I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time.

 June 3. 

Tuesday.

Lectured in Worcester last Saturday, and walked to As- or Hasnebumskit Hill in Paxton the next day.

Said to be the highest land in Worcester County except Wachusett.

Met Mr. Blake, Brown, Chamberlin, Hinsdale, Miss Butman (?), Wyman, Conant.

Returned to Boston yesterday.

Conversed with John Downes, who is connected with the Coast Survey, is printing tables for astronomical, geodesic, and other uses.

He tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths.

Dr. Harris suggests that the mountain cranberry which I saw at Ktaadn was the Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa, cow berry, because it was edible and not the Uva-Ursi, or bear-berry, which we have in Concord.

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill; an abundance of mountain laurel on the hills, now budded to blossom and the fresh lighter growth contrasting with the dark green; an abundance of very large checkerberries, or partridge berries, as Bigelow calls them, on Hasnebumskit.

Sugar maples about there.

A very extensive view, but the western view not so much wilder as I expected. 

See Barre, about fifteen miles off, and Rutland, etc., etc. Not so much forest as in our neighborhood; high, swelling hills, but less shade for the walker. The hills are green, the soil springier; and it is written that water is more easily obtained on the hill than in the valleys.

Saw a Scotch fir, the pine so valued for tar and naval uses in the north of Europe.

Mr. Chamberlin told me that there was no corporation in Worcester except the banks ( which I suspect may not be literally true ), and hence their freedom and independence. I think it likely there is a gas company to light the streets at least.

John Mactaggart finds the ice thickest not in the largest lakes in Canada, nor in the smallest, where the surrounding forests melt it.

He says that the surveyor of the boundary-line between England and United States on the Columbia River saw pine trees which would require sixteen feet in the blade to a cross-cut saw to do anything with them.

I examined to-day a large swamp white oak in Hubbard's meadow, which was blown down by the same storm which destroyed the lighthouse. At five feet from the ground it was nine and three fourths feet in circumference; the first branch at eleven and a half feet from ground; and it held its size up to twenty-three feet from the ground. Its whole height, measured on the ground, was eighty feet, and its breadth about sixty-six feet.

The roots on one side were turned up with the soil on them, making an object very conspicuous a great distance off, the highest root being eighteen feet from the ground and fourteen feet above centre of trunk. The roots, which were small and thickly interlaced, were from three to nine inches beneath the surface ( in other trees I saw them level with the surface ) and thence extended fifteen to eighteen inches in depth (i. e to this depth they occupied the ground). They were broken off at about eleven feet from the centre of the trunk and were there on an average one inch in diameter, the largest being three inches in diameter.The longest root was broken off at twenty feet from the centre, and was there three quarters of an inch in diameter.

The tree was rotten within. The lower side of the soil (what was originally the lower), which clothed the roots for nine feet from the centre of the tree, was white and clayey to appearance, and a sparrow was sitting on three eggs within the mass. Directly under where the massive trunk had stood, and within a foot of the surface, you could apparently strike in a spade and meet with no obstruction to a free cultivation.

There was no tap root to be seen. The roots were encircled with dark, nubby rings. The tree, which still had a portion of its roots in the ground and held to them by a sliver on the leeward side, was alive and had leaved out, though on many branches the leaves were shrivelled again.

Quercus bicolor of Bigelow, Q. Prinus discolor Mx. f.

June 3, 2016

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time, the swift Camilla on it. It might have been noticed before. You might have seen it now for a week past on grain-fields.

Clover has blossomed.

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus.

Methinks it must be the small andromeda (?), that dull red mass of leaves in the swamp, mixed perchance with the rhodora, with its dry fruit like appendages, as well as the Andromeda paniculata, else called ligustrina, and the clethra.

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus) which I plucked a week ago in a meadow in Wayland. The earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.

The Phaseolus vulgaris includes several kinds of bush beans, of which those I raised were one.

