The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.

February 18.

A snow-storm, falling all day; wind northeast. The snow is fine and drives low; is composed of granulated masses one sixteenth to one twentieth of an inch in diameter. Not in flakes at all. I think it is not those large-flaked snow-storms that are the worst for the traveller, or the deepest.

It would seem as if the more odd and whimsical the conceit, the more credible to the mass. They require a surprising truth, though they may well be surprised at any truth. For example, Gesner says of the beaver: “The biting of this beast is very deep, being able to crash asunder the hardest bones, and commonly he never loseth his hold until he feeleth his teeth gnash one against another. Pliny and Solinus affirm, that the person so bitten cannot be cured, except he hear the crashing of the teeth, which I take to be an opinion without truth.”

Gesner (unless we owe it to the translator) has a livelier conception of an animal which has no existence, or of an action which was never performed, than most naturalists have of what passes before their eyes. The ability to report a thing as if [it] had occurred, whether it did or not, is surely important to a describer. They do not half tell a thing because you might expect them to but half believe it.

I feel, of course, very ignorant in a museum. I know nothing about the things which they have there, — no more than I should know my friends in the tomb. I walk amid those jars of bloated creatures which they label frogs, a total stranger, without the least froggy thought being suggested. Not one of them can croak. They leave behind all life they that enter there, both frogs and men.

For example, Gesner says again, “The tree being down and prepared, they take one of the oldest of their company, whose teeth could not be used for the cutting, (or, as others say, they constrain some strange beaver whom they meet withal, to fall flat on his back),... and upon his belly lade they all their timber, which they so ingeniously work and fasten into the compass of his legs that it may not fall, and so the residue by the tail draw him to the water side, where those buildings are to be framed, and this the rather seemeth to be true, because there have been some such taken that had no hair on their backs, but were pilled, which being espied by the hunters, in pity of their slavery or bondage, they have let them go away free.” Gives Albertus and Olaus Magnus as authorities for this.

Melvin tells me that he went a day or two ago to where G. M. Barrett had placed a dead cow of his, and that he found the snow thickly tracked by foxes to within five feet around the carcass, and they appeared to have sat down there, but so suspicious of some trick were they that they had not touched it.

Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P. M., there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts. The history of the sky for that after noon will be but the development of that cloud.

I think that the most important requisite in describing an animal, is to be sure and give its character and spirit, for in that you have, without error, the sum and effect of all its parts, known and unknown. You must tell what it is to man. Surely the most important part of an animal is its anima, its vital spirit, on which is based its character and all the peculiarities by which it most concerns us. Yet most scientific books which treat of animals leave this out altogether, and what they describe are as it were phenomena of dead matter. What is most interesting in a dog, for example, is his attachment to his master, his intelligence, courage, and the like, and not his anatomical structure or even many habits which affect us less.

If you have undertaken to write the biography of an animal, you will have to present to us the living creature, i. e., a result which no man can understand, but only in his degree report the impression made on him.

Science in many departments of natural history does not pretend to go beyond the shell; i. e., it does not get to animated nature at all. A history of animated nature must itself be animated.

The ancients, one would say, with their gorgons, sphinxes, satyrs, mantichora, etc., could imagine more than existed, while the moderns cannot imagine so much as exists.

In describing brutes, as in describing men, we shall naturally dwell most on those particulars in which they are most like ourselves, — in which we have most sympathy with them.

We are as often injured as benefited by our systems, for, to speak the truth, no human system is a true one, and a name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it. As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. To know the names of creatures is only a convenience to us at first, but so soon as we have learned to distinguish them, the sooner we forget their names the better, so far as any true appreciation of them is concerned.

I think, therefore, that the best and most harmless names are those which are an imitation of the voice or note of an animal, or the most poetic ones. But the name adheres only to the accepted and conventional bird or quadruped, never an instant to the real one.

There is always something ridiculous in the name of a great man, — as if he were named John Smith. The name is convenient in communicating with others, but it is not to be remembered when I communicate with myself.

If you look over a list of medicinal recipes in vogue in the last century, how foolish and useless they are seen to be! And yet we use equally absurd ones with faith to-day.

When the ancients had not found an animal wild and strange enough to suit them, they created one by the mingled [traits] of the most savage already known, - as hyenas, lionesses, pards, panthers, etc., etc., - one with another. Their beasts were thus of wildness and savageness all compact, and more ferine and terrible than any of an unmixed breed could be. They allowed nature great license in these directions. The most strange and fearful beasts were by them supposed to be the off spring of two different savage kinds. So fertile were their imaginations, and such fertility did they assign to nature.

In the modern account the fabulous part will be omitted, it is true, but the portrait of the real and living creature also. The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 18, 1860

Gesner (unless we owe it to the translator) has a livelier conception of an animal which has no existence than most naturalists have of what passes before their eyes See February 17, 1860 ("Edward Topsell in his translation of Conrad Gesner, in 1607, called “The History of Four-footed Beasts”")

Sometimes, when I go forth at 2 P.M. there is scarcely a cloud in the sky, but soon one will appear in the west and steadily advance and expand itself, and so change the whole character of the afternoon and of my thoughts. Compare October 28, 1852 ("The clouds lift in the west, — indeed the horizon is now clear all around. Suddenly the light of the setting sun yellows and warms all the landscape. . .”); August 25, 1852 ("What a salad to my spirits is this cooler, darker day!”); April 15, 1856 (" By 9 A. M. the wind has risen, the water is ruffled, the sun seems more permanently obscured, and the character of the day is changed."); See also February 5, 1855 ("In a journal it is important in a few words to describe the weather, or character of the day, as it affects our feelings.")

A name is at most a mere convenience and carries no information with it. As soon as I begin to be aware of the life of any creature, I at once forget its name. See February 12, 1860 ("Whatever aid is to be derived from the use of a scientific term, we can never begin to see anything as it is so long as we remember the scientific term which always our ignorance has imposed on it. Natural objects and phenomena are in this sense forever wild and unnamed by us. "). See also Walking (1861) The names of men are meaningless. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. Compare January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it. . .")