June 30th, July 3d, 4th, 6th, and 7th, I carried round a thermometer in the afternoon and ascertained the temperature of the springs . . . On the whole . . . where I had expected to find great diversity I find remarkable uniformity.
The temperature of good or cool springs in this town at this season varies very little indeed from 49 °, and I should be surprised to meet with one considered cold which varied more than 3º from this . . . Each farmer values his spring and takes pride in it. He is inclined to think it the coldest in the neighbor hood. . .
Some are far away and only used by hunters and walkers and berry-pickers. Some are used in haying time only. Some are so cold and clear, and so near withal, as to be used daily by some family, who "turn up their noses" at the well. Others , as Dugan's, are instead of the well. One, as Wheeler's, has had five hundred dollars expended on it.
No. 6 was found by Hosmer when he built his dam, and he imagines that it has medicinal properties, and used accordingly to come to drink at it often, though half a mile from his house.
Some will have a broken tumbler hid in the grass near, or a rusty dipper hung on a twig near by. Others, again, drink through some hollow weed's stem.
None are too cold for the Rana fontinalis, which will hardly make room for your face when you stoop to drink.
Some are only known to myself and friends, and I clear them out annually.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 7, 1860
I see a flock of some twenty-five crows. Probably the young are just grown. See June 19, 1853 ("I think I saw a young crow now fully grown. "); July 10, 1854 (" Crows are more noisy, probably anxious about young"); see also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow and JJ Audubon ("The American Crow is common in all parts of the United States. It becomes gregarious immediately after the breeding season, when it forms flocks sometimes containing hundreds, or even thousands..")
Springs in this town at this season. See July 7, 1854 ("Woodcock at the spring under Clamshell"); July 11, 1852 ("Impatiens fulva, by Corner Spring . . .The Circæa alpina, enchanter's-nightshade, by Corner Spring"); July 11, 1857 ("Am surprised to find the water of Corner Spring spoiled for the present, however much I clear it out, by the numbers of dead and dying frogs in it (Rana palustris). There is a mortality among which has made them hop to this spring to die. "); July 13, 1852 ("Each day now I scare up woodcocks by shady springs and swamps"); July 14, 1856 ("While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom."); July 17, 1856 "Stooping to drink at the Hosmer Spring, I saw a hundred caddis-cases, of light-colored pebbles, at the bottom,.") See also August 17, 1851 ("The man must not drink of the running streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to have all nature reborn in him,")
The Rana fontinalis . . . will hardly make room for your face when you stoop to drink. See July 12, 1857 ("I drink at every cooler spring in my walk these afternoons and love to eye the bottom there, with its pebbly caddis-cases, or its white worms, or perchance a luxurious frog cooling himself next my nose")
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