Reflecting the November sun without its heats.

November 8. 

A pleasant day. 

P. M. — To Nut Meadow and Fair Haven Hill. 

I hear a small z-ing cricket. 

Coombs says that quite a little flock of pigeons bred here last summer. He found one nest in a small white pine near his pigeon-stand (where he baited them in the summer), so low he could put his hand in it(!?). 

I saw, while talking with him, a trout playing about in the open roadside watering-place, on the Jimmy Miles road (i. e. in Nut Meadow Brook), which was apparently fifteen inches long; not lurking under the bank but openly swimming up and down in midstream.

How richly and exuberantly downy are many golden- rod and aster heads now, their seed just on the point of falling or being blown away, before they are in the least weather-beaten  They are now puffed up to their utmost, clean and light.

The tufts of purplish withered andropogon in Witherell Glade are still as fair as ever, soft and trembling and bending from the wind; of a very light mouse-color seen from the side of the sun, and as delicate as the most fragile ornaments of a lady's bonnet; but looking toward the sun they are a brilliant white, each polished hair (of the pappus?) reflecting the November sun without its heats, not in the least yellowish or brown like the goldenrods and asters.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, November 8, 1859

Coombs says that quite a little flock of pigeons bred here last summer. See September 14, 1859 (“They are catching pigeons nowadays. Coombs has a stand west of Nut Meadow, ”)

I saw a trout playing in Nut Meadow Brook which was apparently fifteen inches long. See November 14, 1857 (“I hear that Gardiner Heywood caught a trout in Walden Pond the other day and that it weighed five pounds.”)

How richly and exuberantly downy are many golden- rod and aster heads now. See November 5, 1855 (“The downy, fuzzy globular tops of the Aster puniceus . . .  are slightly tinged with yellow, compared with the hoary gray of the goldenrod. ”)

Looking toward the sun they are a brilliant white, reflecting the November sun. See November 10, 1858 (“This a November phenomenon, — the silvery light reflected from a myriad of downy surfaces. A true November seat is amid the pretty white-plumed Andropogon scoparius, the withered culms of the purple wood grass which covers so many dry knolls. . . .Looking toward the sun, as I sit in the midst of it rising as high as my head, its countless silvery plumes are a very cheerful sight. At a distance they look like frost on the plant.”)

By boat to Holden Swamp.

May 4. 

Camel’s Hump

May 4, 2015

The Salix pedicellaris by railroad, apparently not for two or three days. 

The Missouri currant, probably to-day. 

P. M. — By boat to Holden Swamp. 

To go among the willows now and hear the bees hum is equal to going some hundreds of miles southward toward summer. 

I see along the sides of the river, i. e., where the bottom is permanently covered, what I have heretofore called the oat spawn, attached to old pontederia stems, etc., now some foot or eighteen inches under the surface. It is not black and white, like that of the Rana halecina, sylvaltica, and palustris, which I cannot distinguish from one another, but a pale brown or fawn-color. Some is pretty fresh or recently laid, others already flatted out. Hence, from comparison with my earlier sylvatica and halecina spawn, I judge that it may have been laid ten days. [Is it not that of the R. fontinalis?]

At Clamshell Shore, I see a clam lying up with open valves. 

Salix pedicellaris at Holden's Swamp, staminate, out apparently two days. - 

It is still warmer than May 1st, yet I hear the stertorous tut tut tut of hardly so many frogs (R. palustris chiefly, I suppose) as then. As with the halecina, it is the first sudden heats that excite them most, me thinks. 

I find hopping in the meadow a Rana halecina, much brighter than any I have seen this year. There is not only a vivid green halo about each spot, but the back is vivid light-green between the spots. I think this was not the case with any of the hundreds I saw a month ago!! Why?? The brassy lines along the sides of the back are narrower (only about one sixteenth of an inch) and more prominent than the more fawn-colored lines of the R. palustris. In this one, which I carry home and compare with the palustris, there is a large spot on each orbit, but none on the top of the head in front. It is all white beneath, except a tinge of greenish yellow on the abdomen. 

Witherell speaks of the R. palustris as the yellow legged frog, very properly. 

See several bullfrogs along the river, but silent. 

I go into Holden Swamp to hear warblers. See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place by the swamp-side, making a pleasant contrast. From time to time have seen the large Vanessa Antiopa resting on the black willows, like a leaf still adhering.

As I sit there by the swamp-side this warm summery afternoon, I hear the crows cawing hoarsely, and from time to time see one flying toward the  top of a tall white pine. At length I distinguish a hen-hawk perched on the top. The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, now from this side, now from that, passing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. 

I hear the weese wese wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there. And methought I heard a redstart's note (?), but oftener than the last I heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler, bluish above, yellow or orange throat and breast, white vent, and white on wings, neck above yellowish, going restlessly over the trees — maples, etc. — by the swamp, in creeper fashion, and as you may hear at the same time the true creeper's note without seeing it, you might think it uttered the creeper's note also. 

