Surprised how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods

April 2. 

Cold and windy. 

April 2, 2018

2 P. M. — Thermometer 31°, or fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. 

I had expected rain to succeed the thick haze. It was cloudy behind the haze and rained a little about 9 P. M., but, the wind having gone northwest (from southwest), it turned to snow.

The shrubs whose buds had begun to unfold yesterday are the spiræa, gooseberry, lilac, and Missouri currant, — the first much the most forward and green, the rest in the order named. 

Walked to the Mayflower Path and to see the great burning of the 31st. I smelled the burnt ground a quarter of a mile off. It was a very severe burn, the ground as black as a chimney-back. The fire is said to have begun by an Irishman burning brush near Wild' s house in the south part of Acton, and ran north and northeast some two miles before the southwest wind, crossing Fort Pond Brook. I walked more than a mile along it and could not see to either end, and crossed it in two places. A thousand acres must have been burned. 

The leaves being thus cleanly burned, you see amid their cinders countless mouse-galleries, where they have run all over the wood, especially in shrub oak land, these lines crossing each other every foot and at every angle. You are surprised to see by these traces how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods, out of the way of cold and of hawks. The fire has burned off the top and half-way down their galleries. 

Every now and then we saw an oblong square mark of pale-brown or fawn-colored ashes amid the black cinders, where corded wood had been burned. In one place, though at the north edge of a wood, I saw white birch and amelanchier buds (the base of whose stems had been burned or scorched) just bursting into leaf, — evidently the effect of the fire, for none of their kind is so forward elsewhere. 

This fire ran before the wind, which was southwest, and, as nearly as I remember, the fires generally at this season begin on that side, and you need to be well protected there by a plowing or raking away the leaves. Also the men should run ahead of the fire before the wind, most of them, and stop it at some cross-road, by raking away the leaves and setting back fires. 

Look out for your wood-lots between the time when the dust first begins to blow in the streets and the leaves are partly grown. 

The earliest willows are apparently in prime. 

I find that the signs of the weather in Theophrastus are repeated by many more recent writers without being referred to him or through him; e. g., by an authority quoted by Brand in his “Popular Antiquities," who evidently does not know that they are in Theophrastus. 

Talking with a farmer who was milking sixteen cows in a row the other evening, an ox near which we stood,  at the end of the row, suddenly half lay, half fell, down on the hard and filthy floor, extending its legs helplessly to one side in a mechanical manner while its head was uncomfortably held between the stanchions as in a pillory. Thus man's fellow-laborer the ox, tired with his day's work, is compelled to take his rest, like the most wretched slave or culprit. It was evidently a difficult experiment each time to lie down at all without dislocating his neck, and his neighbors had not room to try the same at the same time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 2, 1860

Thermometer fallen 40° since yesterday, and the ground slightly whitened by a flurry of snow. See  April 2, 1852 (“The rain now turns to snow with large flakes, so soft many cohere in the air as they fall. . . . Looking up, the flakes are black against the sky. And now the ground begins to whiten.”); April 2, 1857 ("In the night it was very cold, with snow, which is now several inches deep."); April 2, 1861 ("A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average.”)

The great burning of the 31st. . . Look out for your wood-lots. See March 31, 1860 ("I hear that there has been a great fire in the woods this afternoon near the factory. Some say a thousand acres have been burned over. This is the dangerous time, —between the drying of the earth, or say when dust begins to fly, and the general leafing of the trees,")

You are surprised to see by these traces how many of these creatures live and run under the leaves in the woods. Compare January 31, 1856 (“The tracks of the mice suggest extensive hopping in the night and going a-gadding."); January 4, 1860 ("Again see what the snow reveals.. .that the woods are nightly thronged with little creatures which most have never seen")

I saw amelanchier buds (the base of whose stems had been burned or scorched) just bursting into leaf, — evidently the effect of the fire. See April 2, 1853 ("The amelanchier buds look more forward than those of any shrub I notice.")


The earliest willows are apparently in prime. See March 25, 1860  ("One early willow on railroad . . . just sheds pollen from one anther, but probably might find another more forward"); March 31, 1858 ("The most forward willow catkins are not so silvery now, more grayish, being much enlarged and the down less compact, revealing the dark scales"); April 1, 1852 ("There is an early willow on sand-bank of the railroad, against the pond, by the fence, grayish below and yellowish above."); April 12, 1852 ("See the first blossoms (bright-yellow stamens or pistils) on the willow catkins to-day.. . . It is fit that this almost earliest spring flower should be yellow, the color of the sun."); April 15, 1852 ("I think that the largest early-catkined willow in large bushes in sand by water now blossoming -- the fertile catkins with paler blossoms, the sterile covered with pollen, a pleasant lively bright yellow -- is the brightest flower I have seen thus far.")

A farmer who was milking sixteen cows. See January 9, 1860 ("A rich old farmer . . . milks seventeen cows regularly.")

An ox . . . suddenly half lay, half fell, down on the hard and filthy floor, extending its legs helplessly to one side. See December 26, 1851 ("It is painful to think how they may sometimes be overworked. I saw that even the ox could be weary with toil.")