January 30
Clear and not cold, and now fine skating, the river rising again to the height it had attained the 24th, which (with this) I think remarkable for this season. It is unusual for the river to be so much swollen in midwinter, because it is unusual to have so much rain at this season. The hills shed it all like a roof into the valleys. It is up to the hubs on the causeways, and foot—travellers have to cross on the river and meadows.
Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He says, “It’s a sort of yaller fox, but their pelts ain’t good for much.” He never saw one, but the hunters have told him of them. He never saw a gray nor a black one. Told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.
Said the raccoon made a track very much like a young child’s foot. He had often seen it in the mud of a ditch.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1855
Clear and not cold, and now fine skating, the river rising again to the height it had attained the 24th, which (with this) I think remarkable for this season. It is unusual for the river to be so much swollen in midwinter, because it is unusual to have so much rain at this season. The hills shed it all like a roof into the valleys. It is up to the hubs on the causeways, and foot—travellers have to cross on the river and meadows.
Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He says, “It’s a sort of yaller fox, but their pelts ain’t good for much.” He never saw one, but the hunters have told him of them. He never saw a gray nor a black one. Told how Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him.
Said the raccoon made a track very much like a young child’s foot. He had often seen it in the mud of a ditch.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 30, 1855
Clear and not cold, and now fine skating, the river rising again. See January 31, 1855 ("A clear, cold, beautiful day. Fine skating. An unprecedented expanse of ice . . . skated up the river to explore further than I had been") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Winter of Skating
Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He never saw a gray nor a black one. Jake Lakin lost a dog, a very valuable one, by a fox leading him on to the ice on the Great Meadows and drowning him. See January 2, 1859 ("Minott says that a fox will lead a dog on to thin ice in order that he may get in. Tells of Jake Lakin losing a hound so, which went under the ice and was drowned below the Holt; was found afterward by Sted Buttrick, his collar taken off and given to Lakin"); January 22, 1860 ("Minott says that a hound which pursues a fox by scent cannot tell which way he is going; that the fox is very cunning and will often return on its track over which the dog had already run. It will ascend a high rock and then leap off very far to one side; so throw the dogs off the scent for a while and gain a breathing-spell."); January 23, 1860. ("[Minott] says that . . . a hound in its head long course will frequently run over the fox, which quickly turns and gets off three or four rods before the former can stop himself.") September 10, 1860 ("[Minott] told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox . . .from Lowell over this way and lost him at Chelmsford.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
He had often seen the track of a racooon. See February 20, 1855 ("I know that we have here in Concord are at least twenty-one and perhaps twenty-six quadrupeds . . . Some, though numerous, are rarely seen, as the wild mice and moles. Others are very rare, like the otter and raccoon.")
January 30. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 30
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