Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden.
Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them.
P. M. —With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction. Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten.
See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April.
Returned by bridle-road.
Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more.
English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.
Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat.
5 P. M. —To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.
Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long?
White maple keys conspicuous.
In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton ” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “ Philosophical Transactions ” at five hundred feet distance.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1856
Perez Blood (1785 - 1856) was an amateur astronomer living in Concord near the Carlisle border. In 1847 HDT and Emerson looked through Blood’s 85 power telescope and saw "Saturn’s rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the mountains in the dark portion . . ..” On July 7, 1851 with Anthony Wright HDT looked through Blood's telescope a second time, and concluded " I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye.” See September 29, 1854 (“ When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them . . . One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.”)
Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. See June 3, 1855 ("Caraway in garden apparently three days out.")
Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars. See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. . . Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark uses; fifty-odd dollars apiece.")
Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade. See July 4, 1860 ("Rich and luxuriant uncut grass-lands , now waving under the easterly wind. It is a beautiful Camilla, sweeping like waves of light and shade over the whole breadth of his land") [HDT oft compared Thoreau compares waves of light and shade passing over a rye field to the speed and lightness of Camilla, a warrior-maiden from Virgil's Aeneid who was said to be able to run over grain fields without bending a blade.]
Not 19th of April. See May 19, 1860 ("[T]hey say of the 19th of April, '75, — that "the apple trees were in bloom and grass was waving in the fields,")
Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet . . . Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more. See May 30, 1855 ("The myrica, bayberry, plucked on the 23d, now first sheds pollen in house, the leaf being but little more expanded on the flowering shoot."); June 12, 1857 ("Bayberry well out")
Ranunculus recurvatus [in prime] See May 26, 1855 ("Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.")
To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. See June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime. What splendid masses of pink! with a few glaucous green leaves sprinkled here and there —just enough for contrast.”); "): See also May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora . . . Azalea nudiflora, -purple azalea, pinxter-flower,... It is a conspicuously beautiful flowering shrub, with the sweet fragrance of the common swamp-pink, but the flowers are larger and, in this case, a fine lively rosy pink,...With a broader, somewhat downy pale-green leaf."); May 31, 1853"); May 24, 1858 ("The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out[ in New York)”); May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden"); May 26, 1857 ("Pink azalea in garden"); May 27, 1859 (“Azalea nudiflora blooms generally.”) May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden")
White maple keys conspicuous. See . May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects");May 30, 1853 ("The white maple keys falling and covering the river. ");June 2, 1855 ("From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropia which I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth. "); June 6, 1855 ("The white maple keys are about half fallen. It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out."); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Maple Keys
June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2
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 © 2009-2021
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