To Baker’s old chestnut lot near Flint’s Pond

October 26. 

P. M. – To Baker’s old chestnut lot near Flint’s Pond.

As I go through what was formerly the dense pitch pine lot on Thrush Alley (G. Hubbard’s), I observe that the present growth is scrub oak, birch, oaks of various kinds, white pines, pitch pines, willows, and poplars. Apparently, the birch, oaks, and pitch pines are the oldest of the trees.

From the number of small white pines in the neighboring pitch pine wood, I should have expected to find larger and also more white pines here. It will finally become a mixed wood of oak and white and pitch pine.

There is much cladonia in the lot. 

Observed yesterday that the row of white pines set along the fence on the west side of Sleepy Hollow had grown very fast, apparently from about the time they were set out, or the last three years. Several had made grow the fastest at just this age, or after they get to be about five feet high? 

I see to-day sprouts from chestnut stumps which are two and a half feet in diameter (i. e. the stumps). One of these large stumps is cut quite low and hollowing, so as to hold water as well as leaves, and the leaves prevent the water from drying up. It is evident that in such a case the stump rots sooner than if high and roof like. 

I remember that there were a great many hickories with R. W. E.’s pitch pines when I lived there, but now there are but few comparatively, and they appear to have died down several times and come up again from the root. I suppose it is mainly on account of frosts, though perhaps the fires have done part of it.

Are not hickories most commonly found on hills? There are a few hickories in the open land which I once cultivated there, and these may have been planted there by birds or squirrels. It must be more than thirty-five years since there was wood there. 

I find little white pines under the pitch pines (of E.), near the pond end, and few or no little pitch pines, but between here and the road about as many of one as of the other, but the old pines are much less dense that way, or not dense at all. 

This is the season of the fall when the leaves are whirled through the air like flocks of birds, the season of birch spangles, when you see afar a few clear-yellow leaves left on the tops of the birches. 

It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. I remember a large old pine and chestnut wood there some twenty years ago . He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. I mean that acre at the bottom of the hollow.

It is now one of those frosty hollows so common in Walden Woods, where little grows, sheep’s fescue grass, sweet-fern, hazelnut bushes, and oak scrubs whose dead tops are two or three feet high, while the still living shoots are not more than half as high at their base. They have lingered so long and died down annually.

At length I see a few birches and pines creeping into it, which at this rate in the course of a dozen years more will suggest a forest there.

Was this wise? 

Examined the stumps in the Baker chestnut lot which was cut when I surveyed it in the spring of’52.  They were when cut commonly from fifty to sixty years old (some older, some younger).

The sprouts from them are from three to six inches thick, and may average-the largest — four inches, and eighteen feet high. The wood is perhaps near half oak sprouts, and these are one and a half to four inches thick, or average two and a half, and not so high as the chestnut.

Some of the largest chestnut stumps have sent up no sprout, yet others equally large and very much more decayed have sent up sprouts. Can this be owing to the different time when they were cut? The cutting was after April.

The largest sprouts I chanced to notice were from a small stump in low ground. Some hemlock stumps there had a hundred rings.

Was overtaken by a sudden thunder-shower.

Cut a chestnut sprout two years old. It grew about five and a half feet the first year and three and a half the next, and was an inch in diameter. The tops of these sprouts, the last few inches, had died in the winter, so that a side bud continued them, and this made a slight curve in the sprout, thus: There was on a cross-section, of course, but one ring of pores within the wood, just outside the large pith, the diameter of the first year’s growth being just half an inch, radius a fourth of an inch.

The thickness of the second year’s growth was the same, or one fourth, but it was distinctly marked to the naked eye with about seven concentric lighter lines, which, I suppose, marked so many successive growths or waves of growth, or seasons in its year.

These were not visible through a microscope of considerable power, but best to the naked eye.

Probably you could tell a seedling chestnut from a vigorous sprout, however old or large, provided the heart were perfectly sound to the pith, by the much more rapid growth of the last the first half-dozen years of its existence. 

There are scarcely any chestnuts this year near Britton’s, but I find as many as usual east of Flint’s Pond. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 26, 1860

It was a mistake for Britton to treat that Fox Hollow lot as he did. He came and cut it off and burned it over, and ever since it has been good for nothing. See  October 16, 1860 (" I have come up here this afternoon to see the dense white pine lot beyond the pond, . . .To my surprise and chagrin, I find that the fellow who calls himself its owner has burned it all over and sowed winter-rye here.. . .He needs to have a guardian placed over him. A forest-warden should be appointed by the town. Overseers of poor husbandmen.")

Probably you could tell a seedling chestnut from a vigorous sprout, however old or large, by the much more rapid growth of the last the first half-dozen years of its existence. See November 6, 1857 ("seventy years ago . . .there was a large old chestnut by the roadside there, which being cut, two sprouts came up which have become the largest chestnut trees by the wall now.")

