I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

 

June 12

June 12, 2019

Saturday. P. M. – To Lupine Hill via Depot Field Brook.

For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?).

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio.

Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), lilac - tinted, rather pretty.

The mouse-ear forget me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest.

The blue flag (Iris versicolor). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and simple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf.

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets.

The blue flag, notwithstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved parasols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit.

How completely all character is expressed by flowers !

This is a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's bonnets. Yet it belongs to the meadow and ornaments it much.

The critchicrotches are going to seed.

I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below.

Enothera pumila, dwarf tree-primrose. Ever it will be some obscure small and modest flower that will most please us.

Some of the ferns have branches wholly covered with fruit.

How difficult, if not impossible, to do the things we have done! as fishing and camping out. They seem to me a little fabulous now.

Boys are bathing at Hubbard's Bend, playing with a boat (I at the willows).

The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing, the not often seen flesh-color. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water.

As yet we have not man in nature.

What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties ! A pale pink, which the sun would soon tan.

White men ! There are no white men to contrast with the red and the black; they are of such colors as the weaver gives them. I wonder that the dog knows his master when he goes in to bathe and does not stay by his clothes.

Small white-bellied (?) swallows in a row ( a dozen ) on the telegraph - wire over the water by the bridge. This perch is little enough departure from unobstructed air to suit them. Pluming themselves.

If you could furnish a perch aerial enough, even birds of paradise would alight.

Swallows have forked tails, and wings and tails are about the same length. They do not alight on trees, methinks, unless on dead and bare boughs, but stretch a wire over water and they perch on it.

This is among the phenomena that cluster about the telegraph.

Hedge-mustard.

(Turned into the lane beyond Dennis's.) 

Some fields are almost wholly covered with sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, — its valves (?). It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, — three or four acres of it.

To the farmer or grazier it is a troublesome weed, but to the landscape-viewer an agreeable red tinge laid on by the painter. I feel well into summer when I see this redness.

It appears to be avoided by the cows.

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially.

Rye that has sown itself and come up scatteringly in bunches is now nearly ripe.

They are beginning to cut rank grass on the village street.

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! 

The glory of Dennis's lupines is departed, and the white now shows in abundance beneath them.

So I cannot walk longer in those fields of Enna in which Proserpine amused herself gathering flowers.

The steam whistle at a distance sounds even like the hum of a bee in a flower.

So man's works fall into nature.

The flies hum at mid-afternoon, as if peevish and weary of the length of the days.

The river is shrunk to summer width; on the sides smooth whitish water, or rather it is the light from the pads; - in the middle, dark blue or slate, rippled.

The color of the earth at a distance where a wood has been cut off is a reddish brown.

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house.

The Ranunculus filiformis on the muddy shore of the river.

The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.

It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon.

Who knows how much lighter day there may be?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 12, 1852

The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. See 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."); June 10, 1854 ("The meadows now begin to be yellow with senecio.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Senecio

It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Mouse-ear forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa small-flowered forget- me- not)

The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers . . .It will bear to be praised by poets.  See June 15, 1851 ("The blue-eyed grass, wellnamed, looks up to heaven."); A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Blue-Eyed Grass

The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below. See May 23, 1860 ("Critchicrotches some two or three days; now tender to eat . How agreeable and surprising the peculiar fragrance of the sweet flag when bruised! That this plant alone should have extracted this odor surely for so many ages each summer from the moist earth!");   May 27, 1852 ("The fruit of the sweet flag is now just fit to eat, and reminds me of childhood, — the critchicrotches. They would help sustain a famished traveller. The inmost tender leaf, also, near the base, is quite palatable, as children know. I love it as well as muskrats (?)."); July 20, 1852. "Dug open a muskrat's gallery ... there was half a critchicrotch in it." May 29 1854  (Critchicrotches have been edible some time in some places. It must be a kind of water milfoil, whose leaves I now see variously divided under water, and some nearly two feet long. ") See also Critchicrotches · iNaturalist ("It turns out Thoreau is referring to the fruit of Acorus calamus. This wetland plant goes by dozens of common names . . . sweet flag, calamus, beewort, bitter pepper root, gladdon, myrtle grass, myrtle sedge, pine root, rat root, sea sedge, sweet cane, sweet cinnamon, sweet grass, sweet myrtle, sweet root, sweet rush, and sweet sedge. . . . I continue to be amazed at how often I can observe the same plant or animal on the exact same date as Thoreau observes it.") and Journal IV 74, 92, 240, V 155, VI 307, VII 387.

Sheep's-sorrel, now turned red, helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. See June 12, 1859 ("I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now. . . . What a wholesome red! . . . There is hardly a more agreeable sight at this season."); June 12, 1854 ("Clover now reddens the fields."); See also June 11, 1853 ("In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood."); May 22, 1854 ("The sorrel beginning to redden the fields with ruddy health, — all these things make earth now a paradise. How many times I have been surprised thus, on turning about on this very spot, at the fairness of the earth!"); June 5, 1853 ("The distant fields are seen, reddened with sorrel, and the meadows wet green, full of fresh grass, and the trees in their first beautiful, bright, untarnished and unspotted green."); June 6, 1857(“A year is made up of a certain series and number of sensations and thoughts which have their language in nature. Now I am ice, now I am sorrel. Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind.”)

