Friday.
I believe that I rarely hear the nuthatch's note from the elms toward evening, for when I heard it yesterday evening I was surprised.
P. M. — To epigaea and Well Meadow.
I see on the west side of the railroad causeway a peculiar early willow, now just beginning to bloom with the common Salix discolor there, perhaps (as I remember) some thirty rods beyond the wall, against A. Wheeler's land.
The catkins (sterile) are peculiarly long and tapering, and grayish or mouse-color, beginning to open low on one side, while the points have comparatively little down on them. I find no description of it. Perhaps rather more than one inch long. The most decidedly opening first on one side near the base of any. Call it the gray bodkin-pointed.
As I stood by the foot of a middling-sized white pine the other day, on Fair Haven Hill, one of the very windy days, I felt the ground rise and fall under my feet, being lifted by the roots of the pine, which was waving in the wind; so loosely are they planted.
We have had two more windy days, this and yesterday, though less so than the previous ones.
We have had, most of the time, during this windy weather for a month past, when the wind was northwest, those peculiar brushy clouds which look as if a little snow or rain was falling in the northwest, but they prove to be wind chiefly. It has not rained, I think, with the wind in that quarter.
These windy days the sparrows resort to the pines and peach trees on the east side of our house for shelter, and there they sing all together, — tree sparrows, fox-colored sparrows, and song sparrows. The F. hyemalis with them do not sing so much of late. The first two are most commonly heard together, the fine canary like twitter of the tree sparrow appearing to ripen or swell from time to time into the clear, rich whistle of the fox-colored sparrow, so that most refer both notes to one bird.
What a pitiful business is the fur trade, which has been pursued now for so many ages, for so many years by famous companies which enjoy a profitable mono poly and control a large portion of the earth's surface, unweariedly pursuing and ferreting out small animals by the aid of all the loafing class tempted by rum and money, that you may rob some little fellow-creature of its coat to adorn or thicken your own, that you may get a fashionable covering in which to hide your head, or a suitable robe in which to dispense justice to your fellow-men! Regarded from the philosopher's point of view, it is precisely on a level with rag and bone picking in the streets of the cities. The Indian led a more respectable life before he was tempted to debase himself so much by the white man. Think how many musquash and weasel skins the Hudson's Bay Company pile up annually in their warehouses, leaving the bare red carcasses on the banks of the streams throughout all British America, — and this it is, chiefly, which makes it British America. It is the place where Great Britain goes a-mousing.
We have heard much of the wonderful intelligence of the beaver, but that regard for the beaver is all a pretense, and we would give more for a beaver hat than to preserve the intelligence of the whole race of beavers. When we see men and boys spend their time shooting and trapping musquash and mink, we cannot but have a poorer opinion of them, unless we thought meanly of them before. Yet the world is imposed on by the fame of the Hudson's Bay and Northwest Fur Companies, who are only so many partners more or less in the same sort of business, with thousands of just such loafing men and boys in their service to abet them. On the one side is the Hudson's Bay Company, on the other the company of scavengers who clear the sewers of Paris of their vermin.
There is a good excuse for smoking out or poisoning rats which infest the house, but when they are as far off as Hudson's Bay, I think that we had better let them alone. To such an extent do time and distance, and our imaginations, consecrate at last not only the most ordinary, but even vilest pursuits. The efforts of legislation from time to time to stem the torrent are significant as showing that there is some sense and conscience left, but they are insignificant in their effects. We will fine Abner if he shoots a singing bird, but encourage the army of Abners that compose the Hudson's Bay Company. One of the most remarkable sources of profit opened to the Yankee within a year is the traffic in skunk- skins. I learn from the newspapers — as from other sources (vide Journal of Commerce in Tribune for April 5, 1859) — that "the traffic in skunk-skins has suddenly become a most important branch of the fur trade, and the skins of an animal which three years ago were deemed of no value whatever, are now in the greatest demand.”
