Drifting snow, blue sky.

February 16. 

This afternoon there is a clear, bright air, which, though cold and windy, I love to inhale. The sky is a much fairer and undimmed blue than usual. The surface of the snow which fell last night is coarse like bran, with shining flakes. 

I see the steam-like snow-dust curling up and careering along over the fields. As I walk the bleak Walden road, it blows up over the highest drifts in the west, lit by the westering sun like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind.

By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.

Linnæus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 16, 1852

Clear, bright air, undimmed blue sky. See January 7, 1851 ("The life, the joy, that is in blue sky after a storm! "); February 12, 1860 ("Above me is a cloudless blue sky; beneath, the sky-blue, sky-reflecting ice with patches of snow scattered over it like mackerel clouds")

I see the steam-like snow-dust . . . like the spray on a beach before the northwest wind. See February 9, 1855 ("The snow is so light and dry that it rises like spray or foam before the legs of the horses.")

By the artificial system we learn the names of plants. Seee January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . ."); August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing."); February 18, 1860 ("As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but . . . the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.")

Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. Compare February 18, 1852 ("It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science."); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)  [On Feb 3 Thoreau had checked out Linnaeus' Philosophia botanica by Carl von Linnaeus from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).]

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