August 29.
I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen.
The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — several of them.
All these high colors in the stems and leaves and other portions of plants answer to some maturity in us. I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there.
Has not the mind, too, its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened,and the rain loosened? Are there my mind ?
I remember when boiled green corn was sold piping hot on a muster-field in this town, and my father says that he remembers when it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of negro women, and gentlemen would stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street.
Ah! what a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22d! Think of hearing, as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its truje source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures? We walk invested by sound, -— the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. ,
Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The empurpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sun shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land
P. M. — To J. Farmer’s via Assabet.
As, standing up in my boat, I am watching some minnows at the Prichard bend steadily stemming the current in the sunny water between the waving potamogeton, right under my face, I see a musquash gliding along above the sand directly beneath them, a perfect denizen of the water as much as they. This rat was a pale brown, as light as pale-brown paper or perfectly withered white oak leaves. Its coat is never of this color out of water, and I suppose it was because it was completely coated with air. This makes it less visible on a sandy bottom.
Is not that Eleocharis tenuis, long since out of bloom, growing in the water along the Merrick shore, near the oak; round culms, fifteen inches to two feet high? A spiked rush, without a leaf, and round. I can hardly find a head left on it. Yet Flint says this blooms in August! It grows in dense fields like pipes. Did I find it before this year?
The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past. Perhaps the front-rank polygonum is in prime now, for there is apparently more than before.
I look along Mantatuket Field hedge to see if there are hazelnuts there, but am surprised to find that thereabouts the bushes have been completely stripped by squirrels already and the rich brown burs are strewn on the ground beneath. What a fine brown these dried burs have already acquired, — not chestnut nor hazel! I fear it is already too late for me, though I find some yet quite green in another place. They must have been very busy collecting these nuts and husking them for a fortnight past, climbing to the extremities of the slender twigs. Who witnesses the gathering of the hazelnuts, the hazel harvest? Yet what a busy and important season to the striped squirrel! Now, if ever, he needs to get up a bee. Every nut that I could find left in that field was a poor one. By more frequented paths the squirrels have not worked yet. Take warning from the squirrel, which is already laying up his winter store.
I see some Cornus sericea berries turning.
The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed?
Small botrychium in the bobolink meadow, not yet.
Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.
Before bathing at the Pokelogan, I see and hear a school of large suckers, which have come into this narrow bay and are swiftly dashing about and rising to the surface, with a bubbling sound, as if to snatch something from the surface. They agitate the whole bay. They [are] great ruddy-looking fellows, limber with life. How intelligent of all watery knowledge! They seem to measure the length, breadth, and depth of that cove — which perhaps they never entered before — with every wave of their fins. They feel it all at once. With what superfluous vigor they seem to move about restlessly in their element! Lift them but six inches, and they would quirk their tails in vain. They are poor, soft fish, however, large as they are, and taste when cooked at present much like boiled brown, paper.
The wild Monarda fistulosa is apparently nearly done.
Cicuta maculata, apparently generally done.
J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens. I bring it home and find that it measures seventeen inches in length and thirty in alar extent, and the tail extends four inches beyond the closed wings. It has a very large head, and the wing is six and a half inches wide at the secondaries. It is dark-brown above, skirted with ferruginous; scapulars, with white spots; legs, bright-yellow; iris, yellow. Has those peculiar pendulous lobes to the feet, which Farmer thinks are to enable it to hold a small bone of its prey between the nail and the lobe, as it feeds, while perching. The breast and belly feathers are shafted with dark-brown pointed spots. Vent white. There are three obvious slate-colored bars to tail, alternating with the black.
F. says that he has seen the nest of a smaller hawk, the pigeon hawk, heretofore, on an oak (in Owl-Nest Swamp), made of sticks, some fifteen feet from ground. R. Rice says that he has found the nest of the pigeon hawk hereabouts.
We go to see a bittern nest by Spencer Brook. F. says they call the cardinal-flower “ slink-weed,” and say that the eating it will cause cows to miscarry. He calls the Viburnum nudum “withe-wood,” and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking.
The bittern’s nest was close to the edge of the brook, eighteen inches above the water, and was made of the withered sedge that had grown close by (i. e. wool-grass, etc.) and what I have called pages back Eleocharis tenuis. It was quite a deep nest, like and as big as a hen’s nest, deep in the grass. He or his son saw the young about it a month ago.
He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron.
We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured.
Spiranthes cemua, how long?
Near the bittern-nest, grows what F. calls blue-joint grass; out of bloom.
Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate. He had never seen it before. Soon they all took to flight and filled the air in the neighborhood.
The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, though the colors, etc., etc., appear to be essentially the same. Yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me, but is at least half an inch longer. The toes, especially, are longer and more slender, but I am not sure whether Farrar’s hawk has those pendulous lobes, the foot is so dry, nor if it had sharp-edged shin, it being eaten away by worms. The inner vanes of the primaries of Farrar’s bird are brighter white with much narrower bars of blackish. The longest primary of Farrar’s bird is about ten inches; that of to day, about eight inches. I find the outside tail-feathers of to-day’s bird much harder to pull than the inside ones!‘
Our black willow is of so peculiar and light a green, so ethereal, that, as I look back forty rods at those by the Heron Rock, their outlines are seen with perfect distinctness against the darker green of maples, etc., three or four rods behind them, as if they were a green cloud or smoke blown by. They are seen as distinctly against these other trees as they would be against the sky.
Rice tells me a queer story. Some twenty-five years ago he and his brother William took a journey in their wagon into the northwest part of Maine, carrying their guns and fishing-tackle with them. At Fryeburg they visited the scene of Lovewell’s Fight, and, seeing some trout in the stream there, they tried to dig some fishworms for bait, but they could not find any. So they asked a boy where they got fishworms, but he did not know what they meant. “Long, slender worms, angle worms,” said they; but he only answered that he had seen worms in their manure-heap (which were grubs). On inquiring further, they found that the inhabitants had never seen nor heard of angleworms, and one old settler, who had come from Massachusetts and had lived there thirty years, declared that there was no such worm in that neighborhood.
Mr. Farmer gave me a turtle-shaped bug found by Melvin on a board by the river, some time ago.
I hear A. W. complained of for overworking his cattle and hired men, but there is this to be said in his favor, that he does not spare himself. They say that he made his horse “Tom” draw twenty-nine hundred of hay to Boston the other day, — or night, — but then he put his shoulder to the wheel at every hill. I hear that since then the horse has died, but W. is alive and working.
How hard one must work in order to acquire his language,—-words by which to express himself! I have known a particular rush, for instance, for at least twenty years, but have ever been prevented from describing some [of] its peculiarities, because I did not know its name nor any one in the neighborhood who could tell me it. With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing.
That shore is now more describable, and poetic even. My knowledge was cramped and confined before, and grew rusty be cause not used, — for it could not be used. My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1858
The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? See
August 29, 1856 ("To J. Farmer's by river. The
Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled")
The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me. See J
uly 21, 1858 ("A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk");
October 11, 1856 (“Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago . . . . This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,
the sharp-shinned hawk.
With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. See
August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system."); March 1, 1852 (""There is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses.);
January 15, 1853 ("I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it.");
March 23, 1853 ("One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists , — to be able to communicate with them.")
