Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

October 7

Went to Plymouth to lecture and survey Watson's grounds. Returned the 15th.

The Decodon verticillatus (swamp loosestrife) very abundant, forming isles in the pond on Town Brook on Watson's farm, now turned (methinks it was) a somewhat orange (?) scarlet.

Measured a buckthorn on land of N. Russell & Co., bounding on Watson, close by the ruins of the cotton-factory, in five places from the ground to the first branching, or as high as my head. The diameters were 4 feet 8 inches, 4-6, 4-3, 4-2, 4-6. It was full of fruit now quite ripe, which Watson plants. The birds eat it.

Saw a small goldenrod in the woods with four very broad rays, a new kind to me

Saw also the English oak; leaf much like our white oak, but acorns large and long, with a long peduncle, and the bark of these young trees, twenty or twenty-five feet high, quite smooth.

Saw moon-seed, a climbing vine.

Also the leaf of the ginkgo tree, of pine-needles run together.

Spooner's garden a wilderness of fruit trees.

Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 7, 1854

Went to Plymouth to lecture.   On Sunday, October 8, 1854  Thoreau gave his lecture "Moonlight" to a small audience of friends, among them Bronson Alcott. James Spooner, Marston Watson and his wife Mary Russell Watson.  See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden 259-255.  See also Night and Moonlight

Botanizing with Russell; Bathing in Walden

July 23

July 23, 2016

9 a. m. — Up river for Nuphar Kalmiana with Russell.

Pasture thistle, not long. 

Hypericum Sarothra, not long, or perhaps some days. 

Antennaria margaritacea. Scutellaria lateriflora, apparently some days. 

R. says that my five-finger fungus is the Lycoperdon stellatum and can be found now. I find it in some places. (It is different from the white rough-coated puffball now found.) It was exhibited lately in Boston as the "resurrection plant " (! !) to compete with the one imported from Palestine. 

That what I have called fresh-water sponge is such, Spongea fluviatilis, and, like the marine, is uncertain whether vegetable or animal. When burned it leaves a mass of white spicula which have been mistaken for infusoria! 

Thinks the dry brown last-year’s plant I brought from Haskell's Island, Lakeville, the Epiphegus. 

That the Rubus Canadensis, low blackberry, is not found far west of us. 

That there is described — he thinks in Hooker's English Flora — a certain massing up of a conferva similar to that of my eriocaulon balls. Has seen a Mexican species, allied to the potato, cultivated hereabouts, which became a weed, — would not become larger than a walnut. 

Speaks of the young pouts with their bladders attached, accompanied by the old. 

That the berries of the celtis are pleasant to taste, those of the sassafras abominable. 

Showed me the Dulichium spathaceum, leaves in three ranks, so common along river, now in bloom; also the Carex lupulina (?) or retrorsa (?), hop sedge, with the inflated perigynia. 

Said that those reddish clusters of buds on a rush or carex were enlarged by disease. 

That the two white cotton-grasses (Eriophorum) were probably but one species, taller and shorter; also the two wool-grasses Scirpus — Trichophorum [sic] were probably but one species, the tall and short. 

That there was an account of the lecheas by Tuckerman in Silliman's Journal. 

P. M. — To Walden for hydropeltis. 

A young sternothserus which R. picked up recently dead, on the shore of the pond, was one and one sixteenth inches long, — the upper shell, — probably therefore a last year's one, or not yet one year old. Very high and sharp back, but broader than old. No hook to upper bill. 

That fern leaf on my coal (?) is probably the Newropteris as figured in Richardson's Botany. 

Saw at Hydropeltis Meadow a small bullfrog in the act of swallowing a young but pretty sizable apparently Rana palustris, such as now hop about, an inch and a half long. He took it down head foremost, and as the legs were slowly taken in, — stuffing himself, — for the legs were often straightened out, — I wondered what satisfaction it could be to the larger to have that cold slimy fellow, entire, lying head to tail within him! I sprang to make him disgorge, but it was too late to save him. Though I tossed the bullfrog out of the water, the palustris was entombed. So little while had he been in the light when he fell into that recess! 

Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin, but the sandy bottom much warmer to my feet than the water. The heat passes through the water with[out] being absorbed by it much. 

The hydropeltis leaves so crowded they cannot lie flat, but their edges show (a good part the under side) as if blown up by wind. 

The water adder killed on the 15th and left hanging on a twig has decayed wonderfully. I perceive no odor, and it is already falling to pieces. I can see most of its ribs and through and through in many directions ! ! It is already mere skin and skeleton, as empty as [a] flute. I can count the bare ribs, and it [is] inoffensive to the smell. 

See apparently young goldfinches about, very freshly bright golden and black. 

The small potamogeton, heterophyllus (?) or hybridus (?), out some time. Ludwigia alternifolia, five or six days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1856

Bathing in Walden, I find the water considerably colder at the bottom while I stand up to my chin. See June 25, 1858 ("We bathe at Bittern Cliff. The water is exceedingly warm near the surface, but refreshingly cold four or five feet beneath. There must be twenty degrees difference at least"); July 3, 1854 ("What a luxury to bathe now! It is gloriously hot, — the first of this weather. I cannot get wet enough. I must let the water soak into me. I begin to inhabit the planet, and see how I may be naturalized at last.”); July 9, 1852 ("Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day. . . .The pond water being so warm made the water of the brook feel very cold;. . .and when I thrust my arm down where it was only two feet deep, my arm was in the warm water of the pond, but my hand in the cold water of the brook.”); July 10, 1852 (" I make quite an excursion up and down the river in the water, a fluvial, a water walk. . . .Walking up and down a river in torrid weather with only a hat to shade the head.”);  July 17, 1860 ("The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold.");July 22, 1851("I bathe, and in a few hours I bathe again, not remembering that I was wetted before. When I come to the river, I take off my clothes and carry them over, then bathe and wash off the mud and continue my walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.”).  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing


The water adder killed on the 15th. See July 15, 1856 ("It was about three feet long, but large round in proportion, with about one hundred and forty abdominal plates and a long, slender tail. . . .")

