Lowell to
Boston and Concord.
There was a
frost this morning, as my host, who keeps a market, informed me.
Leaving
Lowell at 7 A. M. in the cars, I observed and admired the dew on a fine grass
in the meadows, which was almost as white and silvery as frost when the rays of
the newly risen sun fell on it.
Some of it
was probably the frost of the morning melted.
I saw that
this phenomenon was confined to one species of grass, which grew in narrow
curving lines and small patches along the edges of the meadows or lowest ground,
grass with very fine stems and branches, which held the dew; in short, that it
was what I had falsely called Eragrostis capillaris, but which is probably the
Sporobolus serotinus, almost the only, if not the only, grass there in its
prime.
And thus
this plant has its day.
Owing to the
number of its а very fine branches, now in their prime, it holds the dew like a
cobweb,-a clear drop at the end and lesser drops or beads all along the fine
branches and stems.
It grows on
the higher parts of the meadows, where other herbage is thin, and is the less
apt to be cut; and, seen toward the sun not long after sunrise, it is very
conspicuous and bright a quarter of a mile off, like frostwork.
Call it dew-grass.
I find its hyaline seed.
Almost every plant, however humble, has thus its day, and sooner or later becomes the characteristic feature of some part of the landscape or other.
Almost all
other grasses are now either cut or withering, and are, beside, so coarse
comparatively that they can never present this phenomenon.
It is only a
grass that is in its full vigor, as well as fine-branched (capillary), that can
thus attract and uphold the dew.
This is
noticed about the time the first frosts come.
If you sit
at an open attic window almost anywhere, about the 20th of September, you will
see many a milkweed down go sailing by on a level with you, though commonly it
has lost its freight, — notwithstanding that you may not know of any of these
plants growing in your neighborhood.
My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox [Like the silver, made a variety of the red by Baird.] from Lowell over this way and lost him at Chelmsford. Had heard of him within about six years. A Carlisle man also tells me since that this fox used to turn off and run northwest from Chelmsford, but that he would soon after return.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 10, 1860
Almost every plant, however humble, has its day. See March 18, 1853 ("These plants waste not a day, not a moment, suitable to their development."); August 26, 1856 ("Each humblest plant, or weed, as we call it, stands there to express some thought or mood of ours."); August 30, 1851 ("This plant acts not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of the seasons. May I perform my part as well!"); September 13, 1852 ("How earnestly and rapidly each creature, each flower, is fulfilling its part while its day lasts!"); September 17, 1857 ("How perfectly each plant has its turn! – as if the seasons revolved for it alone."); October 22, 1858 ("When you come to observe faithfully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints")My host, yesterday, told me that he was accustomed once to chase a black fox. See January 30, 1855 ("Minott to-day enumerates the red, gray, black, and what he calls the Sampson fox. He says, “It’s a sort of yaller fox, but their pelts ain’t good for much.” He never saw one, but the hunters have told him of them. He never saw a gray nor a black one.") See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Almost every plant, however humble, has its day.
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