  

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 3, 1851

Lectured in Worcester last Saturday[May 31, 1851] See Thoreau's Lectures Before Walden, Lecture 32 (Thoreau read a  version of "Walking or the Wild" to a private audience)

John Downes tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths. See. June 3, 1857 (" I feel the suckers' nests with my paddle, but do not see them on account of the depth of the river"); May 7, 1853 ("The stone heaps have been formed since I was here before, methinks about a month ag . . . i. e., piles several feet in diameter by a foot high have evidently been made (no doubt commonly on the ruins of old ones) within a month. The stones are less than the size of a hen's egg, down to a pebble;")

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in Worcester near the hill. See May 30, 1857 ("By the path near the northeast shore of Flint's Pond, just before reaching the wall by the brook, I . . .am surprised to find ... the Uvularia perfoliata, which I have not found hereabouts before. . . .. It is considerably past its prime “). Note: Thoreau’s only references to Concord occurrence of the perfoliate bellwort are tsecond-hand, August 22, 1857 and September 22, 1852 ~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

I observed the grass waving to-day for the first time. See May 19, 1860 ("[T]hey say of the 19th of April, '75, — that "the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,"); May 23, 1853 ("And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season ."); May 30, 1852 (A day for shadows, even of moving clouds, over fields in which the grass is beginning to wave."); June 9, 1852 ("The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season.")

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing up like asparagus. See May 6, 1860 ("indigo-weed shoots six inches high"); July 17, 1852 ("Some fields are covered now with tufts or clumps of indigo- weed, yellow with blossoms, with a few dead leaves turned black here and there.")

It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus). . .earliest, methinks, of the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. See May 23, 1853 ("I am surprised by the dark orange-yellow of the senecio. At first we had the lighter, paler spring yellows of willows, dandelion, cinquefoil, then the darker and deeper yellow of the buttercup; and then this broad distinction between the buttercup and the senecio, as the seasons revolve toward July."); June 6, 1858 ("Golden senecio is not uncommon now"); June 9, 1853 ("The meadows are now yellow with the golden senecio, a more orange yellow, mingled with the light glossy yellow of the buttercup")

Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.  See March 4, 1854 (" In the meadow beyond I see everywhere the green and reddish radical leaves of the golden senecio, whose fragrance when bruised carries me back or forward to an incredible season. Who would believe that under the snow and ice lie still — or in midwinter — some green leaves which, bruised, yield the same odor that they do when their yellow blossoms spot the meadows in June? Nothing so realizes the summer to me now."); March 10 1853 ("the fragrance of the senecio, which is decidedly evergreen, which I have bruised, is very permanent and brings round the year again. It is a memorable sweet meadowy fragrance."); August 30, 1857 ("The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio.")

To let the wind blow me also to other climes.

 

May 9. 

Tuesday.

To Boston and Cambridge.

Currant in garden, but ours may be a late kind.

Purple finch still here.

Looking at the birds at the Natural History Rooms, I find that I have not seen the crow blackbird at all yet this season.

Perhaps I have seen the rusty-black bird, though I am not sure what those slaty-black ones are, as large as the red-wings, nor those pure-black fellows, unless rusty blackbirds.

I think that my blackbirds of the morning of the 24th may have been cowbirds.

Sat on end of Long Wharf.

Was surprised to observe that so many of the men on board the shipping were pure countrymen in dress and habits, and the seaport is no more than a country town to which they come a-trading. I found about the wharves, steering the coasters and unloading the ships, men in farmer's dress.

As I watched the various craft successively unfurling their sails and getting to sea, I felt more than for many years inclined to let the wind blow me also to other climes.

Harris showed me a list of plants in Hovey's Magazine (I think for '42 or '43) not in Bigelow's Botany, -- seventeen or eighteen of them, among the rest a pine I have not seen, etc., etc., q. v.

Perla marginata

That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera he says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla. Thinks it the Donatia palmata I gave him. Says the shad-flies (with streamers and erect wings ) are ephemeræ. 

He spoke of Podura nivalis, I think meaning ours.

Planted melons.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 9, 1854

I think that my blackbirds of the morning of the 24th may have been cowbirds. See April 24, 1854 ("Saw a black blackbird without red, with a purplish-green-black neck, and somewhat less than a red-wing, in company with two smaller slaty black females (?). Can they be rusty grackles?")

