,” which looks sufficiently like a hungry beast covered with scales, which you may have dreamed of, apparently just fallen on the track of you, the reader, and snuffing the odor with greediness. 


These men had an adequate idea of a beast, or what a beast should be, a very bellua (the translator makes the word bestia to be “a vastando”); and they will describe and will draw you a cat with four strokes, more beastly or beast - like to look at than Mr. Ruskin's favorite artist draws a tiger. They had an adequate idea of the wildness of beasts and of men, and in their descriptions and drawings they did not always fail when they surpassed nature. 

Gesner says of apes that “they are held for a subtil, ironical, ridiculous and unprofitable beast, whose flesh is not good for meat as a sheep, neither his back for burthen as an asses, nor yet commodious to keep a house like a dog, but of the Grecians termed geloto poios, made for laughter.” As an evidence of an ape's want of “discretion” he says: “A certain ape after a shipwreck, swimming to land, was seen by a country man, who thinking him to be a man in the water gave him his hand to save him, yet in the mean time asked him what countryman he was , to which he answered that he was an Athenian: Well, said the man, dost thou know Piræus (a port in Athens)? Very well, said the ape, and his wife, friends and children. Whereat the man being moved, did what he could to drown him. ”

 “They are best contented to sit aloft although tied with chains . . . . They bring forth young ones for the most part by twins, whereof they love the one and hate the other; that which they love they bear on their arms, the other hangeth at the dam' s back, and for the most part she killeth that which she loveth, by pressing it too hard: afterward, she setteth her whole delight upon the other.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1860

When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink. See December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge");  December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. "); January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.") January 31, 1859 (" The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.") and note to December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them").

Some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week! See February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.");  February 18, 1857 ("I thought at one time that I heard a bluebird. . . . I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. . . . Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird. They do not quite attain to song") See also December 18, 1859 ("I see three shrikes in different places to-day, — two on the top of apple trees, sitting still in the storm, on the lookout. They fly low to another tree when disturbed, much like a bluebird, and jerk their tails once or twice when they alight.")

February 22.

Such remarkably

pleasant weather, i  listen

for the first bluebird.

February 22, 1855