The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. See note to June 12, 1856 ("Sidesaddle flower numerously out now.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Purple Pitcher Plant

I should say the summer began with the leafiness, umbrageous summer! See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June.”); June 1, 1853 ("Summer begins now about a week past, with the expanded leaves, the shade and warm weather");June 4, 1860 (''The leafy season has fairly commenced."); June 6, 1855 ("The dark eye and shade of June”); June 9, 1852 (The general leafiness, shadiness, and waving of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season")

Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house. See June 24, 1852 ("I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one's eyes ache.");  November 25, 1853 ("The white houses of the village, also, are remarkably distinct and bare and brought very near."); November 29, 1858 ("[After a snowfall ] White houses no longer stand out and stare in the landscape.")

The locusts' blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance.  See June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 10, 1853 ("The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness."); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

Get yourself therefore a name.

November 15

Here is a rainy day, which keeps me in the house.

Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer.

“Good Lord ” says he, “a man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. Maybe the man you work with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds.”

I am pleased to read in Stoever's Life of Linnæus (Trapp's translation) that his 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, “a custom,” he says, “not unfrequent in Sweden, to take fresh appellations from natural objects.”

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.

It is refreshing to get to a man whom you will not be satisfied to call John's son or Johnson's son, but a new name applicable to himself alone, he being the first of his kind. We may say there have been but so many men as there are sur names, and of all the John-Smiths there has been but one true John Smith, and he of course is dead.

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all.

There was one enterprising boy came to school to me whose name was “Buster,” and an honorable name it was. He was the only boy in the school, to my knowledge, who was named.

What shall we say of the comparative intellectual vigor of the ancients and moderns, when we read of Theophrastus, the father of botany, that he composed more than two hundred treatises in the third century before Christ and the seventeenth before printing, about twenty of which remain, and that these fill six volumes in folio printed at Venice? Among the last are two works on natural history and the generation of plants. What a stimulus to a literary man to read his works! They were opera, not an essay or two, which you can carry between your thumb and finger.

Dioscorides (according to Stoever), who lived in the first century after Christ, was the first to inquire into the medicinal properties of plants, “the literary father of the materia medica." His work remains.

And next comes Pliny the Elder, and “by his own avowal (?), his natural history is a compilation from about twenty five hundred (?) different authors."

Conrad Gesner, of the Sixteenth Century, the first botanist of note among the moderns; also a naturalist generally.

In this century botany first “became a regular academical study.”

I think it would be a good discipline for Channing, who writes poetry in a sublimo-lipshod style, to write Latin, for then he would be compelled to say something always, and frequently have recourse to his grammar and dictionary. Methinks that what a man might write in a dead language could be more surely translated into good sense in his own language, than his own language could be translated into good Latin, or the dead language.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1851 

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all. See 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. . . . Our true names are nicknames."); August 19, 1851  ("There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal"); June 4, 1856 ("He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain.")

Theophrastus, the father of botany, . . Dioscorides . . . Pliny the Elder.. .Conrad Gesner. See February 17, 1852 ("If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science.")

A dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp.

February 28. 

2 P. M. — Thermometer 52; wind easterly. To Conantum. 

I am surprised to see how my English brook cress has expanded or extended since I saw it last fall to a bed four feet in diameter, as if it had grown in the water, though it is quite dirty or muddied with sediment. Many of the sprigs turn upwards and just rest on the water at their ends, as if they might be growing. It has also been eaten considerably by some inhabitant of the water. I am inclined to think it must grow in the winter. 

What is that bluish bulb now apparently beginning to shoot in the water there, floating loose (not the water purslane )?

I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about. 

Passed a very little boy in the street to-day, who had on a home-made cap of a woodchuck-skin, which his father or elder brother had killed and cured, and his mother or elder sister had fashioned into a nice warm cap. I was interested by the sight of it, it suggested so much of family history, adventure with the chuck, story told about [it], not without exaggeration, the human parents' care of their young these hard times. Johnny was promised many times, and now the work has been completed, — a perfect little idyl, as they say. The cap was large and round, big enough, you would say, for the boy's father, and had some kind of cloth visor stitched to it. The top of the cap was evidently the back of the woodchuck, as it were expanded in breadth, contracted in length, and it was as fresh and handsome as if the woodchuck wore it himself. The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life. 

As if he put his head into the belly of a woodchuck, having cut off his tail and legs and substituted a visor for the head. The little fellow wore it innocently enough, not knowing what he had on, forsooth, going about his small business pit-a-pat; and his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done. Such should be the history of every piece of clothing that we wear. 

As I stood by Eagle Field wall, I heard a fine rattling sound, produced by the wind on some dry weeds at my elbow. It was occasioned by the wind rattling the fine seeds in those pods of the indigo-weed which were still closed, — a distinct rattling din which drew my attention to it, — like a small Indian's calabash. Not a mere rustling of dry weeds, but the shaking of a rattle, or a hundred rattles, beside. 

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season. 

I take up a handsomely spread (or blossomed) pitch pine cone, but I find that a squirrel has begun to strip it first, having gnawed off a few of the scales at the base. The squirrel always begins to gnaw a cone thus at the base, as if it were a stringent law among the squirrel people, — as if the old squirrels taught the young ones a few simple rules like this. 

C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp. 

One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. 

One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th, and says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck. 

It suggests from what point of view Gesner (or his translator) describes an animal, — how far he takes into account man's relation to it, — that he commonly gives the “epithets” which have been applied to it. He deals in description, and epithets are a short description. And the translator says to the reader, “All these rows and ranks of living four-footed beasts are as letters and midwives to save the reverence which is due to the Highest (that made them ) from perishing within you.” 