Young goldfinches about, very freshly bright golden and black. See May 6, 1860 ("A goldfinch apparently not quite in summer dress; with a dark-brown, not black, front.") See also July 10, 1854 (" Goldfinch oftener twitters over."); July 17, 1852 ("Again methinks I hear the goldfinch."); July 31, 1859 ("The goldfinch's note, the cool watery twitter, is more prominent now."); July 31, 1855 ("Have observed the twittering over of goldfinches for a week."); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Goldfinch

Saturday afternoon we are putting together a sturdy garden cart at the edge of the garage when a sudden wind rises the trees begin to crack and the top of the large near-dead maple at the top of the driveway comes down with a crash blocking the way out. Then a heavy rain comes and thunder and rain and dark I decide to take a nap. I get up a couple of hours later when the power goes on and begin to clear the driveway starting with the small stuff. Jane comes out with her Japanese saw and I spend a lot of time first with the electric chainsaw which derails after each cut and eventually get my gas chainsaw going and cut the larger stuff. We end up loading my truck with all the tops of the tree and drive it up the driveway where we dump it near the entrance to the trail. 20160723

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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

The shadow of our shadows, two men in a boat.

August 16.

With Russell* to Fair Haven by boat.  At the steam mill sand-bank is the distinct shadow of our shadows, — first on the water, then the double one on the bank bottom to bottom, one being upside down, — three in all, — one on water, two on land or bushes.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 16, 1854

See Walden, The Pond in Winter ("Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hillside.”) and August 31, 1852 ("I observe, on the willows on the east shore, the shadow of my boat and self and oars, upside down”); October 18, 1853 ("Returning late, we see a double shadow of ourselves and boat, one, the true, quite black, the other directly above it and very faint, on the willows and high bank.") and November 1, 1854 ("Sailing past the bank above the railroad, just before a clear sundown, close to the shore on the east side I see a second fainter shadow of the boat, sail, myself, and paddle, etc., directly above and upon the first on the bank. What makes the second? At length I discovered that it was the reflected sun which cast a higher shadow like the true one. As I moved to the west side, the upper shadow rose, grew larger and less perceptible; and at last when I was so near the west shore that I could not see the reflected sun, it disappeared; but then there appeared one upside down in its place!")

August 16. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 16

* John Lewis Russell, botanist

At steam-mill sand-bank

the shadow of our shadows –

one is upside down.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The shadow of our shadows

"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-540816 

Naming a lichen (The value of mutual intelligence)

January 15.

January 15, 2017

Mrs. Ripley told me this afternoon that Russell* had decided that that green (and sometimes yellow) dust on the under side of stones in walls was a decaying state of Lepraria chlorina, a lichen, -- the yellow another species of Lepraria. 

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, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 15, 1853

* John Lewis Russell, botanist. See Botanizing with Russell; Botanizing Marblehead and Salem; Botanizing the grasses and sedges; Russell is not sure but Eaton has described my rare polygonum.

Mrs. Ripley told ne this afternnoon. See May 17, 1856 ("Mrs. Ripley showed me, from her son Gore in Minnesota, a few days ago, the first spring flower of the prairie there, a hairy-stemmed, slender-divisioned, and hairy-involucred, six-petalled blue flower, probably a species of hepatica. No leaves with it. Not described in Gray.")

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. See March 1, 1852 ("I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses, for instance. No one masters them so as to use them in writing on the subject without being far better informed than the rabble about it. . . . No man writes on lichens, using the terms of the science intelligibly, without having something to say. "); August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing."); See also February 16, 1852 ("By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department."); March 1,1852 ("Linnæus, speaking of the necessity of precise and adequate terms in any science"); March 5, 1858 ("Our scientific names convey a very partial information only; they suggest certain thoughts only. It does not occur to me that there are other names for most of these objects, given by a people who stood between me and them, who had better senses than our race."); March 12, 1852 ("I have learned in a shorter time and more accurately the meaning of the scientific terms used in botany."); March 16, 1858 ("No doubt he had names accordingly for many things for which we have no popular names."); March 5, 1858 ("It was a new light when my; guide gave me Indian names for things for which had only scientific ones before. In proportion as I understood the language, I saw them from a new point of view."); 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"); February 18, 1860 ("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 . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned."); February 28, 1860 ("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.") And see also November 15, 1851 ( Linnæus['s]. . . father, being the first learned man of his family, changed his family name and borrowed that of Linnæus (Linden-tree-man ) from a lofty linden tree which stood near his native place. . .What more fit than that the advent of a new man into a family should acquire for it, and transmit to his posterity, a new patronymic? Such a custom suggests, if it does not argue, an unabated vigor in the race, relating it to those primitive times when men did, indeed, acquire a name, as memorable and distinct as their characters."); May 21, 1851 ("You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as yours."); See also Walking (1861 ("Travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.. . .So every man has an original wild name")

January 15. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, January 15

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/hdt530115