Saw the grizzly bear near the Haymarket to-day.

February 9.

 At Cambridge to-day.

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

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

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

Yet he allows that Raleigh cultivated the potato in Ireland.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Snowing all day but

just beginning to clear up –

blue sky visible.

February 9, 2021

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

 "A book, each page written in its own season, 

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2023

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed

August 20

2 p. m. — To Lee's Bridge via Hubbard's Wood, Potter's field, Conantum, returning by Abel Minott's house, Clematis Brook, Baker's pine plain, and railroad.

 I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed, — for I pull away the withered grass with my hands, — uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. 

They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other's song? It would be a curious ear, indeed, that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. 

Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one's song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth's axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night or day.

The Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco, meets me at every turn. At first I suspect some new bluish flower in the grass, but stooping see the inflated pods. Tasting one such herb convinces me that there are such things as drugs which may either kill or cure.[A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it, be cause it makes him slobber badly.]

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. 

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe a flower's leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in describing a psychological fact. 

Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field, or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and confusion we describe men. The precision and copiousness of botanical language applied to the description of moral qualities! 

The neottia, or ladies'-tresses, behind Garfield's house. 

The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. 

Here are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. 

The grasshoppers seem no drier than the grass.

In Lee's field are two kinds of plantain. Is the common one found there? 

The willow reach by Lee's Bridge has been stripped for powder. None escapes. This morning, hearing a cart, I looked out and saw George Dugan going by with a horse-load of his willow toward Acton powder-mills, which I had seen in piles by the turnpike. Every traveller has just as particular an errand which I might like wise chance to be privy to. 

Now that I am at the extremity of my walk, I see a threatening cloud blowing up from the south, which however, methinks, will not compel me to make haste. 

Apios tuberosa, or Glycine Apios, ground-nut. 

The prenanthes now takes the place of the lactucas, which are gone to seed. 

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. 

Scutellaria lateriflora, side-flowering skullcap, here. 

This brook deserves to be called Clematis Brook (though that name is too often applied), for the clematis is very abundant, running over the alders and other bushes on its brink. Where the brook issues from the pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five or six feet each way, with its red berries now ripe. It grows, too, at the upper end of the pond. But if it is the button-bush that grows in the now low water, it should rather be called the Button-Bush Pond. Now the tall rush is in its prime on the shore here, and the clematis abounds by this pond also. 

I came out by the leafy-columned elm under Mt. Misery, where the trees stood up one above another, higher and higher, immeasurably far to my imagination, as on the side of a New Hampshire mountain. . 

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far apart, with a wiry grass between, and goldenrod and hardhack and St. John's-wort and blackberry vines, each tree merely keeping down the grass for a space about itself, meditating to make a forest floor; and here and there younger pines are springing up. Further in, you come to moss-covered patches, dry, deep white moss, or almost bare mould, half covered with pine needles. Thus begins the future forest floor.

 The sites of the shanties that once stood by the railroad in Lincoln when the Irish built it, the still remaining hollow square mounds of earth which formed their embankments, are to me instead of barrows and druidical monuments and other ruins. It is a sufficient antiquity to me since they were built, their material being earth. Now the Canada thistle and the mullein crown their tops. I see the stones which made their simple chimneys still left one upon another at one end, which were sur mounted with barrels to eke them out ; and clean boiled beef bones and old shoes are strewn about. Otherwise it is a clean ruin, and nothing is left but a mound, as in the graveyard. 

Sium lineare, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom resembles the Cicuta maculata. The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes.

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1851

The song of the crickets fails not in its season, night or day. See August 20. 1858 (" the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady"); August 18, 1856 (" I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,")

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); and note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. See March 1, 1852 (" I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses"); January 15, 1853 ("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.");  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.")

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers. See August 27, 1856 ("The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw.")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. Compare August 6, 1851 ("How often it happens that the traveller's principal distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a native! "); April 16, 1852 ("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs"); September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")

The low fields which have been mown now look very green.

August 4

Rain last night and to-day again. 

Ground nut. 

The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring. 

Aaron's-rod, not yet. 

A sicyos in front of the Vose house, not quite, but probably somewhere now.

Symphytum officinale still in bloom in front of C. Stow's, over the fence. 