I hear this account of Austin: An acquaintance who had bought him a place in Lincoln took him out one day to see it, and Austin was so smitten with the quiet and retirement and other rural charms that he at once sold his house in Concord, bought a small piece of rocky pasture in an out-of-the way part of this out-of-the-way town and with the funds raised by the sale of his old house built him a costly stone house upon it. Now he finds that this retirement (or country life) is the very thing which he does not want, but, his property being chiefly invested in the house, he is caught in a trap, as it were, for he cannot sell it, though he advertises it every year.

As for society, he has none; his neighbors are few and far between, and he never visits them nor they him. They can do without him, being old settlers, adscripti glebae. 

He found one man in the next town who got his living by sporting and fishing, and he has built him a little hut and got him to live on his place for society and help fulness. He cannot get help either for the outdoor or indoor work. There are none thereabouts who work by the day or job, and servant-girls decline to come so far into the country. Surrounded by grain-fields, he sends to Cambridge for his oats, and, as for milk, he can scarcely get any at all, for the farmers all send it to Boston, but he has persuaded one to leave some for him at the depot half a mile off.

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. For our science, so called, is always more barren and mixed up with error than our sympathies are. 

As I go down the Boston road, I see an Irishman wheeling home from far a large damp and rotten pine log for fuel. He evidently sweats at it , and pauses to rest many times. He found, perhaps, that his wood-pile was gone before the winter was, and he trusts thus to contend with the remaining cold. I see him unload it in his yard before me and then rest himself. The piles of solid oak wood which I see in other yards do not interest me at all, but this looked like fuel. It warmed me to think of it. He will now proceed to split it finely, and then I fear it [will] require almost as much heat to dry it, as it will give out at last. 

How rarely we are encouraged by the sight of simple actions in the street! We deal with banks and other institutions, where the life and humanity are concealed, — what there is. I like at least to see the great beams half exposed in the ceiling or the corner.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 28, 1860


I suppose they are linarias which I still see flying about See January 8, 1860 ("When I heard their note, I looked to find them on a birch, and lo, it was a black birch! [Were they not linarias? Vide Jan. 24, 27, 29.]")

The great gray-tipped wind hairs were all preserved, and stood out above the brown only a little more loosely than in life,  -- his black eyes sparkled beneath it when I remarked on its warmth , even as the woodchuck's might have done.See May 30, 1859 ("Its colors were gray, reddish brown, and blackish, the gray-tipped wind hairs giving it a grizzly look above, and when it stood up its distinct rust-color beneath was seen, while the top of its head was dark-brown, becoming black at snout, as also its paws and its little rounded ears."); April 29, 1855 ("See his shining black eyes and black snout and his little erect ears. He is of a light brown forward at this distance (hoary above, yellowish or sorrel beneath), gradually darkening backward to the end of the tail, which is dark-brown. The general aspect is grizzly.")

C. saw a dozen robins to-day. See February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 25, 1859 ("I hear that robins were seen a week or more ago."); February 27, 1857 ("Before I opened the window this cold morning, I heard the peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather, so often heard first borne on the cutting March wind or through sleet or rain, as if its coming were premature.")

Looking from Hubbard's Bridge, I see a great water bug even on the river, so forward is the season.C. saw a dozen robins to-day.One tells me that George Hubbard told him he saw blackbirds go over this forenoon. One of the Corner Wheelers feels sure that he saw a bluebird on the 24th See . March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect; they seem premature, and there is no such evidence of spring as themselves, so that they literally fetch the year about. It is thus when I hear the first robin or bluebird or, looking along the brooks, see the first water-bugs out circling. But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede.")

Says he saw a sheldrake in the river at the factory "a month ago." I should say that the sheldrake was our hardiest duck .See March 1, 1856 ("It is remarkable that though I have not been able to find any open place in the river almost all winter,. . . Coombs should (as he says) have killed two sheldrakes at the falls by the factory, a place which I had forgotten, some four or six weeks ago. Singular that this hardy bird should have found this small opening,. . .If there is a crack amid the rocks of some waterfall, this bright diver is sure to know it. Ask the sheldrake whether the rivers are completely sealed up."); February 27, 1860 ("This is the first bird of the spring that I have seen or heard of.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Sheldrake (Merganser, Goosander)

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. See October 13, 1857 ("We ordinarily do not see what is before us, but what our prejudices presume to be there."); October 4, 1859 (“It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know. I do not get nearer by a hair's breadth to any natural object so long as I presume that I have an introduction to it from some learned man. To conceive of it with a total apprehension I must for the thousandth time approach it as something totally strange. If you would make acquaintance with the ferns you must forget your botany. You must get rid of what is commonly called knowledge of them. Not a single scientific term or distinction is the least to the purpose, for you would fain perceive something, and you must approach the object totally unprejudiced You must be aware that no thing is what you have taken it to be. In what book is this world and its beauty described? Who has plotted the steps toward the discovery of beauty? You have got to be in a different state from common. Your greatest success will be simply to perceive that such things are."); November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it "); February 14, 1851 ("We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see")

High dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice.

February 25. 

P. M. - Round via Clamshell to Hubbard's Bridge. 

Colder, and frozen ground; strong wind, northwest. 