There are scarcely any chestnuts this year near Britton’s, but I find as many as usual east of Flint’s Pond. See August 14, 1856 ("All the Flint's Pond wood-paths are strewn with these gay-spotted chestnut leaves") October 18, 1856 ("A-chestnutting down Turnpike and across to Britton's, thinking that the rain now added to the frosts would relax the burs which were open and let the nuts drop . . ."); October 22, 1857("Chestnut trees are almost bare. Now is just the time for chestnuts."); October 23, 1855 ("Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders."); December 22, 1859 ("I see in the chestnut woods near Flint's Pond where squirrels have collected the small chestnut burs left         the trunks on the snow.")

October 26. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, October 26 and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The seasons and all their changes are in me.

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off

June 14.

P. M.--To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick.

Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Bigelow, some days, at foot of Loring's land.

Common mallows well out; how long? 

What is that sisymbrium or mustard-like plant at foot of Loring 's ?

Erigeron strigosus (??) out earliest, say yesterday.

Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown's barn by road, with elongated spikes and only pistillate flowers.

Hedge-mustard, how long? Pepper grass, how long? Some time.

Scirpus lacustris, maybe some days.

I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots.

Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are.

Says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his observation alone); that there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick.

He has found the Lygodium palmatum there.

There is one pure-blooded Indian woman there. Pearl [?], I think he called her.

He thought those the exuviæ of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water.

Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets.

He called the huckleberry-apple a parasitic plant, — pterospora, – which grown on and changed the nature of the huckleberry.

Observed a diseased Andromeda paniculata twig prematurely in blossom.

Caught a locust, — properly harvest-fly (cicada), — drumming on a birch, which Bacon and Hill (of Waltham) think like the septendecim, except that ours has not red eyes but black ones. 

Harris's other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July.

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; is pretty sure.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 14, 1854

To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick.")
Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets. See August 24. 1857 ("A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made.")

Bacon says there are one or two arbor-vitæs native in Natick. See August 24, 1857 ("B[acon] says that the arbor-vitae grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham")

Thee dog-day cicada begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. See note to July 22, 1860 ("First locust heard.")

Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; See. June 3, 1857 ("The pitch pine at Hemlocks is in bloom. . . .As usual, when I jar them the pollen rises in a little cloud about the pistillate flowers and the tops of the twigs, there being a little wind"); June 9, 1850 ("I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover the surface of the pond.")

I see tobacco-pipes now in the path.

July 31.

 P. M. — To Flint’s Pond.

I see much eriocaulon floating, with its mass of white roots uppermost, near the shore in Goose Pond. I suspect it may have been loosened up by the musquash, which either feeds on it, or merely makes its way through its dense mats. 

I also see small fishes, apparently shiners, four or five inches long, in this pond. Yet I have seen this almost all dried up.

I have smelled fungi in the thick woods for a week, though they are not very common. I see tobacco-pipes now in the path. 

You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons. 

The anychia already shows green seed-vessels on its lower branches. 

Petty morel has begun to bloom in shady swamps, how long?

Got the wood thrush’s nest of June 19th (now empty). It was placed between many small upright shoots, against the main stem of the slender maple, and measures four and a half to five inches in diameter from outside to outside of the rim, and one and three quarters deep within. 

It is quite firm (except the external leaves falling off) the rim about three quarters of an inch thick,  and it is composed externally of leaves, apparently chiefly chestnut, very much decayed, beneath which, in the place of the grass and stubble of which most nests are composed, are apparently the midribs of the same leaves, whose whole pulp, etc., is gone, arranged as compactly and densely (in a curving manner) as grass or stubble could be, upon a core, not of mud, but a pale-brown composition quite firm and smooth (within), looking like inside of a cocoanut-shell, and apparently composed of decayed leaf pulp (?) which the bird has perhaps mixed and cemented with its saliva. This is about a quarter of an inch thick and about as regular as a half of a cocoanut-shell. 

Within this, the lower part is lined with considerable rather coarse black root-fibre and a very little fine stubble. From some particles of fine white sand, etc., on the pale brown composition of the nest, I thought it was obtained from the pond shore. This composition, viewed through a microscope, has almost a cellular structure.

H. D. Thoreau Journal, July 31, 1858

I see tobacco-pipes now in the path. See July 30, 1854 ("I have seen a few new fungi within a week. The tobacco-pipes are still pushing up white amid the dry leaves, sometimes lifting a canopy of leaves with them four or five inches."); August 10, 1858 ("I see many tobacco-pipes, now perhaps in their prime, ... bursting up through the dry leaves, which, elevated around, may serve to prop them. Springing up in the shade with so little color, they look the more fragile and delicate.")

You are liable to be overtaken by a thunder-shower these afternoons.  See July 31, 1860 ("At mid-afternoon I am caught in a deluging rain as I stand under a maple by the Assabet shore ")

The wood thrush’s nest of June 19th. See June 19, 1858 ("Storrow Higginson and other boys. . . showed me one of five eggs, far advanced, they found there [at Flint's Pond] in a nest some fourteen feet high in a slender maple sapling, placed between many upright shoots, many dry leaves outside.") See also  August 10, 1858 ("The wood thrush’s was a peculiarly woodland nest, made solely of such materials as that unfrequented grove afforded.")

Snows hard in afternoon and evening. Quite wintry.

April 27 

April 27, 2018

It has been so cold since the 23d that I have not been able to catch a single frog, have hardly seen where one jumped, as I walked through the meadows looking for them, though in some warmer places I heard a low stertorous R. halecina-like note from a few. 