The red-wings, though here and there in flocks, are apparently beginning to build. I judge by their shyness and alarm in the bushes along the river and their richer, solitary warbling. 

Coming back, I talk with Witherell at William Wheeler's landing. He comes pushing Wheeler's square ended boat down-stream with a fish-spear. Says he caught a snapping turtle in the river May 1st. He sits on the side of my boat by the shore a little while, talking with me. There is a hole in the knee of his pants as big as your hand, and he keeps passing his hand over this slowly, to hide his bare skin, which is sun burnt and the color of his face, though the latter is reddened by rum, of which his breath smells. But how intimate he is with mud and its inhabitants. 

He says he caught a large pickerel the other night with spawn in it yet; that Henry Bigelow put many little trout into that round pond (Green Pond he calls it) on the Marlborough road, which Elbridge Haynes caught a few years after, weighing two or three pounds apiece. A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds. This was in Spectacle Pond in Littleton. 

A fisherman told him once that the common eel “gendered” into the river clam, and the young fed on the clam till they were big enough to get other food, and hence you found so many dead clams in the river. 

I asked him if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel. He saw one making one last spring about this time, as he was going across the fields by the river near Tarbell's to get seed corn. It was a single lamprey piling up the stones. He used to see thousands of them where he lived a boy, where the lead pipe factory was. 

Agassiz says in his Introduction (page 175), “I have known it [the Chelonara serpentina] snapping in the same fierce manner [which somebody else had described at a later period when it was very young] as it does when full grown, at a time it was still a pale almost colorless embryo, wrapped up in its foetal envelopes, with a yolk larger than itself hanging from its sternum, three months before hatching.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 4, 1858

The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, now from this side, now from that, passing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. See May 13, 1860 ("See two crows pursuing and diving at a hen-hawk very high in the air over the river. [H]e merely winks, as it were, bends or jerks his wings slightly as if a little startled. but never ceases soaring. nor once turns to pursue or shake them off.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the particolored warbler. See  May 13, 1860 ("At Holden Swamp, hear plenty of parti-colored warblers (tweezer-birds) and redstarts."); May 18, 1856 ("A Sylvia Americana, — parti-colored warbler, — in the Holden Wood, sings a, tshrea tshrea tshrea, tshre’ tshritty tshrit’.”)  See note to May 13, 1856 (“At the swamp, hear the yorrick of Wilson’s thrush; the tweezer-bird or Sylvia Americana. Also the oven-bird sings.”) See also A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place. See April 30, 1859 ("That interesting small blue butterfly (size of small red) is apparently just out, fluttering over the warm dry oak leaves within the wood in the sun.");See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The  Blue Butterfly in Spring

At the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing.

July 5. 

A. M. — To Loring’s Pond. 

July 5. 

Pink-colored yarrow.

Epilobium coloratum, a day or more. 

Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the railroad. 

Plucked some large luscious purple pyrus berries. Lactuca some days out. 

Borrowed Witherell’s boat and paddled over Loring’s Pond. A kingbird’s nest in fork of a buttonbush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg. 

Much of this pond is now very shallow and muddy and crowded with pads, etc. I can hardly push through them. Yet I can see no more white lily pads shaped as that appears to have been which I found here a few weeks since. 

Many pickerel dart away from amidst the pads, and in one place I see one or two great snap-turtles. 

I notice two varieties (?), perhaps, of Asclepias Cornuti now out, one on the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing, the other beyond the first mile-post above. The last has broader leaves and blunter and more decidedly mucronate, and pedicels and peduncles quite downy, the former little more than twice the length of the petals. The other has narrower and more pointed leaves, peduncles and pedicels but little downy comparatively, the latter more than three times the length of the petals and not so numerous as in the other. Vide their pods, if spiny, by and by. 

The Spergularia rubra was not open in the morning when I passed up, at 8 or 9 A. M., but was opened when I returned at noon, but closed again at 5 P. M.

The notes of barn swallows, perhaps with their young, are particularly loud now and almost metallic, like that of a mackerel gull. 

The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 P. M. or sundown. It was not open when I went to bathe, but freshly out in the cool of the evening at sun down, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 5, 1856


Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste . . . See July 5, 1857 ("Partridges big as quails."); June 26, 1857( See a pack of partridges as big as robins at least.); July 1, 1860 (I see young partridges not bigger than robins . . .”) and note to August 24, 1855 ("Scare up a pack of grouse."). Also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.

A kingbird’s nest in fork of a buttonbush five feet high. See July 9, 1859 ("See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twittering"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Eastern Kingbird

Pink-colored yarrow. See August 27, 1859 ("I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint, very distinct from the common pure-white ones. ")

To Ledum Swamp.

November 15

A very pleasant Indian-summer day.