I noticed yesterday in the street some dryness of stones at crossings and in the road and sidewalk here and there, and even two or three boys beginning to play at marbles, so ready are they to get at the earth. 

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind? 

It is pleasant to see high dark-blue waves half a mile off running incessantly along the edge of white ice. There the motion of the blue liquid is the most distinct. As the waves rise and fall they seem to run swiftly along the edge of the ice. 

The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet. 

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. 

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind. A small one was conspicuous by the side of the road more than a quarter of a mile ahead. I suspect that those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. 

Those peculiar tracks which I saw some time ago, and still see, made in slosh and since frozen at the Andromeda Ponds, I think must be mole-tracks, and those “nicks” on the sides are where they shoved back the snow with their vertical flippers. This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1860

The fields of open water amid the thin ice of the meadows are the spectacle to-day. They are especially dark blue when I look southwest. Has it anything to do with the direction of the wind. See 

February 12, 1860 ("That dark-eyed water, especially when I see it at right angles with the direction of the sun, is it not the first sign of spring? "); February 25, 1851 ("The waves on the meadows make a fine show."); March 29, 1852 ("The water on the meadows looks very dark from the street. Their color depends on the position of the beholder in relation to the direction of the wind.") See alsoo A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Bright Blue Water

For a day or two past I have seen in various places the small tracks apparently of skunks. They appear to come out commonly in the warmer weather in the latter part of February. see February 24, 1857 ("I have seen the probings of skunks for a week or more. “); March 10, 1854 ("See a skunk in the Corner road, which I follow. . .. It is a slender black (and white) animal, with its back remarkably arched, standing high behind and carrying its head low; runs, even when undisturbed, with singular teeter or undulation, like the walking of a Chinese lady. Very slow; I hardly have to run to keep up with it. It has a long tail, which it regularly erects when I come too near and prepares to discharge its liquid. It is white at the end of the tail, and the hind head and a line on the front of the face, — the rest black, except the flesh-colored nose (and I think feet). . . .I have no doubt they have begun to probe already where the ground permits, — or as far as it does. But what have they eat all winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Skunks Active

I noticed yesterday the first conspicuous silvery sheen from the needles of the white pine waving in the wind . . .those plumes which have been appressed or contracted by snow and ice are not only dried but opened and spread by the wind. See February 4, 1852 ("Now the white pine are a misty blue; anon a lively, silvery light plays on them, and they seem to erect themselves unusually"); February 5, 1852 ("The boughs, feathery boughs, of the white pines, tier above tier, reflect a silvery light against the darkness of the grove.");  February 10, 1860 ("I see that Wheildon's pines are rocking and showing their silvery under sides as last spring, — their first awakening, as it were. "); March 2, 1860 ("I see a row of white pines, too, waving and reflecting their silvery light.")

This is a very peculiar track, a broad channel in slosh, and at length in ice. See February 20, 1852 ("No wonder that we so rarely see these animals, though their tracks are so common.  . . .The mole goes behind and beneath, rather than before and above.")

Look for hard ice in the shade.

February 23. 

Fire & Ice February 23, 2019

P. M. — Walk to Quinsigamond Pond, where was good skating yesterday, but this very pleasant and warm day it is suddenly quite too soft. 

I was just saying to Blake that I should look for hard ice in the shade, or north side, of some wooded hill close to the shore, though skating was out of the question elsewhere, when, looking up, I saw a gentleman and lady very gracefully gyrating and, as it were, courtesying to each other in a small bay under such a hill on the opposite shore of the pond. 

Intervening bushes and shore concealed the ice, so that their swift and graceful motions, their bodies inclined at various angles as they gyrated forward and backward about a small space, looking as if they would hit each other, reminded me of the circling of two winged insects in the air, or hawks receding and approaching. 

I first hear and then see eight or ten bluebirds going over. Perhaps they have not reached Concord yet. One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th. 

I see, just caught in the pond, a brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, but a much finer and slighter reticulation than the common, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout. This is much shorter and broader as you look down on it.

In Bell Pond (once Bladder Pond) on the same road, near to Worcester, they were catching little shiners, only, at most, two inches long, for perch bait. (The perch and pickerel they commonly catch at Quinsigamond are small.) They cut a round hole about three feet in diameter and let down a simple net, with only a stone to sink it in the bottom, then cast Indian meal or bits of cracker into the water, and the minnows swim forward after the bait, and the fisherman, without seeing them, pulls up the net at a venture.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, February 23, 1859

One boy tells me that he saw a bluebird in Concord on Sunday, the 20th. See note to February 18, 1857 (“I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Bluebird in Early Spring.

A brook pickerel which, though it has no transverse bars, is very distinct from it in the length and form of the snout.  See April 21, 1858 ("Melvin says that those short-nosed brook pickerel are caught in the river also, but rarely weigh more than two pounds.”) and note to January 20, 1859 (“Among four or five pickerel in a “well” on the river, I see one with distinct transverse bars as I look down on its back, — not quite across the back, but plain as they spring from the side of the back, — while all the others are uniformly dark above.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Pickerel

When we looked up in the night we saw the stars were bright as in winter.

July 6. 

Tuesday. 5.35 A. M. —Keep on through North Tamworth, and breakfast by shore of one of the Ossipee Lakes. 

July 6, 2018

Chocorua north-northwest. Hear and see loons and see a peetweet’s egg washed up. A shallow-shored pond, too shallow for fishing, with a few breams seen near shore; some pontederia and target weed in it. 