The tortoises are stirring much more. 

Frogs appear to love warm and moist weather, rainy or cloudy. They will sit thickly along the shore, apparently small bullfrogs, etc., R. palustris. 

My young fishes had the pectoral fins and tail very early developing, but not yet can I detect any other fins with my glass. They had mouths, which I saw them open as soon as hatched, and more and more a perch-like head. I think that with Hoar's microscope I detected two dorsal fins such as the perch have. When I put them suddenly in the sun they sink and rest on the bottom a moment. 

In the French work for schools of Edwards and Comte, it is said that the perch spawns not till the age of three years, and in the spring. “The ova are joined together by some glutinous matter in long strings (codons) intertwined with the reeds.” (Page 36.) 

I noticed yesterday that again the newly laid spawn at the cold pool on Hubbard's land was all gone, and that in the larger pool south of it was much diminished. What creature devours it? 

Snows hard in afternoon and evening. Quite wintry. About an inch on ground the next morning.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 27, 1858

It has been so cold since the 23d that I have not been able to catch a single frog. See April 24, 1858 (“This shows how sensitive they are to changes of temperature. Hardly one puts its head out of the water, if ever he creeps out the grassy or muddy bottom this cold day. ”)

The newly laid spawn at the cold pool on Hubbard's land was all gone. See April 22, 1858 (“The spawn of April 18th is gone! It was fresh there and apparently some creature has eaten it.”)

Snows hard in afternoon and evening. Quite wintry. See note to April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.”)

Fish embryos suddenly hatched

April 16

My fish ova in a tumbler has gradually expanded till it is some three sixteenths of an inch in diameter, and for more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, hardly still enough to be observed with a microscope. Their tails, eyes, pectoral fins, etc., were early developed and conspicuous. They keep up a regular jerking motion as they lie curved in the egg, and so develop themselves. 

This morning I set them in the sun, and, looking again soon after, found that they were suddenly hatched, and more than half of them were free of the egg. They were nearly a quarter of an inch long, or longer than the diameter of a perfect egg. The substance of the egg-shell seemed to have expanded and softened, and the embryo by its incessant quirking elongated it so that it was able to extend itself at full length. It then almost incessantly kept up a vibratory motion of its tail and its pectoral fins, and every few moments it bunted against the side of the egg, wearing it away and extending it, till it broke through. Sometimes it got its head out first and then struggled many minutes before it escaped completely. 

It was a pretty sight to see them all rising immediately to the surface by means of the tail and pectoral fins, the first vibrating from one twentieth to one thirtieth of an inch, at an angle of about forty-five degrees, and then, ceasing their motions, they steadily settled down again. Think of the myriads of these minnows set free of a warm morning, and rising and falling in this wise in their native element!!

(Some are still in the egg on the 18th.) 

The incessant activity of these minnows, and apparent vigor, are surprising. Already they dart swiftly an inch one side like little pickerel, tender as they are, carrying the yolk with them, which gradually diminishes, as I notice, in a day or two after. They have no snouts yet, or only blunt and rounded ones. I have not detected any general resting even at night, though they often rest on the bottom day or night. 

They are remarkably aroused when placed in the morning sun. This sets them all in motion. Looking at them through a jar between you and the sun, a hundred at once, they reflect the colors of the rainbow, — some purple, others violet, green, etc., etc. It is a wonder how they survive the accidents of their condition. 

By what instinct do they keep together in a school? I think that the spawn could not have been laid long when I found it April 3d, it was so perfect and the embryo so slightly, if at all, developed. That was a sudden very warm day. In that case, they may be hatched in a fortnight. That appeared to have been a general breeding-place for this species of fish. I looked a good while on the 14th, but could find none near home. 

My hylodes in the tumbler will always hop to the side toward the window as fast as I turn it. 

We may think these days of the myriads of fishes just hatched which come rising to the surface. The water swarms with them as with the mosquito.

P. M. — To Conantum. 

The Rana sylvatica spawn at Hubbard's Grove begins to kick free. This is early. I put some in a bottle, which being shaken in my walk, I find the embryos all separated from the ova when I get home. These are now regular little pollywogs and wiggle about in a lively manner when the water is shaken. 

They are chiefly tail and head. They look like the samara of the ash, and in both cases this winged or feather-like tail it is that transports them. I can already see their little feet or fins. 

The bodkin-like bulb, considerably grown, in my tumbler and elsewhere, is probably the water-purslane. I see it floating free and sending out many rootlets, on pools and ditches. In this way it spreads itself. 

The earliest red maple I can see in this walk is well out, on the Hubbard Bridge causeway. Probably some was yesterday. 

I sat a long time by the little pool behind Lee's, to see the hylodes. Not one was heard there; only the skater insects were slightly rippling the surface, pursuing one another and breeding amid the grass. The bottom is covered with pretty proserpinaca. 

At length I see one hylodes with heels up, burying itself at the bottom. How wary they are! After nearly half an hour I see one sitting out on a blade of the floating purple grass, but down he goes again. They see or hear you three or four rods off. They are more active toward night.

