In Worcester.
5 A. M. Walk with Blake, Brown, and Rogers to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast.
Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side. See some quite fresh frog-spawn of the dark kind, like the Rana palustris, for instance. Cross and ascend Wigwam Hill. Krigia and comandra out there. Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs.
Found in the water, eight or ten inches deep, just behind the Lake House, a nasturtium not quite open, which I think must be a variety of the horse-radish (N. Armoracia). Yet such a variety is not described by Gray, for the immersed stem leaves were all narrowly dissected and pinnate (vide pressed specimen), and I saw similar ones in the streets in Worcester in dry ground. The lowest portion — for I had not the root — had the true horse-radish taste. It seemed to be the result of its growing at some time in water. Has the N. lacustre the common horse-radish taste?
A little south of the Boston and Worcester turnpike, and six rods from the west side of the pond, I saw a chestnut about eighteen inches in diameter which was struck by lightning in the night some ten days ago. There was left standing only a splinter of the stump, some seven feet high, with the main limbs fallen upon and around it. The bark and thin slivers or strips of the wood had been cast to a dozen rods around in all directions, the ground being strewn with them, and some rested on the top of an adjacent wood-pile. Also one. or two large limbs were thrown to a distance.
But what was most remarkable and peculiar, there was a trench somewhat more than two rods long, five feet wide at top, and more than two feet deep, leading perfectly straight from the foot of the tree toward the pond, large old roots being burst through, in the gravelly soil, and masses of the earth cast a rod each way, yet most of the dirt formed a bank to the trench. It would have taken an Irishman at least three hours to have dug this. Then, after an interval of three or four rods, where the ground was a little higher, the trench reappeared at the water's edge, though quite short there, exactly in the line of the first ditch continued, and there some two cartloads of gravelly soil were thrown out, and the water stood in it.
I counted in all nine places within eight or ten rods along the water's edge, or six or eight rods from the tree, where it had made a short furrow in the ground; and in some cases there were slight furrows here and there between these and the tree, as if the lightning had diverged in rays from the base of the tree, perhaps (?) at first along the roots to the pond.
Did it pass through the ground when it did not break the surface? The bark was not so much stripped off as I have seen, but the wood was finely splintered.
H. d. Thoreau, Journal, May 23, 1858
See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau May 23
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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