Travelling thus toward the White Mountains, the mountains fairly begin with Red Hill and Ossipee Mountain, but the White Mountain scenery proper on the high hillside road in Madison before entering Conway, where you see Chocorua on the left, Mote Mountain ahead, Doublehead, and some of the White Mountains proper beyond, i. e. a sharp peak. 

We fished in vain in a small clear pond by the road side in Madison. 

Chocorua is as interesting a peak as any to remember. You may be jogging along steadily for a day before you get round it and leave it behind, first seeing it on the north, then northwest, then west, and at last south westerly, ever stern, rugged and inaccessible, and omnipresent. It was seen from Gilmanton to Conway, and from Moultonboro was the ruling feature. 

The scenery in Conway and onward to North Conway is surprisingly grand. You are steadily advancing into an amphitheatre of mountains.

I do not know exactly how long we had seen one of the highest peaks before us in the extreme northwest, with snow on its side just below the summit, but a little beyond Conway a boy called it Mt. Washington. I think it was visible just before entering Conway village. If Mt. Washington, the snow must have been in Tuckerman’s Ravine, which, methinks, is rather too low. Perhaps it was that we afterward saw on Mt. Adams. There was the regular dark pyramid of Kearsarge at first in front, then, as you proceed to North Conway, on our right, with its deserted hotel on the summit, and Mote Mountain accompanies you on the left, and high, bare rocky precipices at last on the same side. 

The road, which is for the most part level, winds along the Saco through groves of maples, etc., on the level intervals, with so little of rugged New Hampshire under your feet, often soft and sandy road. The scenery is remarkable for this contrast of level interval with soft and shady groves, with mountain grandeur and ruggedness. Often from the midst of level maple groves, which remind you only of classic lowlands, you look out through a vista to the most New Hampshire generally, quite unexpected by me, and suggests a superior culture. 

We at length crossed the Saco from the left to the, right side of the valley, going over or through three channels. After leaving North Conway, the higher White Mountains were less seen, if at all. They had not appeared in pinnacles, as sometimes described, but broad and massive. 

Only one of the higher peaks or summits (called by the boy Mt. Washington) was conspicuous. The snow near the top was conspicuous here thirty miles off. The summit appeared dark, the rocks just beneath pale-brown (forenoon) (not flesh-colored like Chocorua), and below, green, wooded. 

The road to-day from Tamworth almost to the base of Mt. Washington was better on the whole, less hilly, than through Gilmanton to Tamworth; i. e., the hills were not so long and tedious. 

At Bartlett Corner we turned up the Ellis River and took our nooning on the bank of the river, by the bridge just this side of Jackson Centre, in a rock maple grove. Saw snow on Mt. Carter (?) from this road. There are but few narrow intervals on this road, — two or three only after passing Jackson, — and each is improved by a settler. We see the handsome Malva sylvestris, an introduced flower, by roadside, apparently in prime, and also in Conway, and hear the night warbler all along thus far. 

Saw the bones of a bear at Wentworth’s house, and camped, rather late, on right-hand side of road just beyond, or a little more than four miles from Jackson. The wood was canoe birch and some yellow (see little of the small white birch as far as to the neighborhood of the mountains), rock maple, spruce, fir, Populus tremuliformis, and one grandidentata, etc. 

In this deep vale between the mountains, the sun set very early to us, but we saw it on the mountains long after. Heard at evening the wood thrush, veery, white-throated sparrow, etc., and I found a fresh nest in a fir, made of hemlock twigs, etc., when I was getting twigs for a bed. The mosquitoes troubled us in the evening and just before dawn, but not seriously in the middle of the night. This, I find, is the way with them generally. 

Wentworth said he was much troubled by the bears. They killed his sheep and calves and destroyed his corn when in the milk, close by his house. He has trapped and killed many of them and brought home and reared the young. 

When we looked up in the night we saw that the stars were bright as in winter, owing to the clear cold air.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 6, 1858

When we looked up in

the night we saw the stars were

bright as in winter

I find a young Emys insculpta

June 18. 

How dogs will resort to carrion, a dead cow or horse, half buried, no matter how stale, — the best-bred and petted village dogs, and there gorge themselves with the most disgusting offal by the hour, as if it were a season of famine! Surely they are foul creatures that we make cossets of. 

P. M. – To Walden to see a bird's nest, a red-eye's, in a small white pine; nest not so high as my head; still laying. 

A boy climbs to the cat owl's nest and casts down what is left of it, — a few short sticks and some earthy almost turfy foundation, as if it were the accumulation of years. Beside much black and white skunk-hair, there are many fishes scales (!) intimately mixed with its substance, and some skunk’s bones. 

E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. One or more of them he thinks has been covered by the recent flood. 

A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson's thrush, which he found in a nest in a low bush about a foot from the ground. 

Coming across the level pasture west of E. Hubbard's swamp, toward Emerson's, I find a young Emys insculpta, apparently going to lay, though she had not dug a hole. It was four and a quarter inches long by three and a half wide, and altogether the handsomest turtle of this species, if not of any, that I have ever seen. It was quite fresh and perfect, without wound or imperfection; its claws quite sharp and slender, and the annual striae so distinct on all the scales above and below that I could count them with ease. It was nine years old, though it would be like an infant among turtles, the successive striae being perfectly parallel at equal distances apart.

