February 17.
P. M. — Cold and northwest wind, drifting the snow.
3 P. M., thermometer 14º. A perfectly clear sky except one or two little cloud flecks in the southwest, which, when I look again after walking forty rods, have entirely dissolved.
When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink, and even from white board fences.
Grows colder yet at evening, and frost forms on the windows.
I hear that some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week!! It was probably a shrike .
Minott says that he hears that Heard's testimony in regard to Concord River in the meadow case was that “it is dammed at both ends and cursed in the middle,” i.e. on account of the damage to the grass there.
We cannot spare the very lively and lifelike descriptions of some of the old naturalists. They sympathize with the creatures which they describe.
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| The artist too has done his part equally well. |
Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The History of Four-footed Beasts” says of the antelopes that “they are bred in India and Syria , near the river Euphrates," and then — which enables you to realize the living creature and its habitat — he adds, "and delight much to drink of the cold water thereof."
The beasts which most modern naturalists describe do not delight in anything, and their water is neither hot nor cold. Reading the above makes you want to go and drink of the Euphrates yourself, if it is warm weather.
I do not know how much of his spirit he owes to Gesner, but he proceeds in his translation to say that "they have horns growing forth of the crown of their head, which are very long and sharp; so that Alexander affirmed they pierced through the shields of his soldiers, and fought with them very irefully: at which time his company slew as he travelled to India, eight thousand five hundred and fifty, which great slaughter may be the occasion why they are so rare and seldom seen to this day.”
Now here something is described at any rate; it is a real account, whether of a real animal or not. You can plainly see the horns which "grew forth” from their crowns, and how well that word “irefully” describes a beast' s fighting! And then for the number which Alexander's men slew “as he travelled to India,” — and what a travelling was that, my hearers! - eight thousand five hundred and fifty, just the number you would have guessed after the thousands were given, and [an] easy one to remember too.
He goes on to say that “their horns are great and made like a saw, and they with them can cut asunder the branches of osier or small trees , whereby it cometh to pass that many times their necks are taken in the twists of the falling boughs , whereat the beast with repining cry, bewrayeth him self to the hunters, and so is taken.”
The artist too has done his part equally well, for you are presented with a drawing of the beast with serrated horns, the tail of a lion, a cheek tooth (canine?) as big as a boar's, a stout front, and an exceedingly “ireful” look, as if he were facing all Alexander's army.
Though some beasts are described in this book which have no existence as I can learn but in the imagination of the writers, they really have an existence there, which is saying not a little, for most of our modern authors have not imagined the actual beasts which they presume to describe.
The very frontispiece is a figure of “the gorgon,” which looks sufficiently like a hungry beast covered with scales, which you may have dreamed of, apparently just fallen on the track of you, the reader, and snuffing the odor with greediness.
These men had an adequate idea of a beast, or what a beast should be, a very bellua (the translator makes the word bestia to be “a vastando”); and they will describe and will draw you a cat with four strokes, more beastly or beast - like to look at than Mr. Ruskin's favorite artist draws a tiger. They had an adequate idea of the wildness of beasts and of men, and in their descriptions and drawings they did not always fail when they surpassed nature.
Gesner says of apes that “they are held for a subtil, ironical, ridiculous and unprofitable beast, whose flesh is not good for meat as a sheep, neither his back for burthen as an asses, nor yet commodious to keep a house like a dog, but of the Grecians termed geloto poios, made for laughter.” As an evidence of an ape's want of “discretion” he says: “A certain ape after a shipwreck, swimming to land, was seen by a country man, who thinking him to be a man in the water gave him his hand to save him, yet in the mean time asked him what countryman he was , to which he answered that he was an Athenian: Well, said the man, dost thou know Piræus (a port in Athens)? Very well, said the ape, and his wife, friends and children. Whereat the man being moved, did what he could to drown him. ”
“They are best contented to sit aloft although tied with chains . . . . They bring forth young ones for the most part by twins, whereof they love the one and hate the other; that which they love they bear on their arms, the other hangeth at the dam' s back, and for the most part she killeth that which she loveth, by pressing it too hard: afterward, she setteth her whole delight upon the other.”
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1860
When the sun is setting the light reflected from the snow-covered roofs is quite a clear pink. See
December 20, 1854 ("in some places, where the sun falls on it, the snow has a pinkish tinge");
December 21, 1854 ("The last rays of the sun falling on the Baker Farm reflect a clear pink color. ");
January 10, 1859 ("This is one of the phenomena of the winter sunset, this distinct pink light reflected from the brows of snow-clad hills on one side of you as you are facing the sun.") J
anuary 31, 1859 (" The pink light reflected from the low, flat snowy surfaces amid the ice on the meadows, just before sunset, is a constant phenomenon these clear winter days. . . . I also see this pink in the dust made by the skaters.") and note to
December 29, 1859 ("To-night I notice the rose-color in the snow and the green in the ice at the same time, having been looking out for them").
Some say they saw a bluebird and heard it sing last week! See
February 8, 1860 ("It will take a yet more genial and milder air before the bluebird's warble can be heard.");
February 18, 1857 ("I thought at one time that I heard a bluebird. . . . I am excited by this wonderful air and go listening for the note of the bluebird or other comer. . . . Here is the soft air and the moist expectant apple trees, but not yet the bluebird. They do not quite attain to song") See also
December 18, 1859 ("I see three shrikes in different places to-day, — two on the top of apple trees, sitting still in the storm, on the lookout. They fly low to another tree when disturbed, much like a bluebird, and jerk their tails once or twice when they alight.")
Such remarkably
pleasant weather, i listen
for the first bluebird.
February 22, 1855