As I watched the various craft successively unfurling their sails and getting to sea, I felt more than for many years inclined to let the wind blow me also to other climes See December 25, 1853 ("When I go to Boston, I go naturally straight through the city down to the end of Long Wharf and look off");  November 5, 1859 ("Sat at the end of Long Wharf for coolness, but it was very warm, with scarcely a breath of wind, and so thick a haze that I could see but little way down the harbor.")

The first Indian-summer day, See November 1, 2015 ("A beautiful Indian-summer day, the most remarkable hitherto and equal to any of the kind. "); November 1, 1860 ("A perfect Indian-summer day, and wonderfully warm. 72+ at 1 P. M. and probably warmer at two.");November 6, 1857 ("Thermometer on north of the house 70° at 12 M. Indian summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The world can never be more beautiful than now.

That early narrow curved-winged insect on ice and river which I thought an ephemera he says is a Sialis, or maybe rather a Perla. See March 22, 1856 ("On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned, though it is all ice and snow around the country over. Do not see any flying, nor before this"); March 24, 1857 ("I see many of those narrow four-winged insects (perla?) of the ice now fluttering on the water like ephemerae. They have two pairs of wings indistinctly spotted dark and light."); March 17, 1858 ("As usual, I have seen for some weeks on the ice these peculiar (perla?) insects with long wings and two tails."); March 7, 1859 ("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."); March 3, 1860 ("I see one of those gray-winged (long and slender) perla-like insects by the waterside this afternoon.")

Says the shad-flies (with streamers and erect wings ) are ephemeræ. See May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”); ;June 2, 1854 "The whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.. . . It was a great flight of ephemera"); June 9, 1854 (" The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal.”); May 4, 1856 ("Shad-flies on the water, schooner-like."); June 8, 1856 (“My boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”); June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ... and the fishes leap as before.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Insect Hatches in Spring 

May 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau: May 9

On end of Long Wharf

inclined to let the wind blow

me to other climes.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Sat on end of Long Wharf.

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

tinyurl.com/hdt-540509

I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch.

April 11. 

I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch, somewhat like and nearly as loud as the robin, from the elm by Whiting's.

The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning.

9 A. M. – To Haverhill via Cambridge and Boston.

Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa, and is introduced from Europe, and is sometimes found in this state alive in winter.

The orange-brown one with scalloped wings, and smaller somewhat, is Vanessa Progne.

The early pestle-shaped bug or beetle is a cicindela, of which there are three species, one of them named from a semicolon-like mark on it.

Vide Hassley on spiders in Boston Journal of Natural History.

At Natural History Rooms, saw the female red-wing, striped white and ash; female cow-bird, ashy-brown.

First.

The swamp sparrow is ferruginous-brown (spotted with black) and ash above about neck; brownish-white beneath; undivided chestnut crown.

Second.

The grass-bird, grayish-brown, mingled with ashy-whitish above; light, pencilled with dark brown beneath; no marked crown; outer tail feathers whitish, perhaps a faint bar on wing.

Third.

Field sparrow, smaller than either; marked like first, with less black, and less distinct ash on neck, and less ferruginous and no distinct crown.

Fourth.

Savannah sparrow, much like second, with more black, but not noticeable white in tail, and a little more brown; no crown marked.

Emberiza miliaria Gmel* (What is it in Nuttall?) appears to be my young of purple finch.

One Maryland yellow-throat, probably female, has no black on side head, and is like a summer yellow bird except that the latter has ends of the wings and tail black.

The yellow-rump warbler (what is it in Nuttall?) is bluish-gray, with two white bars on wings, a bright yellow crown, side breasts, and rump. Female less distinct.

Blackburnian is orange-throated.

American redstart, male, is black forward, coppery orange beneath and stripe on wings and near base of tail. Female dark ashy and fainter marks.

American Redstart

J. E. Cabot thought my small hawk might be Cooper's hawk.

Says that Gould, an Englishman, is the best authority on birds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 11, 1853

I hear the clear, loud whistle of a purple finch from the elm by Whiting's. See April 15, 1854 ("The arrival of the purple finches appears to be coincident with the blossoming of the elm, on whose blossom it feeds"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Elms and the Purple Finch and note to April 10, 1861 ("Purple finch.")