H. D. Thoreau,  Journal, April 16, 1858


I think that the spawn could not have been laid long when I found it April 3d, it was so perfect and the embryo so slightly, if at all, developed. For more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, as they lie curved in the egg. This morning I  found that they were suddenly hatched, and more than half of them were free of the egg. See April 3, 1858 (“When returning, we discovered, on the south side of the river, just at the old crossing-place from the Great Meadows, north of the ludwigia pool, a curious kind of spawn. It was white, each ovum about as big as a robin-shot or larger, with mostly a very minute white core, no black core, and these were agglutinated together in the form of zigzag hollow cylinders, two or three inches in diameter and one or two feet long, looking like a lady's ruff or other muslin work, on the bottom or on roots and twigs of willow and button-bush, where the water was two or three feet deep. The greater part lay on the bottom, looking like a film, these cylinders being somewhat coiled about there. When you took it up, the two sides fell together, and it was flat in your hand like the leg of a stocking. In one place there were a dozen very large red-bellied and brown-backed leeches in it, evidently battening on it. ); April 7, 1858 ("I brought home t... two kinds of spawn in a pail. ... The other (probably fish) spawn is seen to be arranged in perfect hexagons; i. e., the ova so impinge on each other; but where there is a vent or free side, it is a regular arc of a circle. Is not this the form that spheres pressing on each other equally on all sides assume? I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope.”); April 14, 1858 (“My Rana halecina spawn in tumbler is now flatted out and begins to betray the pollywog form. I had already noticed a little motion in it from time to time, but nothing like the incessant activity of the embryo fishes. . . .At Ed. Hoar's in the evening.. . .. with his microscope I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body.”); April 22, 1858 (“The spawn of April 18th is gone! It was fresh there and apparently some creature has eaten it.”)April 24, 1858 (“I find that my fish ova were not all killed some weeks ago in the firkin, as I supposed, for many that were accidentally left in it have hatched, and they bore the cold of last night better than those hatched earlier and kept in the larger vessel (tub), which froze but thinly, while the firkin froze a quarter of an inch thick last night.”); April 27, 1858 (“I noticed yesterday that again the newly laid spawn at the cold pool on Hubbard's land was all gone, and that in the larger pool south of it was much diminished. What creature devours it? ”); April 27, 1858 (“My young fishes had the pectoral fins and tail very early developing, but not yet can I detect any other fins with my glass. They had mouths, which I saw them open as soon as hatched, and more and more a perch-like head. I think that with Hoar's microscope I detected two dorsal fins such as the perch have. ”); April 30, 2018 ("I carry the rest of my little fishes, fifteen or twenty, to the cold pool in Hubbard's ground. They are about a quarter-inch long still, and have scarcely increased in length.”); June 16, 1858 ("Looking into Hubbard's Pool, I at length see one of the minims which I put into it. I brought the last here April 30th. It is now a little perch about an inch and a quarter long; it was then about a quarter of an inch long. I can now see the transverse bars a rod off. It is swimming actively round and round the pool, but avoids the quite shallow water of the edges, so it does not get landlocked or lost in the weedy overflowed edges. I put twenty or thirty into this pool in all. They grow very fast, then, at last.”)

The earliest red maple I can see in this walk is well out. See April 24, 1854 ("The first red maple blossoms — so very red over the water — are very interesting");. April 26, 1855 ("The blossoms of the red maple (some a yellowish green) are now most generally conspicuous and handsome scarlet crescents over the swamps.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

I sat a long time by the little pool behind Lee's, to see the hylodes. Not one was heard there; . . How wary they are! See March 31, 1857 (" If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal.. . . The shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.")

My hylodes in the tumbler will always hop to the side toward the window as fast as I turn it. See  April 15, 1858 ("Catch a peeper at Hayden’s Pool. I suspect it may have been a female . . . It was a pale fawn-color out of water, nine tenths of an inch long, marked with dusky like this though not so distinctly. It could easily climb up the side of a tumbler, and jumped eighteen inches at once.")

I see the heart beating in the embryo fish.

April 14. 

Rains still, with one or two flashes of lightning, but soon over. 

The yew plucked yesterday blossoms in house to day. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The river is a little higher on account of rain. 

I see much sweet flag six or eight inches long, floating, it having been cut up apparently by musquash. (The 17th I see much of the sparganium cut up close to the bottom along a musquash-path at the bottom of a meadow where there was one foot of water.) 

My Rana halecina spawn in tumbler is now flatted out and begins to betray the pollywog form. I had already noticed a little motion in it from time to time, but nothing like the incessant activity of the embryo fishes.  

I find no suckers’ nests yet. There has been no rise of the river of any consequence. 

At Ed. Hoar's in the evening. I look at one of his slides through a microscope, at the infusorial skeletons of the navicula and dumb-bell infusoria etc. etc. with his microscope I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 14, 1858

The river is a little higher on account of rain. See April 14, 1855 (“The river has been steadily rising since the first of April.”)

