The usefulness of bayberries

April 8. 

April 8, 2017

I discovered one convenient use the bayberries served, — that if you got your hands pitched in pine woods, you had only to rub a parcel of these berries between your hands to start the pitch off. Arthur said the shoemakers at the Head of the River used the tallow to rub the soles of their shoes with to make them shine. 

I gathered a quart in about twenty minutes with my hands. You might gather them much faster with a suitable rake and a large shallow basket, or if one were clearing a field he could cut the bushes and thresh them in a heap.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 8, 1857 

If you got your hands pitched in pine woods, you had only to rub a parcel of these berries between your hands to start the pitch off. See September 9, 1857 ( [Squirrels] must know of, or possess, some remedy for pitch that we know nothing of.")
I gathered a quart in about twenty minutes with my hands.  See April 7, 1857 (“Holding a basket beneath, I rubbed them off into it between my hands, and so got about a quart.”); see also December 14, 1850 ("I find a low, branching shrub frozen into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent . . .. When I rub the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it feels greasy and stains them a permanent yellow, which I cannot wash out. It lasts several days, and my fingers smell medicinal. I conclude that it is sweetgale, and we name the island Myrica Island.")

Surprised to see snow flakes flying under the spotlight. When dawn comes the first phoebe sings.

And now the branches outside my window are all lacy white with snow – and the phoebe sings  persistently. Zphx20170408

Reading the Report of the State Entomologist on Injurious and other Insects of the State of New York

April 6. 

P. M. — To New Bedford Library. 

Mr. Ingraham, the librarian, says that he once saw frog-spawn in New Bedford the 4th of March. 

Take out Emmons’s Report on the insects injurious to vegetation in New York. See a plate of the Colias Philodice, or common sulphur-yellow butterfly, male and female of different tinge. 

Areoda lanigera is apparently the common yellow dor-bug. 

Arthur has Tabanus, the great horse-fly. 

Emmons says of Scutelleridae: “The disagreeable smelling bugs that frequent berry bushes and strawberry vines belong here. . . . Of this family the genus Pentatoma is one of the most common and feeds upon the juice of plants. Sometimes it has only to pass over a fruit, to impart to it its offensive odor.” The one represented looks like the huckleberry one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 6, 1857

Frog-spawn. See April 4, 1857 ("Caught a croaking frog . . .. Nearby was its spawn, in very handsome spherical masses of transparent jelly. . . consisting of globules. . . with a black or dark centre as big as a large shot.")

I hear the croaking frogs

April 5. 

Sunday. 

Arthur R. has been decking a new Vineyard boat which he has bought, and making a curb about the open part.  

P. M. —-Walked round by the ruins of the factory. See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris in rather low ground, about the still standing withered stems. It was well called husk-root by the squaw. 

Arthur says that he just counted, at 9.30 P. M., twenty toads that had hopped out from under the wall on to the sidewalk near the house. This, then, is apparently the way with the toads. They very early hop out from under walls on to sidewalks in the warmer nights, long before they are heard to ring, and are often frozen and then crushed there. Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. 

I hear the croaking frogs at 9.30 P. M., also the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock, whose other strain he has already heard.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 5, 1857



See in many places the withered leaves of the aletris . . . See June 26, 1856 (I had been expecting to find the aletris about New Bedford . . ."')

Frozen toads. . . .Probably single ones ring earlier than I supposed. See April 5, 1860 ("I hear, a very faint distant ring of toads, which, though I walk and walk all the afternoon, I never come nearer to.");See also  April 2, 1857 ("On the sidewalk in Cambridge I see a toad, which apparently hopped out from under a fence last evening, frozen quite hard in a sitting posture.");  April 6, 1860 ("A toad has been seen dead on the sidewalk, flattened.")

I hear the croaking frogs. See March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking...) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular. . ."); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods,");  April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

I hear the speed speed over R.’s meadow, which I once referred to the snipe, but R. says is the woodcock. See April 5, 1855 ("Scare up a snipe close to the water’s edge ") See also March 28, 1854 ("See this afternoon either a snipe or a woodcock."); I. April 22, 1860 ("It is evident that we very often come quite near woodcocks and snipe thus concealed on the ground, without starting them and so without suspecting that they are near.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The American Woodcock