A Book of the Seasons: Late Season Frogs and Toads

 I would make a chart of our life,

know why just this circle of creatures completes the world,

what kinds of birds come with what flowers. 

Henry Thoreau, April 18, 1852

In an old pond

a frog grows old

among the fallen leaves

~ Buson

September 28, 2024

Notice a large toad 

amid dead leaves in the woods

colored like the leaves.

October 8. 1856

October 20, 2025

How short their year!  How early they sleep!  . . .

That resounding life is now buried in the mud,

returned into Nature's womb.

November 12, 1853

October 2. As I approached Perch Pool the other day, half a dozen frogs leaped into it and buried themselves in the mass of callitriche at the bottom. I stood looking for perch a minute or two, when one after another up came the frogs from out the callitriche, just as a piece of cork would rise by mere buoyancy to the surface; and then, by a distinct effort, they let go all, drop anchor, elevate or let float up their heels, and lie spread out on the surface. They were probably Rana fontinalis.  October 2, 1858

October 2. Hear a hylodes in the swamp. October 2, 1859

October 3. I hear a hylodes (?) from time to time. October 3, 1852

October 3. Hear a hylodes peeping on shore. October 3, 1858 

October 14. Within a couple of rods a single hyla peeps interruptedly, bird-like. October 14, 1857

October 16.   I see a delicate pale brown-bronze wood frog. I think I can always take them up in my hand. They, too, vary in color, like the leaves of many species of plants at present, having now more yellow, now more red; and perhaps for the same reason. October 16, 1857

October 18. Saw a tree-toad on the ground in a sandy wood-path. It did not offer to hop away, may have been chilled by the rain (?). It is marked on the back with black, some what in the form of the hylodes.   October 18, 1859

October 22. I hear a hyla. October 22, 1855

October 23. Many phenomena remind me that now is to some extent a second spring . . . the peeping of the hylodes for some time.  October 23, 1853

October 29. Wood frogs hop about amid the cool ferns and lycopodiums. October 29, 1858

November 2. Are not the wood frogs the philosophers who walk (?) in these groves? Methinks I imbibe a cool, composed, frog-like philosophy when I behold them. November 2, 1857

November 3. In the Heywood Brooks, many young pollywogs two inches long and more; also snails on the bottom.  November 3, 1852

November 3. Very small pollywogs in pools, one and a half or two inches long. November 3, 1853

November 8. Saw a frog at the Swamp Bridge on back road. November 8, 1851

November 11.  Frogs are rare and sluggish, as if going into winter quarters. A cricket also sounds rather rare and distinct. November 11, 1855 

November 12. There is no sound of a frog from all these waters and meadows which a few months ago resounded so with them; not even a cricket or the sound of a mosquito. I can fancy that I hear the sound of peeping hylodes ringing in my ear, but it is all fancy. How short their year! How early they sleep! Nature is desert and iron-bound; she has shut her door  How different from the muggy nights of summer, teeming with life! That resounding life is now buried in the mud, returned into Nature's womb, and most of the birds have retreated to the warm belt of the earth. Yet still from time to time a pickerel darts away. And still the heavens are unchanged; the same starry geometry looks down on their active and their torpid state. And the first frog that puts his eye forth from the mud next spring shall see the same everlasting starry eyes ready to play at bo-peep with him, for they do not go into the mud. November 12, 1853

November 12.  The hylodes, as it is the first frog heard in the spring, so it is the last in the autumn. I heard it last, me thinks, about a month ago. November 12, 1853

November 23. The Indian summer itself, said to be more remarkable in this country than elsewhere, no less than the reblossoming of certain flowers, the peep of the hylodes, and sometimes the faint warble of some birds, is the reminiscence, or rather the return, of spring, the year renewing its youth. November 23, 1853

November 26. Those pouts’ nests which I discovered in the spring are high and dry six feet from the water. I overhauled one, ripping up the frozen roof with my hands. The roof was only three inches thick, then a cavity and a bottom of wet mud. In this mud I found two small frogs, one apparently a Rana palustris less than an inch long. November 26, 1858

November 30.  This has been a very pleasant month, with quite a number of Indian-summer days, - a pleasanter month than October was. It is quite warm today, and as I go home at dusk on the railroad causeway, I hear a hylodes peeping. November 30, 1859

December 3. At J. Hosmer's tub spring, I dug out a small bull frog (?) in the sandy mud at the bottom of the tub — it was lively enough to hop — and brought it home. Probably they lie universally buried in the mud now, below the reach of frost . . . The frogs then are especially to be looked for in the mud about springs. December 3, 1853