The maple which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildon's, is just out this morning. See April 10, 1853 (''The male red maple buds now show eight or ten (ten counting everything) scales, alternately crosswise, and the pairs successively brighter red or scarlet, which will account for the gradual reddening of their tops. They are about ready to open.");

Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa. See  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

The orange-brown one with scalloped wings, and smaller somewhat, is Vanessa Progne. See April 9, 1853 ("A middling-sized orange-copper butterfly on the mill road, at the clearing, with deeply scalloped wings. You see the buff-edged and this, etc., in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about.")

The grass-bird, grayish-brown, mingled with ashy-whitish above; light, pencilled with dark brown beneath; no marked crown; outer tail feathers whitish, perhaps a faint bar on wing.  [The Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramineus).] See October 16, 1855 ("I look at a grass-bird on a wall in the dry Great Fields. There is a dirty-white or cream-colored line above the eye and another from the angle of the mouth beneath it and a white ring close about the eye. The breast is streaked with this creamy white and dark brown in streams, as on the cover of a book"); April 13, 1855 ("See a sparrow without marks on throat or breast, running peculiarly in the dry grass in the open field beyond, and hear its song, and then see its white feathers in tail; the bay-wing."); April 29, 1855 ("The bay on its wings is not obvious except when it opens them. The white circle about the eye is visible afar. . . . It is rather . . .concealed by its color . . . with its chestnut crown and light breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bay-Wing Sparrow

Field sparrow, . . . marked like [swamp sparrow], with less  black, and less distinct ash on neck, and less ferruginous and no distinct crown. See  April 8, 1853 ("Heard the field sparrow again"); April 27, 1852 ("Heard the field or rush sparrow this morning (Fringilla juncorum), George Minott's "huckleberry-bird." ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Field Sparrow

Savannah sparrow, much like [grass-bird], with more black, but not noticeable white in tail, and a little more brown; no crown marked. According to Guide to Thoreau’s Birds "Thoreau frequently called the Savannah Sparrow Passerculus sandwichensis the seringo or seringo-bird, but he also applied the name to other small birds."  See June 10, 1854 ("The bay-wing sparrow apparently is not my seringo, after all. What is the seringo? I see some with clear, dirty-yellow breasts, but others, as to-day, with white breasts, dark-streaked. Both have the yellow over eye and the white line on crown, and agree in size, but I have seen only one with distinct yellow on wings. Both the last, i. e. except only the bay-wing, utter the seringo note. Are they both yellow-winged sparrows? or is the white-breasted with streaks the Savannah sparrow?"); June 12, 1854 ("Do I not see two birds with the seringo note, — the Savannah (?) sparrow, larger with not so bright a yellow over eye, none on wing, and white breast, and beneath former streaked with dark and perhaps a dark spot, and the smaller yellow-winged, with spot on wing also and ochreous breast and throat ?"); July 16, 1854 ("Is it the yellow-winged or Savannah sparrow with yellow alternating with dark streaks on throat, as well as yellow over eye, reddish flesh-colored legs, and two light bars on wings?“); April 22, 1856 ("The seringo also sits on a post, with a very distinct yellow line over the eye,"); June 26, 1856 ("According to Audubon’s and Wilson’s plates, . . .the Savannah sparrow [has] no conspicuous yellow on shoulder, a yellow brow, and white crown line. . . .saw, apparently, the F. Savanna. . . Distinctly yellow-browed and spotted breast."); December 7, 1858  ("Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i. e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow.”); April 27, 1859 (“Hear and see the seringo in fields next the shore. No noticeable yellow shoulder, pure whitish beneath, dashed throat and a dark-brown line of dashes along the sides of the body.”) 

One Maryland yellow-throat, probably female, has no black on side head, and is like a summer yellow bird. See May 18, 1856 ("I see. . .what you would call a Maryland yellow-throat, but less chubby, yellow throat, beneath, and vent, and dark under tail, black side; but hear no note."); May 17, 1860; ("I see a female Maryland yellow-throat busily seeking its food amid the dangling fruit of the early aspen, in the top of the tree.")

