To Mt. Misery and Lee's Bridge.

November 8.

I notice along the Corner road, beyond Abiel Wheeler's, quite a number of little white pines springing up against the south wall, whose seed must have been blown from Hubbard's Grove some fifty rods east.  Also a wet and brushy meadow some forty rods in front of Garfield's is being rapidly filled with white pines whose seeds must have been blown an equal distance.

We need not be surprised at these results when we consider how persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly.

A great pine wood may drop many millions of seeds in one year, and if only half a dozen are conveyed a quarter of a mile and lodge against some fence, and only one comes up and lives there, yet in the course of fifteen or twenty years there are fifteen or twenty young trees there.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 8, 1860

How persevering Nature is... See 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. ... How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race! By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft." ); October 23, 1853 ("I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux- de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days. A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there.")