"The principal markets are Russia and Turkey, though some are sent to Germany, where they are sold at a large profit." Furs to Russia ! " The black skins are valued the most, and during the past winter the market price has been as high as one dollar per skin, while mottled skins brought only seventy cents." "Upward of 50,000 of these skins have been shipped from this city [New York] alone within the past two months." Many of them "are designed for the Leipsic sales, Leipsic being next to Novgorod, in Russia, the most important fur entrepot in Europe.
The first intimation received in this market of the value of this new description of fur came from the Hudson's Bay Company, which, having shipped a few to Lon don at a venture, found the returns so profitable that they immediately prosecuted the business on an extensive scale." "The heaviest collections are made in the Middle and Eastern States, in some parts of which the mania for capturing these animals seems to have equalled the Western Pike's Peak gold excitement, men, women, and children turning out en masse for that purpose." And beside, "our fur dealers also receive a considerable sum for the fat of these animals!!"
Almost all smile, or otherwise express their contempt, when they hear of this or the rat-catching of Paris, but what is the difference between catching and skinning the skunk and the mink? It is only in the name.
When you pass the palace of one of the managers of the Hudson's Bay Company, you are reminded that so much he got for his rat-skins. In such a snarl and contamination do we live that it is almost impossible to keep one's skirts clean. Our sugar and cotton are stolen from the slave, and if we jump out of the fire, it is wont to be into the frying-pan at least. It will not do to be thoughtless with regard to any of our valuables or property. When you get to Europe you will meet the most tender-hearted and delicately bred lady, perhaps the President of the Antislavery Society, or of that for the encouragement of humanity to animals, marching or presiding with the scales from a tortoise's back — obtained by laying live coals on it to make them curl up — stuck in her hair, rat-skin fitting as close to her fingers as erst to the rat, and, for her cloak, trimmings perchance adorned with the spoils of a hundred skunks, — rendered inodorous, we trust. Poor misguided woman! Could she not wear other armor in the war of humanity? When a new country like North America is discovered, a few feeble efforts are made to Christianize the na tives before they are all exterminated, but they are not found to pay, in any sense. But the energetic traders of the discovering country organize themselves, or rather inevitably crystallize, into a vast rat-catching society, tempt the natives to become mere vermin-hunters and rum-drinkers, reserving half a continent for the field of their labors. Savage meets savage, and the white man's only distinction is that he is the chief. She says to the turtle basking on the shore of a dis tant isle, " I want your scales to adorn my head " (though fire be used to raise them); she whispers to the rats in the wall, " I want your skins to cover my delicate fingers;" and, meeting an army of a hundred skunks in her morning walk, she says, "worthless vermin, strip off your cloaks this instant, and let me have them to adorn my robe with;" and she comes home with her hands muffled in the pelt of a gray wolf that ventured abroad to find food for its young that day. When the question of the protection of birds comes up, the legislatures regard only a low use and never a high use; the best-disposed legislators employ one, perchance, only to examine their crops and see how many grubs or cherries they contain, and never to study their dispositions, or the beauty of their plumage, or listen and report on the sweetness of their song. The legislature will preserve a bird professedly not because it is a beautiful creature, but because it is a good scavenger or the like. This, at least, is the defense set up. It is as if the question were whether some celebrated singer of the human race — some Jenny Lind or an other — did more harm or good, should be destroyed, or not, and therefore a committee should be appointed, not to listen to her singing at all, but to examine the contents of her stomach and see if she devoured any thing which was injurious to the farmers and gardeners, or which they cannot spare.1
Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun, and when I sit in some warm and sheltered hollow in the woods, I feel the cold currents drop into it from time to time, just as they are seen to ripple a small lake in such a situation from time to time.
The epigaea is not quite out. The earliest peculiarly woodland herbaceous flowers are epigaea, anemone, thalictrum, and — by the first of May — Viola pedata. These grow quite in the woods amid dry leaves, nor do they depend so much on water as the very earliest flowers.