  

The yellow-rump warbler (what is it in Nuttall?) is bluish-gray, with two white bars on wings, a bright yellow crown, side breasts, and rump.  See October 28, 1853 ("Little sparrow-sized birds flitting about amid the dry corn stalks and the weeds, — one, quite slaty with black streaks and a bright-yellow crown and rump, which I think is the yellow-crowned warbler,"); April 23, 1854 ("The myrtle-bird, –yellow-rumped warbler . . . on the willows, alders, and the wall by Hubbard's Bridge, slate and white spotted with yellow. Its note is a fine, rapid, somewhat hissing or whistling se se se se se ser riddler se, somewhat like the common yellowbird's.");  September 23, 1855 (“A little wren-like (or female goldfinch) bird on a.willow at Hubbard’s Causeway, eating a miller: with bright-yellow rump when wings open, and white on tail. Could it have been a yellow-rump warbler?”); October 14, 1855 ("Black bill and feet, yellow rump, brown above, yellowish-brown on head, cream-colored chin, two white bars on wings, tail black, edged with white, — the yellow-rump warbler or myrtle-bird without doubt.");  September 29, 1858 ("One or two myrtle-birds in their fall dress, with brown head and shoulders, two whitish bars on wings, and bright-yellow rump.") See also Thomas Nuttall, A Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada 31  (1832) (naming it "Yellow-Crowned Warbler or Myrtle-Bird (Sylvia coronet)")

Female [redstart] dark ashy and fainter marks. See May 29, 1855 ("females of the redstart, described by Wilson, — very different from the full-plumaged black males."); September 12, 1857 ("Crossing east through the spruce swamp, I think that I saw a female redstart.")  See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The American Redstart

Cabot thought my small hawk might be Cooper's hawk. See April 7, 1853 ("A hawk above Ball’s Hill which, though with a distinct white rump, I think was not the harrier but sharp-shinned, from its broadish, mothlike form, light and slightly spotted beneath, with head bent downward, watching for prey");April 10, 1853 ("What was that smaller, broader-winged hawk with white rump of April 7th ? For, after all, I do not find it described."); December 7, 1858 ("Dr. Bryant . . . says Cooper’s hawk is just like the sharp-shinned, only a little larger commonly. He could not tell them apart.")

Saw the grizzly bear near the Haymarket to-day.

February 9.

 At Cambridge to-day.

Dr. Harris thinks the Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum, and, he thinks, a kind of nettle, and an asclepias, etc.

He doubts if the dog was indigenous among them. Finds nothing to convince him in the history of New England.

Thinks that the potato which is said to have been carried from Virginia by Raleigh was the ground-nut (which is described, I perceived, in Debry (Heriot?) among the fruits of Virginia), the potato not being indigenous in North America, and the ground-nut having been called wild potato in New England, the north part of Virginia, and not being found in England.

Yet he allows that Raleigh cultivated the potato in Ireland.

Saw the grizzly bear near the Haymarket to-day, said (?) to weigh nineteen hundred, — apparently too much. He looked four feet and a few inches in height, by as much in length, not including his great head, and his tail, which was invisible.

He looked gentle, and continually sucked his claws and cleaned between them with his tongue. Small eyes and funny little ears; perfectly bearish, with a strong wild-beast scent; fed on Indian meal and water.

Hind paws a foot long. Lying down, with his feet up against the bars; often sitting up in the corner on his hind quarters.

Two sables also, that would not be waked up by day, with their faces in each other's fur.

An American chinchilla, and a silver lioness said to be from California.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 9, 1853

Dr. Harris ( the librarian of Harvard University and one of Thoreau's professors) See Clark A. Elliott, Thaddeus William Harris 1795-1856: Nature, Science, and Society in the Life of an American Naturalist . See also note to January 1, 1853 ("Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world.")

Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum, and, he thinks, a kind of nettle, and an asclepias.See note to September 2, 1856 ("Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain . . .”); January 19, 1856 ("Probably both the Indian and the bird discovered for themselves this same (so to call it) wild hemp. [milkweed fibre]")

February 9.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  February 9

Snowing all day but

just beginning to clear up –

blue sky visible.

February 9, 2021

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

Nature prepared for an infinity of springs.

November 10

November 10, 2023

P. M. – Sail to Ball's Hill with W. E. C. 

See where the muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. 

Got some donacia grubs for Harris, but find no chrysalids. 