December 3.  I carry hatchet and rake in order to explore the Pout’s Nest for frogs and fish, —the pond not being frozen. A small part of that chink of the 26th is not yet frozen, and is crowded with pollywogs, mostly of large size, and very many have legs more or less developed. With my small iron rake, about a foot long by four inches wide, I jerk on to the ice at one jerk forty five pollywogs, and more than as many more fall into the water. Many of the smallest pollywogs have bright copper-red bellies, prettily spotted, while the large are commonly pale-yellow, either clear or spotted. Many are dying. They have crowded so thickly along the open chink three or four inches wide by the side of a boat in the ice that, when I accidentally rock it, about a hundred are washed out on to the ice . . . I have often seen pollywogs in small numbers in the winter, in spring-holes, etc., but never such crowding to air-holes in the ice. December 3, 1858

December 21. Walking over the Andromeda Ponds between Walden and Fair Haven, which have only frozen just enough to bear me, I see in springy parts, where the ice is thin, good-sized pollywogs wiggling away, scared by the sound of my steps and cracking of the ice. They appear to keep in motion in such muddy pond-holes, where a spring wells up from the bottom till midwinter, if not all winter December 21, 1857 

January 24. At Hosmer's tub spring a small frog is active! January 24, 1858

January 26. I suspect I may even have heard a frog drop into the water once or twice.  January 26, 1858

January 29. I see a Rana palustris swimming, and much conferva greening all the water. January 29, 1858

February 18. When I approached the bank of a ditch this afternoon, I saw a frog diving to the bottom.  February 18, 1857 

An old pond

a frog jumps in –

sound of water.

~ Basho

See also:

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Frogs, and Turtles Stirring 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Basho's Commentary

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Late Season Frogs and Toads

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 © 2009-2026

A Book of the Seasons: October 2 (autumn tints, the pine fall, witch hazel, fall flowers, cinnamon fern, past years)

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852 

October 2. 

At the Cliffs I find

wasps prolonging their short lives

on the sunny rocks.

October 2, 1851

The sour scent of ferns

reminds me of the season

and of the past years.

October 2, 1859

October 2, 2014

A dark and windy night the last. It is a new value when darkness amounts to something positive. Each morning now, after rain and wind, is fresher and cooler, and leaves still green reflect a brighter sheen. October 2, 1858

It is a little hazy as I look into the west to-day. October 2, 1851

A very warm day after the frosts, so that I wish — though I am afraid to wear — a thin coat. October 2, 1852

There are but few and faint autumnal tints about Walden yet. October 2, 1853

The leaves of some trees merely wither, turn brown, and drop off at this season, without any conspicuous flush of beauty, while others now first attain to the climax of their beauty. October 2, 1857

The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uniformly of a deep red. October 2, 1851

From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples. October 2, 1852

How much more beautiful the lakes now, like Fair Haven, surrounded by the autumn-tinted woods and hills, as in an ornamented frame! October 2, 1852

A great many red maples are merely yellow; more, scarlet, in some cases deepening to crimson. October 2, 1857

Some maples in sprout-lands are of a delicate, pure, clear, unspotted red, inclining to crimson, surpassing most flowers. I would fain pluck the whole tree and carry it home for a nosegay. October 2, 1852

Sitting on a rock east of Trillium Woods, I perceive that, generally speaking, it is only the edge or pediment of the woods that shows the bright autumnal tints yet (while the superstructure is green) October 2, 1857

The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite generally. October 2, 1856

The smooth sumach is but a dull red. October 2, 1853

This changing of the leaves — their brighter tints — must have to do with cold, for it begins in the low meadows and in frosty hollows in the woods. There is where you must look as yet for the bright tints. October 2, 1857

There is a more or less general reddening of the leaves at this season, down to the cinquefoil and mouse-ear, sorrel and strawberry under our feet. October 2, 1857

That large lechea, now so freshly green and sometimes scarlet. October 2, 1859

The second lechea radical shoots are one inch long. October 2, 1856

So many maple and pine and other leaves have now fallen that in the woods, at least, you walk over a carpet of fallen leaves. October 2, 1859

Some of the white pines on Fair Haven Hill have just reached the acme of their fall; others have almost entirely shed their leaves, and they are scattered over the ground and the walls. October 2, 1851

The same is the state of the pitch pines. October 2, 1851

The white pines have scarcely begun at all to change here, though a week ago last Wednesday they were fully changed at Bangor. There is fully a fortnight's difference, and methinks more. The witch-hazel, too, was more forward there. October 2, 1853

The gentian in Hubbard's Close is frost-bitten extensively. As the witch-hazel is raised above frost and can afford to be later, for this reason also I think it is so. October 2, 1853

