Delayed by fog in night off coast of Maine.

July 20 

To Boston on way to Maine Woods. 

At Natural History Library. 

Holbrook makes the Emys terrapin to be found from Rhode Island to Florida and South America. "The only Emys common to North and South America." So did not know it was found at New Bedford. Was not my Freetown turtle (vide April 13th) Holbrook's Kinosternon Pennsylvanicum? In his plate the edges of the scales are of more waving lines than those of the Sternothoerus; it has more brown or reddish yellow both above and below; its tail appears more sharply horny. There is no yellow line on its neck. The sternum is considerably larger (in proportion to carapax) as well as broader behind, and the plates connecting it with the upper shell are much wider. In the generic account the difference from the Sternothoerus is that the jaws are hooked (I see no difference in the plates) and the "sternum sub divided into three sections, anterior and posterior movable ; " and the " supplemental plates very large." Under this species he says the shell is "ecarinate;" "vertebral plates depressed, sub-imbricate." "Length of shell, 3 1/2 inches; breadth of shell, 2 inches 10 lines; elevation, 1 3/4 inches; length of sternum, 3 inches 2 lines." "The living animal has a slight odour of musk that is not disagreeable." Found in Atlantic States from Florida to latitude 41°. Thinks Hitchcock mistook it for Sternothoerus in his Geology. Found in the West, and Say says, high up the Missouri. 

According to De Kay, it is found sparingly in the southern counties of New York, and he says, "It has a strong musky smell." Of the Sternothoerus he says, "There appear to be two varieties, of which one is smooth on the shell, while the other is sub-carinate." Length of shell of Sternothoerus, 2 5/10 inches; height, 1 2/10; of Kinosternon, 4 and 8/10. (Vide April 13th.) 

De Kay does not describe the Cistuda Blandingii as found in New York. 

5 p. m. — Take cars for Portland. 

Very hot and dusty; as much need of a veil in the cars to exclude cinders as in the woods to keep off mosquitoes. Riding in the cars this weather like sitting in the flue of a chimney. 

Take steamer at Portland. Delayed by fog in night off coast of Maine.

H. D.Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1857

De Kay: . James Dekay (October 12, 1792 – November 21, 1851) was an American zoologist involved with the Geological Survey of New York, wiho published the multi-volume Zoology of New York, or The New-York Fauna covering: mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians and fish -- the nearly 2,300 animals they estimated to exist in New York. This work was illustrated by  John William Hill. Hill and De Kay used a camera lucia for the rough drafts of the drawings. Hill's drawings of birds represented the first time hand-colored lithographs were used to illustrate a state bird book. De Kay collected the first specimen of a species of small brown snake on Long Island, which was named for him as Storeria dekayi. ~ Wikipedia

Was not my Freetown turtle (vide April 13th) Holbrook's Kinosternon Pennsylvanicum? See April 13, 1857 ("Saw a strange turtle, much like a small snapping turtle or very large Sternothoerus odoratus . . .")

That sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather.

February 27

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. 

P. M. — To the Hill. 

FEBRUARY 27, 2017

The river has skimmed over again in many places. 

I see many crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. They are picking the cow-dung scattered about, apparently for the worms, etc., it contains. They have done this in so many places that it looks as if the farmer had been at work with his maul. They must save him some trouble thus.

I see cinders two or three inches in diameter, apparently burnt clapboards, on the bank of the North River, which came from the burning Lee house! Yet it was quite a damp night, after rain in the afternoon, and rather still. They are all curled by the heat, so that you can tell which side was first exposed to it. The grain is more distinct than ever. Nature so abhors a straight line that she curls each cinder as she launches it on the fiery whirlwind. 

All the lightness and ethereal spirit of the wood is gone, and this black earthy residuum alone returned. The russet hillside is spotted with them. They suggest some affinity with the cawing crows. 

I see some of those large purplish chocolate-colored puffballs. They grow in dry pastures. They are in various states. I do not understand their changes.

Some are quite pulverulent, and emitting a cloud of dust at every touch. 

Others present a firm, very light ash-colored surface above, in a shallow saucer, with a narrow, wrinkled, crenate border, and beneath this firm skin is a perfectly dry spongy mass, less ashy, more reddish than the last, and fibrous, with very little dust in it but many small ribbed grubs. 

The surface often looks as if it had been pecked by birds in search of these grubs. 

Sometimes there is, above the white skin of the saucer, considerable pulverulent substance, as if in the other case this had been dissipated. 

Sometimes two large ones are joined at the root. 

Was there any portion (now dissipated) above this light-colored skin? Did the portion beneath the skin originally contain more dust, which has escaped? Or will it yet come to dust? 

Are not fungi the best hygrometers?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 27, 1857

The peep of a robin, that sound so often heard in cheerless or else rainy weather . . . as if its coming were premature. See February 27, 1861 ("Mother hears a robin to-day."); See also February 25, 1857 ("Goodwin says he saw a robin this morning.”); February 28, 1860 ("C. saw a dozen robins to-day on the ground on Ebby Hubbard's hill by the Yellow Birch Swamp."); March 8, 1855 ("I hear the hasty, shuffling, as if frightened, note of a robin from a dense birch wood . . . This sound reminds me of rainy, misty April days in past years."); March 10, 1855 ("You are always surprised by the sight of the first spring bird or insect . . . But you think, They have come, and Nature cannot recede"); March 18, 1859 ("A day when all the russet banks were dripping, saturated with wet, and the peep of the robin was heard through the drizzle and the rain."); April 2, 1854 ("Sitting on the rail over the brook, I hear something which reminds me of the song of the robin in rainy days in past springs."); April 2, 1852 ("The robin now peeps with scared note in the heavy overcast air, among the apple trees. The hour is favorable to thought."); See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the anxious peep of the early robin and  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Robins in Spring

Crows on the hillside, with their sentinel on a tree. See January 8, 1855 (" I hear a few chickadees near at hand, and hear and see jays further off, and, as yesterday, a crow sitting sentinel on an apple tree. Soon he gives the alarm, and several more take their places near him.")

Are not fungi the best hygrometers? See April 22, 1856 ("It requires wet weather, then, to expand and display them to advantage. They are hygrometers.")

 

That sound so often 

heard on the cutting March wind 

or through sleet or rain.