Polygonum Careyi, four feet high, gigantesque, bristly-glandular, with swollen joints (poly-gonum), many branches from near ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 4, 1853

The low fields which have been mown now look very green again in consequence of the rain, as if it were a second spring. See July 24, 1852 ("There is a short, fresh green on the shorn fields, the aftermath. When the first crop of grass is off, and the aftermath springs, the year has passed its culmination."); July 24, 1860 ("Many a field where the grass has been cut shows now a fresh and very lit-up light green as you look toward the sun."); July 28, 1852 ("There is a yellowish light now from a low, tufted, yellowish, broad-leaved grass, in fields that have been mown."); August 7, 1852 ("At this season we have gentle rain-storms, making the aftermath green . . . as if it were a second spring."); August 10, 1854 ("As I go along the railroad, I observe the darker green of early-mown fields.");  August 17, 1858 ("The aftermath on early mown fields is a very beautiful green.."); August 21, 1851 ("Mowing to some extent improves the landscape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh and green, begins now to recall the spring to my mind")

Polygonum Careyi, four feet high, gigantesque, bristly-glandular, with swollen joints (poly-gonum), many branches from near ground. See July 24, 1856 ("In the low Flint's Pond Path, beyond Britton's, the tall rough goldenrod makes a thicket higher than my head."); August 30, 1859 ("Now is the season of rank weeds, as Polygonum Careyi, tall rough goldenrod."); October 26, 1853 ("As I go up the back road, see fresh sprouts in bloom on a tall rough goldenrod.")

August 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 4 

Fields which have been mown 

now look very green again 

like a second spring.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Fields which have been mown now look very green

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 © 2009-2025

The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills.

August 31. 

P. M. — To Flint’s Pond. 

A hot afternoon. We have had but few warmer. 

wood aster
August 31, 2018

I hear and see but few bobolinks or blackbirds for several days past. The former, at least, must be withdrawing. I have not heard a seringo of late, but I see to-day one golden robin. 

The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground. Also some chestnut leaves have fallen. Many brakes inthe woods are perfectly withered. 

At the Pout’s Nest, Walden, I find the Scirpus debilis, apparently in prime, generally aslant; also the Cyperus dentatus, with some spikes changed into leafy tufts; also here less advanced what I have called Juncus acuminatus. 

Ludwigia alternifolia still. Sericocarpus about done. 

High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any, — even vines, — for the racemes are bent down out of sight, amid the dense sweet-ferns and sumachs, etc. The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. Those in the sun are a little wilted and insipid. 

The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills. 

Lobelia Dortmanna is not quite done. 

Some ground-nuts are washed out. 

The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium mariscoides, twig rush, or, in Bigelow, water bog rush, a good while out of bloom; style three-cleft. It is about three feet high. This, with Eleocharis palustris, which is nearest the shore, forms the dense rushy border of the pond. It extends along the whole of this end, at least about four rods wide, and almost every one of the now dry and brown flower-heads has a cobweb on it. I perceive that the slender semicircular branchlets so fit to the grooved or flattened culm as still, when pressed against it, to make it cylindrical! —very neatly. 

The monotropa is still pushing up. Red choke-berry, apparently not long. 

At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself. 

Edward Bartlett brings me a nest found three feet from the ground in an arbor-vitae, in the New Burying Ground, with one long-since addled egg in it. It is a very thick, substantial nest, five or six inches in diameter and rather deep; outwardly of much coarse stubble with its fine root-fibres attached, loose and dropping off, around a thin casing of withered leaves; then finer stubble within, and a lining of fine grass stems and horse hair. 

The nest is most like that found on Cardinal Shore with an addled pale-bluish egg, which I thought a wood thrush’s at first, except that that has no casing of leaves. It is somewhat like a very large purple finch’s nest, or perchance some red-wing’s with a hair lining. 

The egg is three quarters of an inch long, rather broad at one end (or for length), greenish-white with brown dashes or spots, becoming a large conspicuous purple-brown blotch at the large end; almost exactly like — but a little greener (or bluer) and a little smaller — the egg found on the ground in R. W. E.’s garden. 