The fringed gentian at Hubbard's Close has been out some time, and most of it already withered. October 2, 1857 

The erechthites down (fire-weed) is conspicuous in sprout-lands of late, since its leaves were killed. October 2, 1857

Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there, and Hieracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each.   October 2, 1856 

Corydalis still fresh. October 2, 1856

The veiny-leaved hawkweed in blossom (again?). October 2, 1852

The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form. October 2, 1856

The prinos berries are in their prime, seven sixteenths of an inch in diameter. They are scarlet, some what lighter than the arum berries. They are now very fresh and bright, and what adds to their effect is the perfect freshness and greenness of the leaves amid which they are seen. October 2, 1856

Gerardia purpurea still. October 2, 1856

Eupatorium purpureum is generally done. October 2, 1856

Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, etc., of this and the angulosum are turned crimson. October 2, 1856

The A. undulatus looks fairer than ever, now that flowers are more scarce. October 2, 1859

The Aster undulatus and Solidago coesia and often puberula are particularly prominent now, looking late and bright, attracting bees, etc. October 2, 1859

I see the S. coesia so covered with the little fuzzy gnats as to be whitened by them. October 2, 1859

How bright the S. puberula in sprout-lands, — its yellow wand, — perhaps in the midst of a clump of little scarlet or dark-purple black oaks! October 2, 1859

Solidago speciosa completely out, though not a flower was out September 27th, or five days ago; say three or four days. October 2, 1856

Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. October 2, 1856

Since the cooler weather many crickets are seen clustered on warm banks and by sunny wall-sides. October 2, 1857

The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus — as a magnet discovers the steel filings in a heap of ashes — than if I used my eyes alone. October 2, 1852

Brakes in Hubbard's Swamp Wood are withered, quite dry. October 2, 1856

Cinnamon fern four or five feet high . . . now generally imbrowned or crisp. In the more open swamp beyond, these ferns, recently killed by the frost and exposed to the sun, fill the air with a very strong sour scent.  October 2, 1857

I perceive in various places, in low ground, this afternoon, the sour scent of cinnamon ferns decaying. It is an agreeable phenomenon, reminding me of the season and of past years. October 2, 1859

At the Cliffs, I find the wasps prolonging their short lives on the sunny rocks, just as they endeavored to do at my house in the woods. October 2, 1851

Saw apparently two phoebes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months? October 2, 1856

The garden is alive with migrating sparrows these mornings. October 2, 1858

The chickadees of late have winter ways, flocking after you. October 2, 1857

Hear a hylodes in the swamp. October 2, 1859

*****

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau. Wasps

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Hawkweeds (hieracium)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod (solidago caesia)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Great Bidens (Beggar-ticks)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Fringed Gentian

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau  Purple Gerardia

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Rhexia Virginica 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Witch-Hazel

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Shrub Oak

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chickadee in Winter

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Reminiscence and Prompting

*****

 

June 23, 1858 ("Veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long?");
June 23, 1859 (Veiny-leaved hawkweed freshly out"") 

August 12, 1852 ("Solidago bicolor, white goldenrod, apparently in good season.")

August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”)
August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”);
August 30, 1859 ("The erechthites down has begun to fly.")

September 6, 1854 ("The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered.");
September 9, 1852 ("The groundsel down is in the air.")

September 10, 1859 ("See wasps, collected in the sun on a wall, at 9 A. M.")

September 12, 1858 ("The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither.")

September 16, 1852 (“Some birds, like some flowers, begin to sing again in the fall.”)

September 20, 1852 ("Aster undulatus, or variable aster, with a large head of middle-sized blue flowers.")

September 20, 1852 ("The smooth sumachs are turning conspicuously and generally red, apparently from frost")

September 20, 1852 ("The groundsel and hieracium down is in the air")

September 21, 1856 ("[On top of Cliff, behind the big stump] is a great place for white goldenrod, now in its prime and swarming with honey-bees."); 

September 22, 1852 ("How brown and sere the groundsel or "fire-weed” on hillside by Heywood's Meadow, which has been touched by frost,")

September 23, 1854 ("Very brilliant and remarkable now are the prinos berries, so brilliant and fresh when most things -- flowers and berries -- have withered.”)

September 24, 1859 (" Stedman Buttrick's handsome maple and pine swamp is full of cinnamon ferns.")

September 25, 1859 ("The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown. . . in harmony with the twilight of the swamp")
September 25, 1852 ("The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red")

September 25, 1859 ("Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days")

September 26, 1859 ("So it is with flowers, birds, and frogs a renewal of spring.") 
September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever.")