The sternum, with a large black spot on the rear angle of each scale and else where a rich brown color, even reminded me of the turtle-shell of commerce. While its upper shell was of ‘a uniform wholesome brown, very prettily marked in deed, not only by the outlines of the scales, but more distinctly by the lines of prominences raying out from the starting-point of each scale, perfectly preserved in each year’s growth, a most elaborate coat of mail, worthy the lifelong labor of some reptilian Vulcan. 

This must have been a belle among the E. insculpta. Nevertheless I did discover that all the claws but one of one hind foot were gone! Had not a bird peeked them off? So liable are they to injury in their long lives. Then they are so well-behaved; can be taken up and brought home in your pocket, and make no unseemly efforts to escape. The upper shell was remarkably spreading and curving upward on the rear edges.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 18, 1858

A red-eye's, in a small white pine; nest not so high as my head; still laying. See June 12, 1855 ("In the thick swamp behind the hill I look at the vireo’s nest which C. found on the 10th, within reach on a red maple forked twig, eight feet from ground. He took one cowbird’s egg from it, and I now take the other, which he left. There is no vireo’s egg"); July 21, 1855 ("A red-eyed vireo nest on a red maple on Island Neck, on meadow-edge, ten feet from ground; one egg half hatched and one cowbird’s egg, nearly fresh, a trifle larger"); January 13, 1856 ("What a wonderful genius it is that leads the vireo to select the tough fibres of the inner bark, instead of the more brittle grasses, for its basket, the elastic pine-needles and the twigs, curved as they dried to give it form, and, as I suppose, the silk of cocoons, etc., etc., to bind it together with!")

A boy climbs to the cat owl's nest and casts down what is left of it, — a few short sticks and some earthy almost turfy foundation, as if it were the accumulation of years. Beside much black and white skunk-hair, there are many fishes scales (!) intimately mixed with its substance, and some skunk’s bones. See May 20, 1858 ("Saw in the street a young cat owl, one of two which Skinner killed in Walden Woods yesterday. . . .So I visited the nest. It was in a large white pine close . . . the nest is some thirty-five feet high on two limbs close to the main stem, and, according to Skinner, was not much more than a foot across, made of small sticks, nearly flat, “without fine stuff!” There were but two young. ")

E. Bartlett has found three bobolinks’ nests. See June 22, 1858 (“I have one of the nests. There is but little of it ...”);  see also  June 26, 1857 ("I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days, — in E. Hosmer's meadow by the garlic and here in Charles Hubbard's, — but the birds are so overanxious, though you may be pretty far off, and so shy about visiting their nests while you are there, that you watch them in vain."); July 2, 1855 ("Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest ..")

A little boy brings me an egg of Wilson's thrush. See June 2, 1852 ("Nest of Wilson's thrush with bluish-green eggs.")

This must have been a belle among the E. insculpta. Nevertheless I did discover that all the claws but one of one hind foot were gone! See May 14, 1857 ("I see one with a large dent three eighths of an inch deep and nearly two inches long in the middle of its back, where it was once partially crushed. Hardly one has a perfect shell.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)

June18. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, June 18

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 © 2009-2020

One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle.

November 29. 

Sophia called on old lady Hayden yesterday, and she told her of somebody's twin infants of whom one died for want of air. The father, therefore, was advised to take the survivor with him each morning to the barn, and hold it up to the muzzle of each of the cattle in succession as they got up, that it might catch their first morning breath, and then lay it on the hay while he foddered them. He did so, and there never was a healthier child than this, three months afterward. 

P. M. — To Assabet Bath and down bank. 

This and yesterday remarkably warm days. In John Hosmer's low birch sprout-land, a few rods beyond Tortoise Hollow, or Valley, I find, on raking aside the withered leaves on the ground, one of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter. 

I think that the river might rise so high as to wash this out of the withered grass and leaves here. 

Soon after I find another in a catbird’s nest, nearly three feet from the ground, in a thorn, together [with] half a nestful of freshly nibbled acorn shells and a few hazelnut shells, the work, probably, of a mouse or a squirrel; but this caterpillar was dead and apparently partly eaten. So I am still inclined to think that most of them are washed out of the meadows by the freshets. 

Several times before I have seen nests half filled with nutshells, and as the Mus leucopus adds to and after occupies old nests, am inclined to think that he does it. It may be a convenient deposit for him (or for a striped squirrel??), or else he likes it for concealment and protection against hawks, —in the midst of a thorn bush, before the leaves fall. I do not know, however, that the mouse has this habit of perching while it nibbles, as the squirrel has. 

Again I am struck by the singularly wholesome colors of the withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. So strong and cheerful, as if it rejoiced at the advent of winter, and exclaimed, “Winter, come on!” It exhibits the fashionable colors of the winter on the two sides of its leaves. It sets the fashions, colors good for bare ground or for snow, grateful to the eyes of rabbits and partridges. This is the extent of its gaudiness, red brown and misty white, and yet it is gay. The colors of the brightest flowers are not more agreeable to my eye. Then there is the now rich, dark brown of the black oak’s large and somewhat curled leaf on sprouts, with its lighter, almost yellowish, brown under side. Then the salmonish hue of white oak leaves, with the under sides less distinctly lighter. Many, however, have quite faded already. 

Going through a partly frozen meadow near the meadow [sic], scraping through the sweet-gale, I am pleasantly scented with its odoriferous fruit. 

