Causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved.

January 14. 

Coldest morning yet; 20° (?).

Pliny says, "In minimis Natura praestat” (Nature excels in the least things).

The Wellingtonia gigantea, the famous California tree, is a great thing; the seed from which it sprang, a little thing; and so are all seeds or origins of things.

Richard Porson said:

"We all speak in metaphors. Those who appear not to do it, only use those which are worn out, and are overlooked as metaphors. The original fellow is therefore regarded as only witty; and the dull are consulted as the wise."

He might have said that the former spoke a dead language.

John Horne Tooke is reported in "Recollections” by Samuel Rogers as having said:

 "Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author, and have forgotten the particulars."

I think that the opposite would be the truer statement, books differ so immensely in their nutritive qualities, and good ones are so rare.

Gosse, in his "Letters from Alabama,” says that he thinks he saw a large dragon-fly (Æslona), which was hawking over a brook, catch and devour some minnows about one inch long, and says it is known that "the larvæ of the greater water-beetles (Dyticidæ) devour fish."

It is the discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth's surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws.

The same is true in detail also.

It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are "spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i. e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved.

It is a common saying that "little strokes fall great oaks,” and it does not imply much wisdom in him who originated it. The sound of the axe invites our attention to such a catastrophe; we can easily count each stroke as it is given, and all the neighborhood is informed by a loud crash when the deed is consummated.

But such, too, is the rise of the oak; little strokes of a different kind and often repeated raise great oaks, but scarcely a traveller hears these or turns aside to converse with Nature, who is dealing them the while.

Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance; she knows that seeds have many other uses than to reproduce their kind. In raising oaks and pines, she works with a leisureliness and security answering to the age and strength of the trees. If every acorn of this year's crop is destroyed, never fear! she has more years to come. It is not necessary that a pine or an oak should bear fruit every year, as it is that a pea-vine should.

So, botanically, the greatest changes in the landscape are produced more gradually than we expected. If Nature has a pine or an oak wood to produce, she manifests no haste about it.

Thus we should say that oak forests are produced by a kind of accident, i. e. by the failure of animals to reap the fruit of their labors. Yet who shall say that they have not a fair knowledge of the value of their labors — that the squirrel when it plants an acorn, has not a transient thought for its posterity? 

Possibly here, a thousand years hence, every oak will know the human hand that planted it.

How many of the botanist's arts and inventions are thus but the rediscovery of a lost art, i.e. lost to him here or elsewhere! 

Horace Mann told me some days ago that he found, near the shore in that muddy bay by the willows in the rear of Mrs. Ripley's, a great many of the Sternothærus odoratus, assembled, he supposed, at their breeding time, or, rather, about to come out to lay their eggs. He waded in [and] collected — I think he said-about a hundred and fifty of them for Agassiz! 

I see in the Boston Journal an account of robins in numbers on the savin trees in that neighborhood, feeding on their berries. This suggests that they may plant its berries as well as the crows.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1861

The discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth's surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. See Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830–33); Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle,

Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance; See November 8, 1860 ("Consider how persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

— Lao Tzu

There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws. Compare May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); January 20, 1855 (“The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation.”); October 18, 1860 ("The development theory implies a greater vital force in nature, equivalent to a sort of constant new creation. We find ourselves in a world that is already planted, but is also still being planted as at first.")

Porson said: "We all speak in metaphors." See September 1851 (“All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”); May 10, 1853 ("He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. If I am overflowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry,- all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant.")

It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are "spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i. e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved. See The Succession of Forest Trees  ("As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings , the notion is still a very common one that , when the trees which bear these spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there in an unusual manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a burning  I do not believe these assertions, and I will state some of the ways in which, according to my observation, such forests are planted and raised.")