Do the nest and egg belong together? Was not the egg dropped by a bird of passage in another’s nest? Can it be an indigo-bird’s nest? I take it to be too large.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1858

The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground.  See August 13, 1854 (“At Thrush Alley, I am surprised to behold how many birch leaves have turned yellow, — every other one, — while clear, fresh, leather-colored ones strew the ground with a pretty thick bed under each tree.”); August 31, 1856 (“The birches on Wheeler's meadow have begun to yellow, apparently owing to the [high] water.”)

High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any. See note to August 31, 1857 (“An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked.”)

Some ground-nuts are washed out. See August 31, 1857  (“Am surprised to see on the bottom and washing up on to the shore many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. . . . I never saw so many ground-nuts before.”)

A small green bittern plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limping flight.  See  May 16, 1855  ("A green bittern with its dark-green coat and crest, sitting watchful, goes off with a limping peetweet flight.”); August 2, 1856 ("A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water.") and note to July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight, its legs dangling")

Bathing at Flint's pond.

August 31, 2017

August 31.

Monday. P. M. — To Flint's Pond.

An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit? 

Our first muskmelon to-day. 

Lycopodium complanatum out, how long? 

I have seen for several days amphicarpaea with perfectly white flowers, in dense clusters. 

At Flint's Pond I wade along the edge eight or ten rods to the wharf rock, carrying my shoes and stockings. 

Am surprised to see on the bottom and washing up on to the shore many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. I see these at every step for more than a dozen rods and thought they must have been washed up from deeper waters. 

Examining very closely, I trace one long string through the sandy soil to the root of a ground-nut which grew on the edge of the bank, and afterwards see many more, whose tuberous roots lying in the sand are washed bare, the pond being unusually high. 

I could gather quarts of them. I pick up one string floating loose, about eighteen inches long, with as usual a little greenness and vitality at one end, which has thirteen nuts on it about the size of a walnut or smaller. I never saw so many ground-nuts before, and this makes on me the impression of an unusual fertility.

Bathing there, I see a small potamogeton, very common there, wholly immersed and without floating leaves, which rises erect from the sandy bottom in curving rows four or five feet long. On digging I find it to rise from a subterranean shoot which is larger than any part above ground. It may be one I have, whose floating leaves the high water has destroyed or prevented. The leaves of it have small bits of that fresh-water sponge, so strong-scented, on them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1857

Many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. See August 16 1852 (“Apios tuberosa, ground-nut, a day or two.”)

An abundance of fine high blackberries . . . now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit? See August 10, 1853 ("August, royal and rich . . .It is glorious to see those great shining high blackberries, now partly ripe . . ."); August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins."); August 17, 1853 ("The high blackberries are now in their prime; the richest berry we have.”); August 22, 1852 ("Is not the high blackberry our finest berry?"); August 23, 1856 ("Now for high blackberries, though the low are gone.” ); August 27, 1857 ("Detected a, to me, new kind of high blackberry on the edge of the cliff beyond Conant's wall . . ."); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); August 31, 1858 (“High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. . . . The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Locust days.

August 16.

Down river in boat with George Bradford. These are locust days.  I hear them on the elms in the street, but cannot tell where they are.  Loud is their song, drowning many others, but men appear not to distinguish it, though it pervades their ears as the dust their eyes.

Galeopsis tetrahit, common hemp-nettle, in roadside by Keyes's. How long? Flower like hedge-nettle.

Apios tuberosa, ground-nut, a day or two.  

 

The river is exceedingly fair this afternoon, and there are few handsomer reaches than that by the leaning oak, the deep place, where the willows make a perfect shore. 

At sunset, the glow being confined to the north, it tinges the rails on the causeway lake-color, but behind they are a dead dark blue.

I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found yesterday behind Joe Clark's.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 16, 1852

I must look for the rudbeckia which Bradford says he found . . . See August 18, 1852 ("Rudbeckia laciniata, sunflower-like tall cone-flower, behind Joe Clark's.") See also August 11, 1856 ("Mr. Bradford . . .gives me a sprig of Cassia Marilandica,wild senna, found by Minot Pratt just below Leighton's by the road side.") and August 12, 1856 ("Bradford speaks of the dog's-tooth violet as a plant which disappears early.”).



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

 

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