Surprised how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods

April 2. 

Cold and windy. 

April 2, 2018

2 P. M. — Thermometer 31°, or fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. 

I had expected rain to succeed the thick haze. It was cloudy behind the haze and rained a little about 9 P. M., but, the wind having gone northwest (from southwest), it turned to snow.

The shrubs whose buds had begun to unfold yesterday are the spiræa, gooseberry, lilac, and Missouri currant, — the first much the most forward and green, the rest in the order named. 

Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st. I smelled the burnt ground a quarter of a mile off. It was a very severe burn, the ground as black as a chimney-back. The fire is said to have begun by an Irishman burning brush near Wild' s house in the south part of Acton, and ran north and northeast some two miles before the southwest wind, crossing Fort Pond Brook. I walked more than a mile along it and could not see to either end, and crossed it in two places. A thousand acres must have been burned. 

The leaves being thus cleanly burned, you see amid their cinders countless mouse-galleries, where they have run all over the wood, especially in shrub oak land, these lines crossing each other every foot and at every angle. You are surprised to see by these traces how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods, out of the way of cold and of hawks. The fire has burned off the top and half-way down their galleries. 

Every now and then we saw an oblong square mark of pale-brown or fawn-colored ashes amid the black cinders, where corded wood had been burned. In one place, though at the north edge of a wood, I saw white birch and amelanchier buds (the base of whose stems had been burned or scorched) just bursting into leaf, — evidently the effect of the fire, for none of their kind is so forward elsewhere. 

This fire ran before the wind, which was southwest, and, as nearly as I remember, the fires generally at this season begin on that side, and you need to be well protected there by a plowing or raking away the leaves. Also the men should run ahead of the fire before the wind, most of them, and stop it at some cross-road, by raking away the leaves and setting back fires. 

Look out for your wood-lots between the time when the dust first begins to blow in the streets and the leaves are partly grown. 

The earliest willows are apparently in prime. 

I find that the signs of the weather in Theophrastus are repeated by many more recent writers without being referred to him or through him; e. g., by an authority quoted by Brand in his “Popular Antiquities," who evidently does not know that they are in Theophrastus. 

Talking with a farmer who was milking sixteen cows in a row the other evening, an ox near which we stood,  at the end of the row, suddenly half lay, half fell, down on the hard and filthy floor, extending its legs helplessly to one side in a mechanical manner while its head was uncomfortably held between the stanchions as in a pillory. Thus man's fellow-laborer the ox, tired with his day's work, is compelled to take his rest, like the most wretched slave or culprit. It was evidently a difficult experiment each time to lie down at all without dislocating his neck, and his neighbors had not room to try the same at the same time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1860

Thermometer fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. See  April 2, 1852 (“The rain now turns to snow with large flakes, so soft many cohere in the air as they fall. . . . Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten.”); April 2, 1857 ("In the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep."); April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.”)

The great burning of the 31st. . . Look out for your wood-lots. See March 31, 1860 ("I hear that there has been a great fire in the woods this afternoon near the factory. Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. This is the dangerous time, —between the drying of the earth, or say when dust begins to fly, and the general leafing of the trees,")

You are surprised to see by these traces how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods. Compare January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. .that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen")

I saw amelanchier buds (the base of whose stems had been burned or scorched) just bursting into leaf, — evidently the effect of the fire. See April 2, 1853 ("The amelanchier buds look more forward than those of any shrub I notice.")


The earliest willows are apparently in prime. See March 25, 1860  ("One early willow on railroad . . . just sheds pollen from one anther, but probably might find another more forward"); March 31, 1858 ("The most forward willow catkins are not so silvery now, more grayish, being much enlarged and the down less compact, revealing the dark scales"); April 1, 1852 ("There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above."); April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far.")

A farmer who was milking sixteen cows. See January 9, 1860 ("A rich old farmer . . . milks seventeen cows regularly.")

An ox . . . suddenly half lay, half fell, down on the hard and filthy floor, extending its legs helplessly to one side. See December 26, 1851 ("It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.")

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.

March 5.

March 5, 2020

The meadows skim over at night. 

White pine cones half fallen. 

The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic to nature that they could be surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were not incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but our habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. 

Chickweed and shepherd's-purse in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month.

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. 

I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them. 

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. The best time to hunt them is early morning and evening. His father goes out at daybreak, and can kill more in one hour after that than from that time to near sunset. He says that he has found eleven young in one musquash, and that Joel Barrett observed that one pair near his house bred five times in one year. Thought it would hardly pay to shoot them for their fur alone, but would if you owned river-meadow banks, they undermine them so. 

So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood. 

As the ancients talked about ”hot and cold, moist and dry,” so the moderns talk about ”electric” qualities. 

As we sat under Lupine Promontory the other day, watching the ripples that swept over the flooded meadow and thinking what an eligible site that would be for a cottage, C. declared that we did not live in the country as long as we lived on that village street and only took walks into the fields, any more than if we lived in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of the immortal quiet of the country as we might here, for instance, but per chance the first sound that we hear in the morning, instead of the tinkling of a bird, is your neighbor hawking and spitting.

Our spiræas have been considerably unfolded for several days. 

Ways fairly settled generally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1860

White pine cones half fallen. See February 25, 1860 (“ The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.”); March 7, 1855 ("Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

Gorgons and flying dragons. See February 18, 1860 ("The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.")

Chickweed in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter. See February 2, 1853 ("The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.")

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. See March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.");  March 3, 1860 (" The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.");  March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”);  March 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet. . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.") See also note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.  See February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed."); March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")

Paint the bottom of my boat

February 26. 

Cold and windy. The river fast going down.

 
Paint the bottom of my boat. 

What an accursed land, methinks unfit for the habitation of man, where the wild animals are monkeys! 

I saw Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas to-day grown half an inch (!!), whose starting I heard of on the 18th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 26, 1857

Paint the bottom of my boat. See March 9, 1855 (“Painted the bottom of my boat. ”); March 15, 1854 (“Paint my boat. ”) ; March 16, 1860 (“As soon as I can get it painted and dried, I launch my boat and make my first voyage for the year up or down the stream, on that element from which I have been de barred for three months and a half.”); March 17, 1857 (“Launch my boat.”). See also February 23, 1857 ("I have seen signs of the spring.")

I saw Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas to-day. See February 18, 1856 ("Sophia says that Mrs. Brooks's spiraeas have started considerably!”); February 25, 1857 ("I hear of lilac buds expanding, but have not looked at them.")