In the the aquarium at Barnum's the glass boxes with nothing but water (labelled fresh or salt) seemed sufficiently interesting.

May 24.

Monday. To New York by railroad.

All through Connecticut and New York the white involucres of the cornel (C. Florida), recently expanded, some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now conspicuous. It is not quite expanded in Concord.

It is the most showy indigenous tree now open. (One plant at Staten Island on the 25th had but just begun to flower, i. e. the true flowers to open.)

After entering the State of New York I observed, now fully in bloom, what I call the Viburnum prunifolium, looking very like our V. Lentago in flower at a little distance. It is thorny, as they told me at Staten Island, and the same I dealt with at Perth Amboy, and is insufficiently described.

It grows on higher and drier ground than our V. nudum, but its fruit, which is called “nanny berries,” resembles that rather than the V. Lentago. It shows now rich, dense, rounded masses of white flowers; i.e., the surface of the bushes makes the impression of regular curves or convex masses of bloom, bearing a large proportion to the green leaves.

The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, is generally out, with the cornel. (I see it also next day at Staten Island.)

I saw a musquash swimming across a pool, I think after entering upon Manhattan Island!

In the evening, looked at the aquarium at Barnum's. The glass boxes with nothing but water (labelled fresh or salt) and pebbles seemed sufficiently interesting.

There were breams only two inches long, probably hatched only last year. The sea-anemones were new and interesting to me. The ferns, etc., under glass a fine parlor ornament.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 24, 1858



The white involucres of the cornel (C. Florida), recently expanded, some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now conspicuous. It is not quite expanded in Concord. See  May 16, 1858 ("The flower-buds of the Cornus florida are five eighths of an inch in diameter."). See also   May 25, 1855 ("Cornus florida, no bloom. Was there year before last? Does it not flower every other year?”); May 22, 1856("The Cornus florida does not bloom this year.")

May 24. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 24 

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

At Barnum's Museum,

October 25. 

Saw, at Barnum's Museum, the stuffed skin of a cougar that was found floating dead in the Hudson many years ago. The stuffed jaguar there looks rather the largest. 

Had seen a clergyman in Worcester the previous afternoon (at Higginson's) who told me of one killed near the head of the Delaware, in New York State, by an acquaintance of his. His dog had treed it or found it on a tree on a mountain side, and the hunter first saw it as he came up from below, stretched out on a limb and looking intently at him, ready to spring. He fired and wounded it, but, as usual, it sprang as soon as struck, in the direction it was pointing. It struck seventy feet down the mountain from the tree, or a hundred feet distant, tearing off the sleeve of the hunter's very thick and stout coat, as it passed, and marking his arm from shoulder to hand. It took to a tree, and again, and this time approaching it from above, he shot it. 

The specimens I have seen were long-bodied. 

Arrived at Eagleswood, Perth Amboy, Saturday, 5 p. m., October 25th.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 25, 1856