My Rana halecina spawn in tumbler is now flatted out and begins to betray the pollywog form. See April 7, 1858 (“ Putting some of the Rana halecina spawn in a tumbler of water. . . .”); April 17, 1858 (“The Rana halecina spawn in tumbler begins to struggle free of the ova”); April 18, 1858 (“Put some R. halecina spawn which has flatted out in a ditch on Hubbard’s land.”);April 19, 1858 ("I find that my Rana halecina spawn in the house is considerably further advanced than that left in the meadows.")

I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body. See April 7, 1858 (" I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope"); April 16, 1858 (" For more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, as they lie curved in the egg. This morning I found that they were suddenly hatched, and more than half of them were free of the egg.")

. 

The river is low. The meadows dry.

April 7. 

A cold and gusty, blustering day. We put on greatcoats again. 

April 7, 2018

P. M. — Down the Great Meadows. 

The river is low, even for summer. The ground about the outmost willow at my boat's place is high and dry. I cross the meadows and step across the Mill Brook near Mrs. Ripley's. 

You hear no stertorous sounds of the Rana halecina this cold and blustering day, unless a few when you go close to their breeding places and listen attentively. Scarcely one has his head out of water, though I see many at the bottom. I wear india-rubber boots and wade through the shallow water where they were found. 

In a shallow sheet of water on the meadow, with a grassy bottom, the spawn will commonly all be collected in one or two parcels in the deepest part, if it is generally less than eight or ten inches deep, to be prepared for a further fall. You will also find a little here and there in weedy ditches in the meadow. One of the first-named parcels will consist of even a hundred separate deposits about three or four inches in diameter crowded together. 

The frogs are most numerous to-day about and beneath the spawn. 

Each little mass of ova is pretty firmly attached to the stubble, – not accidentally,  but designedly and effectually, — and when you pull it off, leaves some of the jelly adhering to the stubble. If the mass is large it will run out of your hand this side or that, like a liquid, or as if it had life, — like “sun squall.” It is not injured by any ordinary agitation of the water, but the mass adheres well together. It bears being carried any distance in a pail. When dropped into the water again, it falls wrong side up, showing the white sides of the cores or yolks (?). 

On the Great Meadows, I stand close by two coupled. The male is very much the smallest, an inch, at least, the shortest, and much brighter-colored. The line, or “halo” (?), or margin about its blotches is a distinct yellow or greenish yellow. The female has a distended paunch full of spawn. 

Snipes rise two or three times as I go over the meadow. 

The remarkable spawn of the 3d, just below the Holt (?), does not show its cylindrical form so well as before; appears to have been broken up considerably, perhaps by creatures feeding on it. 

I see the remains of a duck which has died on this meadow, and the southeast edge of the meadow is strewn with the feathers of the water-fowl that plumed themselves here before the water went down. 

There is no water anywhere on these meadows now — except the one or two permanent pools — which I cannot walk through in my boots. 

Where they have been digging mud the past winter in Beck Stow's Swamp, I perceive that the crust, for one foot deep at least, consists chiefly, or perhaps half of it, — the rest mainly sphagnum, - of the dead and fallen stems of water andromeda which have accumulated in course of time. 

I brought home the above two kinds of spawn in a pail. Putting some of the Rana halecina spawn in a tumbler of water, I cannot see the gelatinous part, but only the dark or white cores, which are kept asunder by it at regular intervals. 

The other (probably fish) spawn is seen to be arranged in perfect hexagons; i. e., the ova so impinge on each other; but where there is a vent or free side, it is a regular arc of a circle. Is not this the form that spheres pressing on each other equally on all sides assume? I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 7, 1858

The river is low, even for summer. See April 6, 1858 ("They with whom I talk do not remember when the river was so low at this season.") Compare April 8, 1856 ("River had risen so since yesterday I could not get under the bridge, but was obliged to find a round stick and roll my boat over the road.”)

You hear no stertorous sounds of the Rana halecina this cold and blustering day. Compare April 3, 1858 (" This might be called the Day of the Snoring Frogs, or the Awakening of the Meadows.") and see note to April 7, 1860 ("This is the Rana halecina day, — awakening of the meadows. — though not very warm.")

I see the embryo, already fish-like (?), curved round the yolk, with a microscope. See April 3, 1858 ("When returning , we discovered , on the south side of the river , just at the old crossing - place from the Great Meadows , north of the ludwigia pool , a curious kind of spawn . It was white , each ovum about as big as a robin - shot or larger , with mostly a very minute white core , no black core , and these were agglutinated together in the form of zigzag hollow cylinders , two or three inches in di ameter and one or two feet long"); April 14, 1858 ("with his microscope I see the heart beating in the embryo fish and the circulations distinctly along the body."); April 16, 1858 ("For more than a week the embryos have been conspicuously active, hardly still enough to be observed with a microscope. Their tails, eyes, pectoral fins, etc., were early developed and conspicuous. They keep up a regular jerking motion as they lie curved in the egg,. . . ( Some are still in the egg on the 18th . )")

The first freezing day-- the crunching sound of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet

November 14. 

P. M. – Ride to limestone quarries on old Carlisle road with E. Hoar. 

This morning it was considerably colder than for a long time, and by noon very much colder than heretofore, with a pretty strong northerly wind. The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days. 