The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and flower-buds of the yellow lily, already four or six inches long, at the bottom of the river, reminds me that nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 10, 1854

Harris. Thaddeus William Harris 1795-1856: the librarian of Harvard University and one of Thoreau's professors. See  note to January 1, 1853 ("Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatest entomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark.")

Got some donacia grubs for Harris. See January 19, 1854 ("[Dr, Harris] thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was. . . one of the Donasia (?).")

The muskrats have eaten much pontederia root. See November 11, 1853 ("There were in the water green butts and roots of the pontederia, which I think they [muskrats]eat. I find the roots gnawed off."); December 26, 1859 ("So many of these houses being broken open, — twenty or thirty I see, — I look into the open hole, and find in it, in almost every instance, many pieces of the white root with the little leaf-bud curled up which I take to be the yellow lily root . . . Also I see a little coarser, what I take to be green leaf-stalk of the pontederia.")

The sight of the masses of yellow hastate leaves and flower-buds of the yellow lily reminds me that nature is prepared for an infinity of springs yet. See October 15, 1858 ("The yellow lily in the brook by the Turnpike is still expanding fresh leaves with wrinkled edges, as in the spring. "); March 7, 1853 ("Find the yellow bud of a Nuphar advena in the ditch on the Turnpike on E. Hosmer's land, bud nearly half an inch in diameter on a very thick stem, three fourths of an inch thick at base and ten inches long, four or five inches above the mud. This may have swollen somewhat during the warmest weather in the winter, after pushing up in the fall. And I see that it may, in such a case, in favorable locations, blossom at very early but irregular periods in the spring."); March 28, 1852 ("The yellow lily leaves are pushing up in the ditch beyond Hubbard's Grove, hard-rolled and triangular, with a sharp point with which to pierce the mud; green at the tips and yellow below. The leaf is rolled in from both sides to the midrib. This is, perhaps, to be regarded as the most obvious sign of advancing spring."); June 29, 1852 ("The great yellow lily, the spatter-dock, expresses well the fertility of the river."). See also October 30, 1853 ("Now, now is the time to look at the buds.”); December 1, 1852 ("At this season I observe the form of the buds which are prepared for spring,"); December 2, 1852 ("There is a certain resonance and elasticity in the air that makes the least sound melodious as in spring. It is an anticipation, a looking through winter to spring."); January 12, 1855 (" Well may the tender buds attract us at this season, no less than partridges, for they are the hope of the year, the spring rolled up. The summer is all packed in them.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

Nature prepared for 

an infinity of springs –

yellow lily buds.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Nature prepared for an infinity of springs

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-541110

My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening.

July 26.

By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.

The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky.

In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are of necessity isolated.

The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society.

My desire for society is infinitely increased; my fitness for any actual society is diminished.

Went to Cambridge and Boston to-day.

Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds.

Once, as he was crossing the College Yard, he saw the wings of one coming down, which reached the ground just at his feet. What a tragedy! The wings came down as the only evidence that such a creature had soared, — wings large and splendid, which were designed to bear a precious burthen through the upper air.

So most poems, even epics, are like the wings come down to earth, while the poet whose adventurous flight they evidence has been snapped up [by] the ravenous vulture of this world.

If this moth ventures abroad by day, some bird will pick out the precious cargo and let the sails and rigging drift, as when the sailor meets with a floating spar and sail and reports a wreck seen in a certain latitude and longitude.

For what were such tender and defenseless organizations made?

The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.

Perchance the entomologist never saw an entire specimen, but, as he walked one day, the wings of a larger species than he had ever seen came fluttering down.

The wreck of an argosy in the air. 

He tells me the glow-worms are first seen, he thinks, in the last part of August. Also that there is a large and brilliant glow-worm found here, more than an inch long, as he measured it to me on his finger, but rare. 

Perhaps the sunset glows are sudden in proportion as the edges of the clouds are abrupt, when the sun finally reaches such a point that his rays can be reflected from them.