P. M. -- To Ledum Swamp.

I look up the river from the railroad bridge.

It is perfectly smooth between the uniformly tawny meadows, and I see several musquash-cabins off Hubbard Shore distinctly outlined as usual in the November light.

I hear in several places a faint cricket note, either a fine z-ing or a distincter creak, also see and hear a grasshopper's crackling flight.

The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now, as I look up the Cyanean Reach from Clamshell.

A fine gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble, though a careless observer would not notice it.

As I look along over the grass toward the sun at Hosmer's field, beyond Lupine Hill, I notice the shimmering effect of the gossamer, — which seems to cover it almost like a web, — occasioned by its motion, though the air is so still. This is noticed at least forty rods off.

I turn down Witherell Glade, only that I may bring its tufts of andropogon between me and the sun for a moment. They are pretty as ever. [Vide Oct. 16th and Nov. 8th.]

In the midst of Ledum Swamp I came upon a white cat under the spruces and the water brush, which evidently had not seen me till I was within ten feet. There she stood, quite still, as if hoping to be concealed, only turning her head slowly away from and toward me, looking at me thus two or three times with an extremely worried expression in her eyes, but not moving any other part of her body. It occurred to me from her peculiar anxious expression and this motion, as if spellbound, that perhaps she was deaf; but when I moved toward her she found the use of her limbs and dashed off, bounding over the andromeda by successive leaps like a rabbit, no longer making her way through or beneath it.

I noticed on the 3d, in Worcester, that the white pines had been as full of seed there as here this year.

Also gathered half a pocketful of shagbarks, of which many still hung on the trees though most had fallen.

All through the excitement occasioned by Brown's remarkable attempt and subsequent behavior, the Massachusetts Legislature, not taking any steps for the defense of her citizens who are likely to be carried to Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob, is absorbed in a liquor-agency question.

That has, in fact, been the all-absorbing question with it !! I am sure that no person up to the occasion, or who perceived the significance of the former event, could at present attend to this question at all. As for the Legislature, bad spirits occupied their thoughts.

If any person, in a lecture or a conversation, should now cite any ancient example of heroism, such as Cato, or Tell, or Winkelried, passing over the recent deeds and words of John Brown, I am sure that it would be felt by any intelligent audience of Northern men to be tame and inexcusably far-fetched. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, in Roman, or English, or any, history. 

It is a fact proving how universal and widely related any transcendent greatness is, like the apex of a pyramid to all beneath it, that when I now look over my extracts of the noblest poetry the best is oftenest applicable in part or wholly to this man's position. Almost any noble verse may be read either as his elegy or eulogy or be made the text of an oration on him. Indeed, such are now first discerned to be the parts of a divinely established liturgy, applicable to those rare cases for which the ritual of no church has provided, the case of heroes, martyrs, and saints. This is the formula established on high, their burial service, to which every great genius has contributed its line or syllable. Of course the ritual of no church which is wedded to the state can contain a service applicable to the case of a state criminal unjustly condemned,--a martyr.

The sense of grand poetry read by the light of this event is brought out distinctly like an invisible writing held to the fire.

About the 23d of October I saw a large flock of goldfinches (judging from their motions and notes) on the tops of the hemlocks up the Assabet, apparently feeding on their seeds, then falling. They were collected in great numbers on the very tops of these trees and flitting from one to another.

Rice has since described to me the same phenomenon as observed by him there since ( says he saw the birds picking out the seeds), though he did not know what birds they were. William Rice says that these birds get so much of the lettuce seed that you can hardly save any. They get sunflower seeds also. Are called “lettuce-birds” in the books.

A lady who was suitably indignant at the outrage on Senator Sumner, lamenting to me to-day the very common insensibility to such things, said that one woman to whom she described the deed and on whom she thought that she had made some impression, lately inquired of her with feeble curiosity: “How is that young man who had his head hurt? I haven't heard anything about him for a good while." 

As I returned over the Corner Bridge I saw cows in the sun half-way down Fair Haven Hill next the Cliff, half a mile off, the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks, — for they had no more form at that distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1859

Indian-summer day. . . look up the river . . .perfectly smooth between . . .and I see several musquash-cabins . . .in the November light. . .hear in several places a faint cricket note . . .The clouds were never more fairly reflected in the water than now, as . . .gossamer is streaming from every fence and tree and stubble. See November 15, 1853 ("Cricket still.. . .We have to-day less wind and much haze. It is Indian-summer-like. The river has risen . . . covered most muskrat-cabins again . . .the waters become suddenly smooth, and the clear yellow light of the western sky is handsomely reflected in the water . . .a gossamer day")

I saw cows . .. the declining sun so warmly reflected from their red coats that I could not for some time tell if they were not some still bright-red shrub oaks, See July 16, 1851 ("The color of the cows on Fair Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How striking and wholesome their clean brick-red!")