You need greatcoat and buffalo and gloves now, if you ride. I find my hands stiffened and involuntarily finding their way to my pockets. No wonder that the weather is a standing subject of conversation, since we are so sensitive. 

If we had not gone through several winters, we might well be alarmed at the approach of cold weather. With this keener blast from the north, my hands suddenly fail to fulfill their office, as it were begin to die. We must put on armor against the new foe. I am almost world-ridden suddenly. I can hardly tie and untie my shoe-strings. 

What a story to tell an inhabitant of the tropics, – perchance that you went to walk, after many months of warmth, when suddenly the air became so cold and hostile to your nature, that it benumbed you so that you lost the use of some of your limbs, could not untie your shoe-strings or unbutton your clothes! 

This cold weather makes us step more briskly.

I hear that the Indians say we are to have a hard winter, because of the abundance of acorns, also because of the unusual thickening of corn-husks in the summer! 

The stone at those quarries strikes northeasterly and southwesterly, or apparently with the rocks of Curly-pate, a third of a mile off. The strata appear to be nearly vertical. In the most southwesterly quarry, I noticed in the side of an upright sliver of rock, where the limestone had formerly been blasted off, the bottom of the nearly perpendicular hole which had been drilled for that purpose, two or three inches deep and about two and a half feet from the ground.

 In this I found two fresh chestnuts, a dozen or more amphicarpaea seeds, as many apparently either prinos (?) or rose (?) seeds (single seeds and fresh), and several fresh barberry seeds mixed with a little earth and rubbish. 

What placed them there? Squirrel, mouse, jay, or crow? At first I thought that a quadruped could hardly have reached this hole, but probably it could easily, and it was a very cunning place for such a deposit.  I brought them all home in order to ascertain what the seeds were and how they came there. 

Examining the chestnuts carefully in the evening and wondering if so small a bird as a chickadee could transport one, I observed near the larger end of one some very fine scratches, which it seemed to me might have been made by the teeth of a very small animal when carrying it, but certainly not by the bill of a bird, since they had pricked sharply into the shell, rucking it up one way. I then looked to see where the teeth of the other jaw had scratched it, but could discover no marks and was therefore still somewhat in doubt. 

Coming up-stairs an hour afterward, I examined those scratches with a microscope, and saw plainly that they had been made by some fine and sharp cutting instrument like a fine chisel, a little concave, and had plowed under the surface of the shell a little, toward the big end of the nut, raising it up; and, looking farther, I now discovered, on the larger end of the nut, at least two corresponding marks made by the lower incisors, plowing toward the first and about a quarter of an inch distant. These were a little less obvious to the unarmed eye, but no less plain through the glass. 

I now had no doubt that they were made by the incisors of a mouse, and, comparing them with the incisors of a deer mouse (Mus leucopus) whose skull I have, I found that one or two of the marks were just the width of its two incisors combined (a twentieth of an inch), and the others, though finer, might have been made by them. On one side, at least, it had taken fresh hold once or twice. I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. 

The other nut, which had no marks on it, I suppose was carried by the star end, which was gone from both. There was no chestnut tree within twenty rods. These seeds thus placed in this recess will account for chestnut trees, barberry bushes, etc., etc., growing in chinks and clefts where we do not see how the seeds could have fallen. There was earth enough even in this little hole to keep some very small plant alive. 

I hear that Gardiner Heywood caught a trout in Walden Pond the other day and that it weighed five pounds. [And a little over. Speared it about a week ago, and saw another not quite so large. Henry and John Bigelow put a couple into the pond some ten years ago. Were these the ones?]

It seems that the Abel Davis who caught the pickerel in Temple Brook, which would make such a meal for his “Lavinia” and himself, was addicted to talking to himself, thinking aloud. He was once talked of for captain of the company, and about that time, they say, was overheard saying to himself, “Captain Abel Davis! What a fine-looking man!”  

Can those straight ridges running north by west and south by east over the most level part of Curly-pate have anything to do with diluvial furrows? 

Returning along the edge of Calla Swamp, under the fern-clad hill, I feel the crunching sound  of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet, and see and feel the sphagnum already stiffened into a crust, and what probably in the forenoon was water trickling from a fern-clad rock is now half a dozen icicles, six or eight inches long. 

Such is the first freezing day. Such phenomena are first observed under the north side of a hill in a cold swamp like this. Such are the first advances of winter. Ice-crystals shoot in the mud, the sphagnum becomes a stiffened mass, and dropping water in these cold places, a rigid icicle. 

E. Hoar tells me that his partner, having a new adobe house, or perhaps roof to it, built in Santa Barbara, on the California coast, corrected the bad levelling of his carpenters by taking such a position as to make the ridge-pole coincide with the horizon line where the Pacific appeared to meet the sky. 

The thermometer is 27° at 6 P. M. The mud in the street is stiffened under my feet this evening. 

Where there is a wall near a pitch pine wood, I see the scales of the cones which the squirrels have carried to the wall and stripped, strewn all along the wall on the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1857

I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. See November 19, 1857 (" What pretty fruit for the mice, these bright prinos berries! They run up the twigs in the night and gather this shining fruit, take out the small seeds, and eat their kernels at the entrance to their burrows. The ground is strewn with them there.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The crunching sound of frost-crystals under my feet, such is the first freezing day. See November 14, 1858 ("It is all at once perfect winter. I walk on frozen ground two thirds covered with a sugaring of dry snow.")

