Going to Acton this morning, I saw some sparrows on the wall, which I think must have been the F. hyemalis (?).
P. M. — Up river to Nut Meadow Brook.
It is nearly as cold as yesterday. The piers of the bridge by the railroad bridge are adorned with very handsome salver or waiter shaped ice three or four feet in diameter (bottom upward), the crenate edges all around being adorned with bell-shaped pendants (produced by the melting (?) or perchance the water dashed against them).
Going by the solidago oak at Clamshell Hill bank, I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak, all with their breasts toward me, — sitting so still and quite white, seen against the white cloudy sky, they did not look like birds but the ghosts of birds, and their boldness, allowing me to come quite near, enhanced this impression. These were almost as white as snow balls, and from time [to time] I heard a low, soft rippling note from them. I could see no features, but only the general outline of plump birds in white. It was a very spectral sight, and after I had watched them for several minutes, I can hardly say that I was prepared to see them fly away like ordinary buntings when I advanced further. At first they were almost concealed by being almost the same color with the cloudy sky.
I see in that ditch (call it Grassy Ditch) near John Hosmer's second spring south of Nut Meadow Brook much grass which has lately grown an inch or more and lies flat on the water. Is it the Glyceria fluitans? It is somewhat frost-bitten too. It fills the ditch like moss, as seen at a little distance. It must be a very springy ditch to be thus open entirely.
Also, pretty near the spring, I see a tuft of carex (?) whose stiff glaucous points have risen several inches above the surface. See two small water-bugs at the spring; none elsewhere. I see apparently some callitriche, fresh, in the spring.
We recross the river at Grindstone Meadow, but probably cannot to-morrow or next day there. The ice is spotted with dark crescents, — we tread on the white parts, — and it is puffed up along the middle, being at least six inches high in the middle where we cross.
All the lower part of steep southern slopes of hills is now commonly bare, — though the snow may be pretty deep on the brow, — especially the springy bases where the skunk-cabbage, etc., grow.
How imperceptibly the first springing takes place!
In some still, muddy springs whose temperature is more equable than that of the brooks, while brooks and ditches are generally thickly frozen and concealed and the earth is covered with snow, and it is even cold, hard, and nipping winter weather, some fine grass which fills the water like a moss begins to lift its tiny spears or blades above the surface, which directly fall flat for half an inch or an inch along the surface, and on these (though many are frost-bitten) you may measure the length to which the spring has advanced, — has sprung.
Very few indeed, even of botanists, are aware of this growth.
Some of it appears to go on even under ice and snow, or, in such a place as I have described, if it is also sheltered by alders, or the like, you may see (as March 2d) a little green crescent of caltha leaves, raised an inch or so above the water, with leaves but partially unrolled and looking as if it would withdraw beneath the surface again at night.
This, I think, must be the most conspicuous and forward greenness of the spring.
The small reddish radical leaves of the dock, too, are observed flat on the moist ground as soon as the snow has melted there, as if they had grown beneath it.
The mossy bank along the south side of Hosmer's second spring ditch is very interesting. There are many coarse, hair-like masses of that green and brown moss on its edge, hanging over the ditch, alternating with withered-looking cream-colored sphagnum tinged with rose-color, in protuberances, or mammae, a foot across on the perpendicular side of the ditch. Cast water on their cheeks, and they become much more reddish, yet hardly so interesting. This is while the top of the bank and all the hillside above is covered deep with snow.
The pretty fingers of the Lycopodium clavatum, peeping out here and there amid the snow and hanging down the ditch-side, contrasting with the snow, are very interesting.
Channing tells me he has met with a sassafras tree in New Bedford woods, which, according to a string which he put round it, is eleven and three quarters feet in circumference at about three feet from the ground. They consider them very good for rails there, they are so light and durable.
Talk about reading! — a good reader!
It depends on how he is heard. There may be elocution and pronunciation (recitation, say) to satiety, but there can be no good reading unless there is good hearing also. It takes two at least for this game, as for love, and they must cooperate. The lecturer will read best those parts of his lecture which are best heard. Sometimes, it is true, the faith and spirits of the reader may run a little ahead and draw after the good hearing, and at other times the good hearing runs ahead and draws on the good reading. The reader and the hearer are a team not to be harnessed tandem, the poor wheel horse supporting the burden of the shafts, while the leader runs pretty much at will, while the lecture lies passive in the painted curricle behind.
