Near Loring pond four houses and families now gone.

June 4

Surveying for J. Hosmer. Very warm.

While running a line on the west edge of Loring’s Pond, south of the brook, found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. 

I think it must have been a duck’s nest. This pond and its islets, half flooded and inaccessible, afford excellent places. 

Anthony Wright says that he used to get slippery elm bark from a place southwest of Wetherbee’s Mill, about ten rods south of the brook. 

He says there was once a house at head of hollow next beyond Clamshell. 

He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain. Think of going to sleep for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set and his scales (!), dissolving in your throat! ! What dreams! What waking thoughts! 

Also showed where one Shaw, whom he could just remember, used to live, in the low field north of Dennis’s barn, and also another family in another house by him.

English hawthorn from Poplar Hill blossoms in house.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 4, 1856

[A duck's nest] found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine. See June 23, 1857 ("Found a black duck's nest Sunday before the last, i. e. the 14th, with perhaps a dozen eggs in it, a mere hollow on the top of a tussock, four or five feet within a clump of bushes forming an islet . . . in Hubbard's great meadow.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Black Duck

Anthony Wright says that he used to get slippery elm bark from a place southwest of Wetherbee’s Mill. See June 6, 1853 ("A slippery elm (Ulmus fulva) on Lee's Cliff, – red elm . . . It has large, rough leaves and straggling branches – a rather small, much-spreading tree, with an appearance between the common elm and iron-wood."); July 17, 1857 (" To Lee's Cliff. The young leaves of the slippery elm are a yellowish green and large, and the branches recurved or drooping."); April 6, 1851 ("On examining the buds of the elm at Helianthus Bank, I find it is not the slippery elm, and therefore I know but one.")

“Perch” Hosmer. See November 18, 1851("Deacon Brown told me to-day of a tall, raw-boned fellow by the name of Hosmer who used to help draw the seine behind the Jones house, who once, when he had hauled it without getting a single shad, held up a little perch in sport above his face, to show what he had got. At that moment the perch wiggled and dropped right down his throat head foremost, and nearly suffocated him; and it was only after considerable time, during which the man suffered much, that he was extracted or forced down. He was in a worse predicament than a fish hawk would have been.”)

English hawthorn from Poplar Hill blossoms in house. See June 2, 1856 ("English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.")

A duck's nest found on

a hummock in the swamp, made

of dry sedge and moss.

Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, A nest of dry sedge and moss

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

 ~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx ©  2009-2026

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