September 28, 1851 ("The swamp is bordered with the red-berried alder, or prinos,")
September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool
October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit.").
October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast")

October 1, 1858 ("The cinnamon ferns are crisp and sour in open grounds")

October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish")
October 3, 1856 ("The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall.")
October 3, 1858 ("White pines fairly begin to change.")

 October 3, 1858 ("Hear a hylodes peeping on shore.")
October 3, 1858 ("Some particular maple among a hundred will be of a peculiarly bright and pure scarlet, and, by its difference of tint and intenser color, attract our eyes even at a distance in the midst of the crowd")

October 4, 1859 ("The birds seem to delight in these first fine days of the fall, in the warm, hazy light")
October 4, 1859 (“Birds are now seen more numerously than before, as if called out by the fine weather, probably many migrating birds from the north.”)

October 5, 1858 ("Phebe note of Chickadee often these days. ")

October 5, 1857 ("The smooth sumach is very important for its mass of clear red or crimson. Some of it is now a very dark crimson.")

October 5, 1858 ("I still see large flocks, apparently of chip birds, on the weeds and ground in the yard.”)

October 6, 1856 ("The common notes of the chickadee, so rarely heard for a long time, and also one phebe strain from it, amid the Leaning Hemlocks, remind me of pleasant winter days, when they are more commonly seen.”)
October 6, 1858  ("Cinnamon ferns are generally crisped, but in the swamp I saw some handsomely spotted green and yellowish, and one clump, the handsomest I ever saw.")

October 6, 1858  ("The Aster undulatus is now very fair and interesting. Generally a tall and slender plant with a very long panicle of middle-sized lilac or paler purple flowers, bent over to one side the path. ")

October 6, 1858  ("The smooth sumachs, which are in their prime, or perhaps a little past, are, methinks, the most uniform and intense scarlet of any shrub or tree")

October 7, 1860 ("Now and for a week the chip-birds in flocks; the withered grass and weeds, etc., alive with them.")
October 8, 1855 ("Flocks of tree sparrows by river, slightly warbling. Hear a song sparrow sing. See apparently white-throated sparrows.”)

October 8, 1856 ("Of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus, Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common.")
October 8, 1856 (“The trees and weeds by the Turnpike are all alive this pleasant afternoon with twittering sparrows.”)

 October 8, 1852 (“Nothing can exceed the brilliancy of some of the maples which stand by the shore and extend their red banners over the water.”)

October 9, 1853 ("The red maples are now red and also yellow and reddening.")
October 9, 1860 ("I now see one small red maple which is all a pure yellow within and a bright red scarlet on its outer surface and prominences.")

October 10, 1851 ("There are many things to indicate the renewing of spring at this season.")

October 10, 1856 "The phebe note of the chickadee is now often heard in the yards, and the very Indian summer itself is a similar renewal of the year, with the faint warbling of birds and second blossoming of flowers.")

 October 10, 1857 ("Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare")
October 11, 1856 ("The white goldenrod is still common here, and covered with bees.")
October 11, 1856 ("Here on the Cliffs are fresh poke flowers and small snapdragon and corydalis.");

October 11, 1856 (“Hieracium venosum still.”)
October 12, 1851 ("The seeds of the bidens, or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them.")
October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red,")
October 13, 1857 ("These red maples and young scarlet oaks, etc., have been the most conspicuous and important colors, or patches of color, in the landscape. ")

October 14, 1856 ("Pine-needles, just fallen, now make a thick carpet. ")

October 15, 1856 (“The chickadees are hopping near on the hemlock above. They resume their winter ways before the winter comes.”)

October 16, 1857 ("See the carpet of pale-brown needles under this pine. How light it lies up on the grass, and that great rock, and the wall,")

October 17, 1857 ("The cinnamon ferns . . .have acquired their November aspect.")
October 19, 1852 (“ It is too remarkable a flower not to be sought out and admired each year, . . . this conspicuous and handsome and withal blue flower . . .the latest of all to begin to bloom, unless it be the witch-hazel. ”)
October 20, 1858 ("Now in low grounds the different species of bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes. These bidents, tridents, quadridents are shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes.")

October 22, 1858 ("I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree.")
October 23, 1853 ("I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days")

October 23, 1853 ("The prinos is bare, leaving red berries.")

October 23, 1853 ("Many phenomena re mind me that now is to some extent a second spring, — not only the new-springing and blossoming of flowers, but the peeping of the hylodes for some time")

October 23, 1853 ("The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank, — far more so than the Solidago coesia.")