A week or so ago, as I learn, Miss Emeline Barnett told a little boy who boards with her, and who was playing with an open knife in his hand, that he must be careful not to fall down and cut himself with it, for once Mr. David Loring, when he was a little boy, fell down with a knife in his hand and cut his throat badly. It was soon reported, among the children at least, that little David Loring, the grandson of the former, had fallen down with a knife in his hand as he was going to school, and nearly cut his throat; next, that Mr. David Loring the grandfather (who lives in Framingham) had committed suicide, had cut his throat, was not dead, indeed, but was not expected to live; and in this form the story spread like wildfire over the town and county. Nobody expressed surprise. His oldest acquaintances and best friends, his legal adviser, all said, “Well, I can believe it.” He was known by many to have been speculating in Western lands, which, owing to the hard times, was a failure, and he was depressed in consequence. Sally Cummings helped spread the news. Said there was no doubt of it, but there was Fay’s wife (L.’s daughter) knew nothing of it yet, they were as merry as crickets over there. Others stated that Wetherbee, the expressman, had been over to Northboro, and learned that Mr. Loring had taken poison in Northboro. Mr. Rhodes was stated to have received a letter from Mr. Robbins of Framingham giving all the particulars. Mr. Wild, it was said, had also got a letter from his son Silas in Framingham, to whom he had written, which confirmed the report. As Wild went down-town, he met Meeks the carpenter and inquired in a significant way if he got anything new. Meeks simply answered, “Well, David Loring won’t eat another Thanksgiving dinner.” A child at school wrote to her parents at Northboro, telling the news. Mrs. Loring's sister lives there, and it chances that her husband committed suicide. They were, therefore, slow to communicate the news to her, but at length could not contain themselves longer and told it. The sister was terribly affected; wrote to her son (L.’s nephew) in Worcester, who immediately took the cars and went to Framingham and when he arrived there met his uncle just putting his family into the cars. He shook his hand very heartily indeed, looking, however, hard at his throat, but said not a word about his errand. Already doubts had arisen, people were careful how they spoke of it, the ex pressmen were mum, Adams and Wetherbee never said Loring. The Framingham expressman used the same room with Adams in Boston. A. simply asked, “Any news from Framingham this morning? Seen Loring lately?” and learned that all was well.

H. D. Thoreau , Journal, November 29, 1857


One of those fuzzy caterpillars, black at each end and rust-colored in middle, curled up in a ring, — the same kind that I find on the ice and snow, frozen, in winter. See January 5, 1858 ("I see one of those fuzzy winter caterpillars, black at the two ends and brown-red in middle, crawling on a rock by the Hunt's Bridge causeway. "); January 8, 1857 ("I picked up on the bare ice of the river, opposite the oak in Shattuck's land, on a small space blown bare of snow, a fuzzy caterpillar, black at the two ends and red-brown in the middle, rolled into a ball . . .”); January 24, 1858 ("I see two of those black and red-brown fuzzy caterpillars in a mullein leaf on this bare edge-hill, which could not have blown from any tree, I think. They apparently take refuge in such places.");  March 8, 1855 ("I see of late more than before of the fuzzy caterpillars, both black and reddish-brown.”); March 5, 1854 ("See a small blackish caterpillar on the snow. Where do they come from? ")

The withered oak leaves, especially the shrub oak, so thick and firm and unworn, without speck or fret, clear reddish-brown (sometimes paler or yellowish brown), its whitish under sides contrasting with it in a very cheerful manner. See October 25, 1858 ("How should we do without this variety of oak leaves, — the forms and colors?")  November 20, 1858 ("The rare wholesome and permanent beauty of withered oak leaves of various hues of brown mottling a hillside, especially seen when the sun is low, — Quaker colors, sober ornaments, beauty that quite satisfies the eye.");  December 1. 1856 ("The shrub oak, lowly, loving the earth and spreading over it, tough, thick-leaved; leaves firm and sound in winter and rustling like leather shields; leaves fair and wholesome to the eye, clean and smooth to the touch. Tough to support the snow, not broken down by it.")  

Now is the time to paddle these smooth warm vernal waters.

May 3. 

Sunday. A remarkably warm and pleasant morning. A. M. — To Battle-Ground by river. 

I heard the ring of toads at 6 a. m. The flood on the meadows, still high, is quite smooth, and many are out this still and suddenly very warm morning, pushing about in boats. 

Now, thinks many a one, is the time to paddle or push gently far up or down the river, along the still, warm meadow's edge, and perhaps we may see some large turtles, or muskrats, or otter, or rare fish or fowl. It will be a grand forenoon for a cruise, to explore these meadow shores and inundated maple swamps which we have never explored. Now we shall be recompensed for the week's confinement to shop or garden. 

We will spend our Sabbath exploring these smooth warm vernal waters. Up or down shall we go? To Fair Haven Bay and the Sudbury meadows, or to Ball's Hill and Carlisle Bridge? Along the meadow's edge, lined with willow and alders and maples, under the catkins of the early willow, and brushing those of the sweet-gale with our prow, where the sloping pasture and the plowed ground, submerged, are fast drinking up the flood. What fair isles, what remote coast shall we explore? What San Salvador or Bay of All Saints arrive at? All are tempted forth, like flies, into the sun. 

All isles seem fortunate and blessed to-day; all capes are of Good Hope. 

The same sun and calm that tempts the turtles out tempts the voyagers. It is an opportunity to explore their own natures, to float along their own shores. The woodpecker cackles and the crow black bird utters his jarring chatter from the oaks and maples. All well men and women who are not restrained by superstitious custom come abroad this morning by land or water, and such as have boats launch them and put forth in search of adventure. 