This cold weather makes us step more briskly. See November 12, 1858 ("All people move the brisker for the cold, yet are braced and a little elated by it. They love to say, “Cold day, sir.” Though the days are shorter, you get more work out of a hired man than before, for he must work to keep warm. ")

The mystery of rose-colored ice

January 25

January 25, 2015

This morning is a perfect hunter’s morn, for it snowed about three quarters of an inch last evening, covering land and ice. 

(Is not good skating a sign of snow?) 

I  see the tracks apparently of many hunters that hastened out this morning.

It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm. The warmth and stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds are charming. You dispense with gloves.

I have come with basket and hatchet to get a specimen of the rose-colored ice. It is covered with snow. I push it away with my hands and feet. 

At first I detect no rose tint, and suspect it may have disappeared, —faded or bleached out,—or it was a dream. At length I detect a faint tinge; I cut down a young white oak and sweep bare a larger space; I then cut out a cake.

The redness is all about an inch below the surface, the little bubbles in the ice there for half an inch vertically being coated interruptedly within or without with what looks like a minute red dust when seen through a microscope, as if it had dried on. Little balloons, with some old paint almost sealed off their spheres. It has no beauty nor brightness thus seen, no more than brick-dust.

And this it is which gave the ice so delicate a tinge, seen through that inch of clear white ice. What is it? Can it be blood?

For a week or two the days have been sensibly longer, and it is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 25, 1855

This morning is a perfect hunter’s morn. See January 16, 1853 ("It was a hunter's day. All tracks were fresh, the snow deep and light.")

Good skating  See February 3, 1855 ("This will deserve to be called the winter of skating.") See also 
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating

Stillness in the hollows about the Andromeda Ponds. See January 24, 1855 ("Those Andromeda Ponds are very attractive spots to me."); February 13, 1859 ("The wonderful stillness of a winter day . . .It is the sabbath of the year, stillness audible")

It is a rare day for winter, clear and bright, yet warm . . . You dispense with gloves. See January 25, 1852 ("It is glorious to be abroad this afternoon . . . The warmth of the sun reminds me of summer."); January 25, 1853 ("There is something springlike in this afternoon "); January 25, 1858 ("A warm, moist day. Thermometer at 6.30 P.M. at 49°.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: the new warmth of the sun and Walking without Gloves

Rose-colored ice. See January 24, 1855 ("I was surprised to find the ice in the middle of the last pond a beautiful delicate rose-color for two or three rods, deeper in spots. It reminded me of red snow, and may be the same. It extended several inches into the ice, at least, and had been spread by the flowing water recently. It was this delicate rose tint, with internal bluish tinges."); February 23, 1855 ("See at Walden . . . ice formed over the large square where ice has been taken out for Brown’s ice-house has a decided pink or rosaceous tinge.");  March 4, 1855 ("Returning by the Andromeda Ponds, I am surprised to see the red ice visible still . . . It is melted down to the red bubbles, and I can tinge my finger with it there by rubbing it in the rotted ice."); March 7, 1855 ("The redness in the ice appears mostly to have evaporated, so that, melted, it does not color the water in a bottle."). See also See January 22, 1860 ("At the west or nesaea end of the largest Andromeda Pond, I see that there has been much red ice, more than I ever saw, but now spoiled by the thaw and snow.")

It is quite light now when the five-o’clock train comes in. See January 25, 1853 ( The earth and sun appear to have approached some degrees.") See also January 20, 1852 ("The days are now sensibly longer, and half past five is as light as five was.");  January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); January 24, 1852 ("The sun sets about five.”) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring; The Days have grown Sensibly Longer

January 25. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 25

Clear and bright, yet warm.

 It is a rare winter day –

you dispense with gloves.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The mystery of rose-colored ice

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-550125

Cool breezy evening with a prolonged white twilight.

September 29

September 29, 2018

P. M. —— To Lee’s Bridge via Mt. Misery and return by Conantum.

Yesterday was quite warm, requiring the thinnest coat. To-day is cooler. 

The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds, — as front of Hubbard’s, — perhaps earlier than usual. 

Bass berries dry and brown. 

Now is the time to gather barberries. 

Looking from the Cliffs, the young oak plain is now probably as brightly colored as it will be. The bright reds appear here to be next the ground, the lower parts of these young trees, and I find on descending that it is commonly so as yet with the scarlet oak, which is the brightest. It is the lower half or two thirds which have changed, and this is surmounted by the slender, still green top. In many cases these leaves have only begun to be sprinkled with bloody spots and stains, — sometimes as if one had cast up a quart of blood from beneath and stained them.

I now see the effect of that long drought on some young oaks, especially black oaks. Their leaves are in many in stances all turned to a clear and uniform brown, having so far lost their vitality, but still plump and full veined and not yet withered. Many are so affected and, of course, show no bright tints. They are hastening to a premature decay. The tops of many young white oaks which had turned are already withered, apparently by frost.