At 10 p. m. I see high columns of fog, formed in the lowlands and lit by the moon, preparing to charge this higher ground. It is as if the sky reached the solid ground there, for they shut out the woods.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 26, 1852

My interest in the sun and the moon, in the morning and the evening, compels me to solitude.  See March 17, 1852 (“There is a moment in the dawn,. . . when we see things more truly than at any other time.”);  June 13, 1852 ("All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes"); August 31, 1852 ("The wind is gone down; the water is smooth; a serene evening is approaching; the clouds are dispersing. . . .The reflections are the more perfect for the blackness of the water. This is the most glorious part of this day, the serenest, warmest, brightest part, and the most suggestive. Evening is fairer than morning. Morning is full of promise and vigor. Evening is pensive. The serenity is far more remarkable to those who are on the water") ; January 26, 1853 (“ I look back . . . not into the night, but to a dawn for which no man ever rose early enough.”); May 17, 1853 ("Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness of the night"); August 11, 1853 (" What shall we name this season? — this very late afternoon, or very early evening, this season of the day most favorable for reflection, after the insufferable heats and the bustle of the day are over and before the twilight? The serene hour, the season of reflection! The pensive season.The few sounds now heard, far or near, are delicious. Each sound has a broad and deep relief of silence. It is not more dusky and obscure, but clearer than before. The poet arouses himself and collects his thoughts.");.Walden (“To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say . . . Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”);  and A Book of the Seasons, The hour before sunset


The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from human society. See January 17, 1852 ("As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable."): June 21, 1852 ("The perception of beauty is a moral test."); November 18, 1857 ("You cannot perceive beauty but with a serene mind.")

Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna. See July 8, 1852  ("I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds. Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches the thing like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick. The sight affected me as tropical, . . .  It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.")  See also June 27, 1858 ("See an Attacus luna in the shady path");June 27, 1859 ("At the further Brister's Spring, under the pine, I find an Attacus luna.");   June 29, 1859 ("I found the wing of an Attacus luna, — and July 1st another wing near Second Division, which makes three between June 27th and July 1st."); July 1, 1853 ; ("Saw one of those great pea-green emperor moths, like a bird, fluttering over the top of the woods this forenoon, 10 a. m., near Beck Stow's")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

July 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 26

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 © 2009-2021

Identifying the Attacus cecropia

January 19. 

Went to Cambridge to court. 

Dr. Harris says that my cocoons found in Lincoln in December are of the Attacus cecropia, the largest of our emperor moths. He made this drawing of the four kinds of emperor moths which he says we have.

Attacus cecropia

The cecropia is the largest. The cocoon must be right end uppermost when they are ready to come out. The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it. 

That spider whose hole I found, and which I carried him, he is pretty sure is the Lycosa fatifera. 

In a large and splendid work on the insects of Georgia, by Edwards and Smith (?), near end of last century, up-stairs, I found plates of the above moths, called not Attacus but Phaloena, and other species of Phaloena. 

He thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was a Donax or one of the Donasia (?).

In Josselyn's account of his voyage from London to Boston in 1638, he says, " June the first day in the afternoon, very thick foggie weather, we sailed by an enchanted island," etc. This kind of remark, to be found in so many accounts of voyages, appears to be a fragment of tradition come down from the earliest ac count of Atlantis and its disappearance. 

Varro, having enumerated certain writers on agriculture, says accidentally [sic] that they wrote soluta ratione, i.e. in prose. 

This suggests the difference between the looseness of prose and the precision of poetry. A perfect expression requires a particular rhythm or measure for which no other can be substituted. The prosaic is always a loose expression. 

Varro divides fences into four kinds, — unum naturale, alterum agreste, tertium militare, quartum fabrile. (Many kinds of each.) The first is the living hedge. One kind of sepes agrestis is our rail fence, and our other dead wooden farm fences would come under this head. The military sepes consists of a ditch and rampart; is common along highways; sometimes a rampart alone. The fourth is the mason's fence of stone or brick (burnt or unburnt), or stone and earth together.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 19, 1854

My cocoons found in Lincoln in December are of the Attacus cecropia, the largest of our emperor moths. See December 17, 1853 ("While surveying for Daniel Weston in Lincoln to-day, see a great many — maybe a hundred — silvery-brown cocoons, wrinkled and flattish, on young alders in a meadow, three or four inches long, fastened to the main stem and branches at same time, with dry alder and fragments of fern leaves attached to and partially concealing them; of some great moth.")