A pearly skiff set afloat by the industrious millers

August 11.

 A. M. — Up Assabet to stone bridge. 

This river is so shallow that you can easily push up it with a paddle, but the other is commonly too deep for this. 

As I paddle up this stream this forenoon, the river gently rising as usual in the forenoon (in consequence of raising the gates of the various mill-ponds on and near to it, which had been shut in the night), I meet with many a clam which comes floating down in midstream, nicely poised on the water with its pearly concave side uppermost. 

These have been opened and left by the musquash during the night on the shore, or often on rocks in the stream, and now the water rising gently sets them afloat, as with care you can float an iron pot. 

But soon a stronger wind or eddy will cause the water to break over them and they will at once sink to the bottom. Last night it lay half buried in mud and sand at the bottom. 

The musquash has devoured its tenant, and now it floats seaward, a pearly skiff set afloat by the industrious millers. I met with as many as a dozen of them coming down the stream this forenoon, the valves at an angle of 45°, sometimes a single valve, but the least touch of my oars would sink them. 

The musquash are eating clams quite fast there. Those lately opened are generally quite small. Is it be cause of the season or the stream? 

When I raked the river the other day, all the clams I caught had closed their shells on the teeth of the rake which entered them, just as they catch sea clams with a pointed stick.

Those singular eggs which I saw at the Falls of Concord River in July (vide August 8) are far more numerous at the Assabet stone bridge, and many are hatched. They are sprinkled all over the stones of the arch just within it on the sides, and overhead, but extending only few feet under the bridge on either side.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 11, 1859

Those singular eggs which I saw at the Falls of Concord River in July (vide August 8) are far more numerous at the Assabet stone bridge, and many are hatched. See August 8, 1859 ("I find the same curious eggs (which I saw at the Fordway on the 22d) on the rocks and trees on the Assabet . . . They are not yet hatched."); July 22, 1859 ("distinct white spots, looking like white paint . . . three fourths to one inch in diameter of an oval or circular form")

August 11.  See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 11

 

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