See two either pigeon or sparrow hawks, apparently male and female, the one much larger than the other. 

I see in many places the fallen leaves quite thickly covering the ground in the woods. 

A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season. 

I hear a very pleasant and now unusual strain on the sunny side of an oak wood from many — I think F. hyemalis, though I do not get a clear view of them. Even their slight jingling strain is remarkable at this still season. 

The catbird still mews. 

I see two ducks alternately diving in smooth water near the shore of Fair Haven Pond. Sometimes both are under at once. 

The milkweed down is flying at Clematis Ditch. 

This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight, quite Septemberish. 

When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them, they are so simple and remote. Their knowledge is felt to be all terrestrial and to concern the earth alone. It suggests that the same is the case with every object, however familiar; our so-called knowledge of it is equally vulgar and remote. 

One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1854

Yesterday was quite warm, requiring the thinnest coat.  See September 3, 1852 ("A warm night.  A thin coat sufficient."); September 9, 1851 ("A sultry night; a thin coat is enough."); September 14, 1851 ("A great change in the weather from sultry to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin ones."); September 14, 1859 ("When cooler weather and frosts arrive . . . we shift from the shady to the sunny side of the house, and sit there in an extra coat for warmth.") September 28, 1852 ("It has been too cold for the thinnest coat since the middle of September"); October 2, 1852 ("A very warm day after the frosts, so that I wish — though I am afraid to wear — a thin coat")

The elm leaves have in some places more than half fallen and strew the ground with thick rustling beds. See September 28, 1853 ("The elm leaves are falling"); September 28, 1857 ("Had one of those sudden cool gusts, which . . . caused the elms to labor and drop many leaves, early in afternoon."); October 1, 1858 ("The harvest of elm leaves is come, or at hand.")

Bass berries dry and brown.See September 30, 1859 ("Some acorns (swamp white oak) are browned on the trees, and some bass berries.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

Looking from the Cliffs, the young oak plain is now probably as brightly colored as it will be. See September 24, 1854 ("On the shrub oak plain under Cliffs, the young white oaks are generally now tending to a dull inward red. The ilicifolia generally green stil , with a few yellowish or else scarlet leaves. The young black oaks with many red , scarlet , or yellowish leaves."); September 25, 1854 ("On the shrub oak plain, as seen from Cliffs, the red at least balances the green. It looks like a rich, shaggy rug now, before the woods are changed."); October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples."); October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red, with grayish, withered, apparently white oak leaves intermixed."); January 30, 1853 (" What I have called the Shrub Oak Plain contains comparatively few shrub oaks, — rather, young red and white and, it may be, some scarlet (?).")

Now is the time to gather barberries. See September 29, 1853 ("Barberry ripe.") See also September 28, 1852 ("Children are now gathering barberries, — just the right time.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry

A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season.See September 22, 1860 ("See a large flock of crows."); October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here."); October 9, 1858 ("Crows fly over and caw at you now.") See also
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

The catbird still mews. See September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher."); September 25, 1855 ("Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side");September 25, 1858 ("The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly."); October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint.") 

The milkweed down is flying at Clematis Ditch. See September 10, 1860 ("If you sit at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will see many a milkweed down go sailing by.") September 24, 1852 ("At Clematis Brook I perceive that the pods or follicles of the Asclepias Syriaca . . . already bursting . . .How many myriads go sailing away at this season, high over hill and meadow and river, on various tacks until the wind lulls, to plant their race in new localities, who can tell how many miles distant! And for this end these silken streamers have been perfecting all summer, snugly packed in this light chest, — a perfect adaptation to this end, a prophecy not only of the fall but of future springs. Who could believe in prophecies . . .that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?")

This evening is quite cool and breezy, with a prolonged white twilight, quite Septemberish. See August 19, 1853 ("Now, while off Conantum, we have a cool, white, autumnal twilight, and as we pass the Hubbard Bridge, see the first stars."); August 28, 1853 ("A cool, white, autumnal evening."); August 30, 1856 ("A cold white horizon sky in the north, forerunner of the fall of the year."); September 11, 1854 "This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first in these respects decidedly autumnal evening."); October 27, 1858 (“The cool, white twilights of that season which is itself the twilight of the year.”); November 2, 1853("We come home in the autumn twilight . . . clear white light, which penetrates the woods”); November 14, 1853 ("the clear, white, leafless twilight of November”)

When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them. See November 21, 1850(" I begin to see ... an object when I cease to understand it."); August 5, 1851 ("The astronomer is as blind to the significant phenomena, or the significance of phenomena . . . The question is not what you look at, but what you see."); February 18, 1852 ("I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds."); January 21, 1853 ("if I am elevated in the least toward the heavens, I do not accept their classification of them. I am not to be distracted by the names which they have imposed. The sun which I know is not Apollo, nor is the evening star Venus. The heavens should be as new, at least, as the world is new . . . Nobody sees the stars now. They study astronomy "); September 29, 1858 ("What astronomer can calculate the orbit of my thistle-down?");  October 4, 1859 ("It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.")

Cool breezy evening

with a prolonged white twilight –

quite Septemberish.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Cool breezy evening 

with a prolonged white twilight.

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540929