October 23, 1852 ("The chickadees flit along, following me inquisitively a few rods with lisping, tinkling note, — flit within a few feet of me from curiosity, head downward on the pines.")

October 25, 1858 ("The Aster undulatus is now a dark purple (its leaves), with brighter purple or crimson under sides.")

October 25, 1858 ("I see many goldenrods turned purple — all the leaves. Some of them are Solidago coesia and some (I think) S. puberula.")

November 2, 1853 ("The prinos berries are almost gone.")

November 3, 1858 ("Aster undulatus is still freshly in bloom.")

November 7, 1858 ("Aster undulatus and several goldenrods, at least, may be found yet.")
November 8, 1858 ("Solidago puberula still out, for you see a few bright yellow solidago flowers long after they are generally turned to a dirty-white fuzzy top.")

December 1, 1853 (T hey are our most honest and innocent little bird, drawing yet nearer to us as the winter advances.”)
December 3, 1856 ("Six weeks ago I noticed the advent of chickadees and their winter habits. As you walk along a wood-side, a restless little flock of them, whose notes you hear at a distance, will seem to say, "Oh, there he goes! Let's pay our respects to him." And they will flit after and close to you, and naively peck at the nearest twig to you, as if they were minding their own business all the while without any reference to you.”)

October 2, 2014

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

October 1 <<<<<<<<<  October 2>>>>>>>>  October 3

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  October 2

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 © 2009-2022

https://tinyurl.com/HDT02Oct 

The white pine fall on Fair Haven Hill.

October 2. 

P. M.

October 2, 2014

Some of the white pines on Fair Haven Hill have just reached the acme of their fall; others have almost entirely shed their leaves, and they are scattered over the ground and the walls. The same is the state of the pitch pines.

At the Cliffs, I find the wasps prolonging their short lives on the sunny rocks, just as they endeavored to do at my house in the woods.

It is a little hazy as I look into the west to-day.

The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uniformly of a deep red.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1851

Some of the white pines on Fair Haven Hill have just reached the acme of their fall. See October 2, 1853 ("The white pines have scarcely begun at all to change here.") See also October 1, 1857 ("The pines now half turned yellow, the needles of this year are so much the greener by contrast"); October 3, 1852 ("The pine fall, i.e. change, is commenced, and the trees are mottled green and yellowish"); October 3, 1856 (" The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles ready to fall ."); October 3, 1858 ("White pines fairly begin to change.") A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The October Pine Fall

I find the wasps prolonging their short lives on the sunny rocks. See note to September 10, 1859 ("See wasps, collected in the sun on a wall, at 9 A. M.")

It is a little hazy as I look into the west to-day. See October 4, 1859 ("The birds seem to delight in these first fine days of the fall, in the warm, hazy light")

The shrub oaks on the terraced plain are now almost uniformly of a deep red. See October 2, 1852 ("From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples."); see also October 1, 1859 ("The shrub oaks on this hill are now at their height, both with respect to their tints and their fruit."); October 13, 1852 ("The shrub oak plain is now a deep red,"); October 22, 1858 ("I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a single tree")

I would fain pluck the whole tree and carry it home for a nosegay.

October 2.

P. M.— To Cliffs.

The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus — as a magnet discovers the steel filings in a heap of ashes — than if I used my eyes alone.

The river is as low, within an inch or two, as when I made my mark.

A very warm day after the frosts, so that I wish — though I am afraid to wear — a thin coat.

From Cliffs the shrub oak plain has now a bright-red ground, perhaps of maples.

How much more beautiful the lakes now, like Fair Haven, surrounded by the autumn-tinted woods and hills, as in an ornamented frame!

Some maples in sprout-lands are of a delicate, pure, clear, unspotted red, inclining to crimson, surpassing most flowers. I would fain pluck the whole tree and carry it home for a nosegay.

The veiny-leaved hawkweed in blossom (again?).

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 2, 1852

The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus than if I used my eyes alone. See August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”); September 29, 1856 ("How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat! "); October 12, 1851 ("The seeds of the bidens, or beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them."); October 20, 1858 ("Now in low grounds the different species of bidens or beggar’s-ticks adhere to your clothes. These bidents, tridents, quadridents are shot into you by myriads of unnoticed foes."); October 23, 1853 ("I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days")

The veiny-leaved hawkweed in blossom (again?) See October 11, 1856 (“Hieracium  venosum still.”)  See also June 23, 1858 ("Veiny-leaved hawkweed, how long?"); June 23, 1859 (Veiny-leaved hawkweed freshly out"") and August 21, 1851 (" I have now found all the hawkweeds. Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly related yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a natural history in a new sense.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Hawkweeds (hieracium)