I am, perhaps, more surprised by the growth of the Viola pedata leaves, by the side of paths amid the shrub oaks and half covered with oak leaves, than by any other growth, the situation is so dry and the surrounding bushes so apparently lifeless.
I noticed the other day a leaf on a young oak very rapidly revolving like a windmill, in the wind, not around its midrib for an axis, but about its broken stem, and I saw that this was the way those curiously broken and twisted and splintered petioles were made. It went round so fast as almost to appear like a circular figure.
I find that the cress (Cardamine hirmta) which was so forward at Well Meadow a fortnight ago has been almost entirely browsed off by some creature, so that, if I had not detected it, I might have been surprised that it made no more show.
The skunk-cabbage leaf-buds, which have just begun to unroll, also have been extensively eaten off as they were yet rolled up like cigars. These early greens of the swamp are thus kept down. Is it by the rabbit?
I could see the tracks of some animal, apparently as large, very indistinct in the mud and water. Also an early kind of sedge there was cropped.
The only animals at all likely to have done this are rabbits, musquash, woodchuck (though I doubt if the last has been about here long enough), and geese. Of these, I think it most likely to have been the first, and probably it was the same that gnawed the spathes and ate up the spadix of the cabbage some weeks ago. Woodchucks might nibble some plants now in warmer and drier places. These earliest greens must be very acceptable to these animals. Do partridges ever eat these things ?
The Alnus serrulata is evidently in its prime considerably later than the incana, for those of the former which I notice to-day have scarcely begun, while the latter chance to be done. The fertile flowers are an interesting bright crimson in the sun.
C. says that he found a musquash's skull (which he showed me) at the fox-burrow in Laurel Glen, from which it would appear that they kill the musquash.
See the first bay-wing hopping and flitting along the railroad bank, but hear no note as yet.
I saw Heavy Haynes fishing for trout down the Mill Brook this morning, cold and blustering as it was. He caught two. He is splitting pine-knots at the alms house door for spearing. Has already been spearing in Walden, and got some pickerel, all in the two little meadows there, and saw some pouts and perch. So the pickerel have come into those meadows, probably since January, for the bars were dry before. Perhaps they lie in shallow water, not for warmth, — for it is coldest there by night now, — but for food, the early insects and frogs which may soonest be found there!
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1859
These windy days the sparrows resort to the pines and peach trees on the east side of our house for shelter, and there they sing all together, — tree sparrows, fox-colored sparrows, and song sparrows. See April 8, 1855 ("Also song sparrows and tree sparrows and F. hyemalis are heard in the yard. The fox-colored sparrow is also there”); and note to April 6, 1859 ("Tree sparrows, F. hyemalis, and fox-colored sparrows in company"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Tree Sparrow; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Fox-colored Sparrow; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco; A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)
The first two are most commonly heard together so that most refer both notes to one bird. See March 23, 1858 ("See a large flock of fox-colored sparrows flits by along an alder-row, uttering a faint chip like that of the tree sparrow.") April 3, 1859 ("Their [fox-tailed sparrow's] note to-day is the chip much like a tree sparrow's")
Cold as it is, and has been for several weeks, in all exposed places, I find it unexpectedly warm in perfectly sheltered places where the sun shines. And so it always is in April. The cold wind from the northwest seems distinct and separable from the air here warmed by the sun. See April 13, 1855 ("A fair day, but a cool wind still, from the snow covered country in the northwest. It is, however, pleasant to sit in the sun in sheltered places."); April 26, 1857 ("How well adapted we are to our climate! In the winter we sit by fires in the house; in spring and fall, in sunny and sheltered nooks; in the summer, in shady and cool groves, or over water where the breeze circulates."); See also note to November 18, 1857 (“Now, as in the spring, we rejoice in sheltered and sunny places. ”)
The Alnus serrulata is evidently in its prime considerably later than the incana See April 8, 1855 ("I find also at length a single catkin of the Alnus incana, . . . Though I have looked widely, I have not found the alder out before."): See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Alders
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