Others, less free or, it may be, less fortunate, take their station on bridges, watching the rush of water through them and the motions of the departing voyagers, and listening to the notes of blackbirds from over the smooth water. They see a swimming snake, or a muskrat dive, — airing and sunning themselves there until the first bell rings. Up and down the town, men and boys that are under subjection are polishing their shoes and brushing their go-to-meeting clothes. 

I, a descendant of Northmen who worshipped Thor, spend my time worshipping neither Thor nor Christ; a descendant of Northmen who sacrificed men and horses, sacrifice neither men nor horses. I care not for Thor nor for the Jews. I sympathize not to-day with those who go to church in newest clothes and sit quietly in straight-backed pews. 

I sympathize rather with the boy who has none to look after him, who borrows a boat and paddle and in common clothes sets out to explore these temporary vernal lakes. I meet such a boy paddling along under a sunny bank, with bare feet and his pants rolled up above his knees, ready to leap into the water at a moment's warning. Better for him to read "Robinson Crusoe" than Baxter's "Saints' Rest."

I hear the soft, purring, stertorous croak of frogs on the meadow. 

The pine warbler is perhaps the commonest bird heard now from the wood-sides. It seems left [to] it almost alone to fill their empty aisles. 

The above boy had caught a snapping turtle, the third he had got this year. The first he said he got the fore part of April. He also had caught a bullfrog sitting on the shore just now. 

Thermometer from 1 to 2 p. m., at 78°. 

Neighbors come forth to view the expanding buds in their gardens. 

I see where some fish, probably a pickerel, darted away from high on the meadows, toward the river, and swims so high that it makes a long ripple for twenty rods. 

3 p. m. — To Cliffs. 

In the pool which dries up in Jonathan Wheeler's orchard, I see toads, or maybe frogs, spread out on the surface, uttering a short, loud, peculiar croak, not like that of the early croaking frog, nor the smooth, purring, stertorous one of this morning, but a coarse belching croak, at a little distance like quor and quar, being on various keys, but nearer like ow-oo-uk though one syllable or ar-r-r. Thus they lie, perhaps within a foot or two and facing each other, and alternately throwing their heads back, i. e. upward, swelling their white throats and uttering this abominable noise. 

Then one rushes upon the other, leaps upon him. They struggle and roll over and sink for a moment, and presently they show their heads again a foot or two apart. There are a dozen or more, with very prominent eyes, with bright golden irides. 

In another pool, in Warren's meadow, I hear the ring of toads and the peep of hylodes, and, taking off my stockings and shoes, at length stand in their midst. There are a hundred toads close around me, copulating or preparing to. These look at a little distance precisely like the last, but no one utters that peculiar rough, belching croak, only their common musical ring, and occasionally a short, fainter, interrupted, quivering note, as of alarm. They are continually swimming to and leaping upon each other. I see many large reddish-brown ones, probably females, with small grayish ones lying flat on their backs, the fore feet clasped around them. These commonly lie flat on the bottom, often as if dead, but from time [to time] the under one rises with its load to the surface, puts its nose out and then sinks again. 

The single ones leap upon these double ones and roll them over in vain like the rest. It is the single ones that ring and are so active. They make great gray, yellowish, greenish, or whitish bubbles (different specimens being thus various), as big as their heads. One that rings within a foot of me seems to make the earth vibrate, and I feel it and am thrilled to my very spine, it is so terrene a sound. It reminds me of many a summer night on the river. A bubbling ring, which is continuous about a minute, and then its bag must be inflated again. 

When I move suddenly, it is the single ones chiefly that conceal themselves. The others are not so easily disturbed. You would hardly believe that toads could be so excited and active. When that nearest ringer sounded, the very sod by my feet (whose spires rose above water) seemed to tremble, and the earth itself, and I was thrilled to my spine and vibrated to it. They like a rest for their toes when they ring. It is a sound as crowded with protuberant bubbles as the rind of an orange. A clear, ringing note with a bubbling trill. It takes complete possession of you, for you vibrate to it, and can hear nothing else. 

At length, too, a hylodes or two were heard close about me, but not one was seen. The nearest seemed to have his residence in my ear alone. It took such possession of my ear that I was unable to appreciate the source whence it came. 

It is so warm, mosquitoes alight on my hands and face. 

As I approach the entrance to the spring path, I hear some chickadees phe-be-ing. One sings phe-e — be' be — be' be, just as if another struck in immediately after the usual strain. 

Salix tristis is out to-day at least, perhaps yesterday, by what I may call S. tristis Path. 

Viola ovata is pretty common there. 

Above the Cliffs, scare up a pair of turtle doves from the stubble, which go off with their shrill rattling whistle. 

Corydalis glauca is five inches high. The pistillate Equisetum arvense shows itself. 

To-day we sit without fire. 

Emerson says that Brewer tells him my "night warbler" is probably the Nashville warbler.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 3, 1857

I heard the ring of toads at 6 a. m. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The ring of toads

Emerson says that Brewer tells him my "night warbler" is probably the Nashville warbler.  Thoreau;s night-warbler  is likely the oven-bird making its flight call. According to Emerson the night warbler is "a bird he had never identified, had been in search of twelve years, which always, when he saw it, was in the act of diving down into a tree or bush.”  See note to May 19, 1858 (" Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low.")