I saw some men unloading molasses-hogsheads from a truck at a depot the other day, rolling them up an inclined plane. The truckman stood behind and shoved, after putting a couple of ropes one round each end of the hogshead, while two men standing in the depot steadily pulled at the ropes. The first man was the lecturer, the last was the audience.
It is the duty of the lecturer to team his hogshead of sweets to the depot, or Lyceum, place the horse, arrange the ropes, and shove; and it is the duty of the audience to take hold of the ropes and pull with all their might. The lecturer who tries to read his essay without being abetted by a good hearing is in the predicament of a teamster who is engaged in the Sisyphean labor of rolling a molasses-hogshead up an inclined plane alone, while the freight-master and his men stand indifferent with their hands in their pockets.
I have seen many such a hogshead which had rolled off the horse and gone to smash, with all its sweets wasted on the ground between the truckman and the freight-house, — and the freight-masters thought that the loss was not theirs.
Read well!
Did you ever know a full well that did not yield of its refreshing waters to those who put their hands to the windlass or the well-sweep? Did you ever suck cider through a straw? Did you ever know the cider to push out of the straw when you were not sucking, — unless it chanced to be in a complete ferment? An audience will draw out of a lecture, or enable a lecturer to read, only such parts of his lecture as they like.
A lecture is like a barrel half full of some palatable liquor. You may tap it at various levels, — in the sweet liquor or in the froth or in fixed air above. If it is pronounced good, it is partly to the credit of the hearers; if bad, it is partly their fault. Some 11 times a lazy audience refuses to cooperate and pull on the ropes with a will, simply because the hogshead is full and therefore heavy, when if it were empty, or had only a little sugar adhering to it, they would whisk it up the slope in a jiffy. The lecturer, therefore, desires of his audience a long pull, a strong pull, and all pull together.
I have seen a sturdy truckman, or lecturer, who had nearly broken his back with shoving his lecture up such an inclined plane while the audience were laughing at him, at length, as with a last effort, set it a-rolling in amid the audience and upon their toes, scattering them like sheep and making them cry out with pain, while he drove proudly away. Rarely it is a very heavy freight of such hogsheads stored in a vessel's hold that is to be lifted out and deposited on the public wharf, and this is accomplished only after many a hearty pull all together and a good deal of heave-yo-ing.
H. D Thoreau, Journal, March 3, 1859
Going to Acton this morning, I saw some sparrows on the wall, which I think must have been the F. hyemalis. See February 16, 1854 ("I have not seen F . hyemalis since last fall."): March 6, 1860 ("Going by Messer's, I hear the well-known note and see a flock of F. hyemalis flitting in a lively manner about trees, weeds, walls, and ground, by the roadside, showing their two white tail-feathers. They are more fearless than the song sparrow. These attract notice by their numbers and incessant twittering in a social manner. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)
\I heard a faint rippling note and, looking up, saw about fifteen snow buntings sitting in the top of the oak. See March 2, 1858 (“See a large flock of snow buntings, the white birds of the winter, rejoicing in the snow”); February 27, 1858 ("I see a snow bunting, though it is pleasant and warm.”); February 1, 1857 ("Warm as it is, I see a large flock of snow buntings on the railroad causeway.”); January 6, 1856 ("While I am making a path to the pump, I hear hurried rippling notes of birds, look up, and see quite a flock of snow buntings coming to alight amid the currant-tops in the yard.”). Compare January 2, 1856"("They have come with this deeper snow and colder weather. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Snow Bunting
The small reddish radical leaves of the dock, too, are observed flat on the moist ground as soon as the snow has melted there, as if they had grown beneath it. See February 22, 1855 (“You see fresh upright green radical leaves of some plants — the dock, probably water dock, for one — in and about water now the snow is gone there, as if they had grown all winter.”); March 10, 1853 (“The radical leaves of innumerable plants (as here [John Hosmer’s ditch] a dock in and near the water) are evidently affected by the spring influences”); March 19, 1853 ("Observed the leaves of a dock in the water, more forward than any vegetation I have noticed.")
Talk about reading! On the evening of March 2, 1859 HDT had delivered “Autumn Tints” in Concord. “Father said there were constant spontaneous bursts of laughter and Mr. Thoreau was applauded,” wrote Ellen Tucker Emerson. See Thoreau's Lectures after Walden. 297
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