I make huckleberries my theme

January 11.

Horace Mann brings me the contents of a crow's stomach in alcohol. It was killed in the village within a day or two. It is quite a mass of frozen-thawed apple, — pulp and skin, — with a good many pieces of skunk-cabbage berries one fourth inch or less in diameter, and commonly showing the pale-brown or blackish outside, interspersed, looking like bits of acorns, never a whole or even half a berry, — and two little bones as of frogs (?) or mice (?) or tadpoles; also a street pebble a quarter of an inch in diameter, hard to be distinguished in appearance from the cabbage seeds. 

I presume that every one of my audience knows what a huckleberry is, — has seen a huckleberry, gathered a huckleberry, and, finally, has tasted a huckleberry, and, that being the case, I think that I need offer no apology if I make huckleberries my theme this evening.

What more encouraging sight at the end of a long ramble than the endless successive patches of green bushes, — perhaps in some rocky pasture, — fairly blackened with the profusion of fresh and glossy berries?  There are so many of these berries in their season that most do not perceive that birds and quadrupeds make any use of them, since they are not felt to rob us; yet they are more important to them than to us. We do not notice the robin when it plucks a berry, as when it visits our favorite cherry tree, and the fox pays his visits to the field when we are not there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 11, 1861 

Crow's Stomach. See December 30, 1860 ("The crows now and of late frequent the large trees by the river, especially swamp white oak, and the snow beneath is strewn with bits of bark and moss and with acorns. They are foraging.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Crow

I make huckleberries my theme this evening. See December 30, 1860 ("The Whortleberry Family"); January 3, 1861 ("The berries which I celebrate"); January 8, 1861 ("The Indians used their dried berries commonly in the form of huckleberry cake, and also of huckleberry porridge or pudding. ") See also
Wild Fruits: Thoreau's Rediscovered Last Manuscript, By Henry David Thoreau, 37-59, 113

The fox pays his visits to the field when we are not there. See September 23, 1860 ("It is evident, then, that the fox eats huckleberries and so contributes very much to the dispersion of this shrub, for there were a number of entire berries in its dung in both the last two I chanced to notice.") ee also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 11

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