A beautiful law of distribution.

April 22. 

The Salix purpurea in prime, out probably three or four days; say 19th. 

Arbor-vitae, how long? 

P. M. — In a fine rain, around Walden. 

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut just after entering, whose aments (which apparently here began to shed pollen yesterday) in scattered clusters at the ends of the bare twigs, but just begun to shed their pollen, not hanging loose and straight yet, but curved, are a very rich crimson, like some ripe fruit, as mulberries, seen against the sand. I cannot represent the number in a single cluster, but they are much the handsomest now before the crimson anthers have burst, and are all the more remarkable for the very open and bare habit of the tree. 

When setting the pines at Walden the last three days,

I was sung to by the field sparrow.

For music I heard their jingle from time to time.

That the music the pines were set to, and

I have no doubt they will build many a nest

under their shelter. 

It would seem as if such a field as this —

a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods,

with small pines scattered in it —

was well-nigh, if not quite, abandoned to

this one alone among the sparrows. 

The surface of the earth is portioned out among them.

By a beautiful law of distribution,

one creature does not too much interfere with another.

          I do not hear the song sparrow here. 

As the pines gradually increase,

and a wood-lot is formed,

these birds will withdraw to new pastures,

and the thrushes, etc., will take their place. 

[S]o my pines were established

by the song of the field sparrow.

They commonly place their nests here

under the shelter of a little pine in the field. 

As I planted there, wandering thoughts visited me, which I have now forgotten. My senses were busily suggesting them, though I was unconscious of their origin. 

E. g., I first consciously found myself entertaining the thought of a carriage on the road, and directly after I was aware that I heard it. No doubt I had heard it before, or rather my ears had, but I was quite unconscious of it, — it was not a fact of my then state of existence; yet such was the force of habit, it affected my thoughts nevertheless, so double, if not treble, even, are we. 

Sometimes the senses bring us information quicker than we can receive it. Perhaps these thoughts which run in ruts by themselves while we are engaged in some routine may be called automatic. 

I distinctly entertained the idea of a carriage, without the slightest suspicion how it had originated or been suggested to my mind. I have no doubt at all that my ears had heard it, but my mind, just then preoccupied, had refused to attend to it. 

This suggests that most, if not all, indeed, of our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. 

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. 

I still see a large flock of grackles. 

Within a few days I pricked my fingers smartly against the sharp, stiff points of some sedge coming up. At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking, suggesting heat, even a blaze, there. 

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See them skim or scale away for forty rods along and upward to the woods, into which they swiftly scale, dodging to right and left and avoiding the twigs, yet without once flapping the wings after having launched themselves.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 22, 1859

I go by a Populus grandidentata on the eastern sand slope of the Deep Cut  whose aments are a very rich crimson. See April 3, 1853 ("The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation");  April 8, 1853 ("The male Populus grandidentata . . .shows some of its red anthers long before it opens. There is a female on the left, on Warren's Path at Deep Cut.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Big-toothed Aspen

A field as this — a dry open or half-open pasture in the woods, with small pines scattered in it — [is]abandoned to this one alone among the sparrows. See  April 19, 1860 ("Hear the field sparrow sing on his dry upland, it being a warm day, and see the small blue butterfly hovering over the dry leaves.") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow

Our ideas may be due to some sort of sensuous impression of which we may or may not be conscious. Compare November 18, 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day for many weeks or months at a time becomes intimately acquainted with them in his way. He is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there.")

At Heywood's meadow, by the railroad, this sedge, rising green and dense with yellow tips above the withered clumps, is very striking. See June 19, 1859 ("The prevailing sedge of Heywood Meadow by Bartlett Hill-side, that which showed yellow tops in the spring, is the Carex stricta. On this the musquash there commonly makes its stools. A tall slender sedge with conspicuous brown staminate spikes")

This afternoon there is an east wind, and a rain-storm accordingly beginning, the eighth of the kind with this wind. See April 22, 1852 ("It still rains. The water is over the road at Flint's Bridge . . . This makes five stormy days. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday."); April 22, 1856 ("It has rained two days and nights, and now the sun breaks out, but the wind is still easterly, and the storm probably is not over . . . These rain-storms -- this is the third day of one -- characterize 'the season, and belong rather to winter than to summer.")

Scare up partridges feeding about the green springy places under the edge of hills. See April 22, 1852 ("Our dog sends off a partridge with a whir, far across the open field and the river, like a winged bullet. ") See also A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Partridge.