An old stump by the wall.

November 22

In surveying Mr. Bigelow’s wood-lot to day I found at the northeasterly angle what in the deed from the Thayers in ’38 was called “an old stump by the wall.” It is still quite plain and may last twenty years longer. It is oak. 

This is quite a pleasant day, but hardly amounting to Indian summer. 

I see swarms of large mosquito-like insects dancing in the garden. They may be a large kind of Tipulidoe. Had slender ringed abdomens and no plumes. 

The river is quite low, — about as low as it has been, for it has not been very low. 

About the first of November a wild pig from the West, said to weigh three hundred pounds, jumped out of a car at the depot and made for the woods. The owner had to give up the chase at once, not to lose his passage, while some railroad employees pursued the pig even into the woods a mile and a half off, but there the pig turned and pursued them so resolutely that they ran for their lives and one climbed a tree. The next day being Sunday, they turned out in force with a gun and a large mastiff, but still the pig had the best of it, — fairly frightened the men by his fierce charges, — and the dog was so wearied and injured by the pig that the men were obliged to carry him in their arms. The pig stood it better than the dog. Ran between the gun man’s legs, threw him over, and hurt his shoulder, though pierced in many places by a pitchfork. At the last accounts, he had been driven or baited into a barn in Lincoln, but no one durst enter, and they were preparing to shoot him. Such pork might be called venison.[Caught him at last in a snare, and so conveyed him to Brighton.]

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 22, 1858

I see swarms of large mosquito-like insects dancing in the garden. See October 20, 1858 (“It is so warm that even the tipulidae appear to prefer the shade. There they continue their dance, balancing to partners, as it seems, and by a fine hum remind me of summer still, when now the air generally is rather empty of insect sounds.”)

A wild pig from the Westjumped out of a car at the depot and made for the woods. See February 15, 1857 (“How to catch a pig”)

I find the true line.

December 25.  

Surveying for heirs of J. Richardson, G. Heywood and A. Brooks accompanying.

Skate on Goose Pond. 

Heywood says that some who have gone into Ebby Hubbard's barn to find him have seen the rats run over his shoulders, they are so familiar with him. This because I stopped to speak with Hubbard in his barn about bounds. 

I find the true line between Richardson and Mrs. Bigelow, which Captain Hubbard overlooked in 1840, and yet I find it by his own plan of 1827. Bigelow had set a split stone far into Richardson. After making the proper allowance for variation since 1827, I set my stake exactly on an old spotted line, which was overlooked in 1840 and is probably as old as the survey of ’27, or thirty years. It is on good-sized white pines, and is quite distinct now, though not blazed into the wood at first. 

It would not be detected unless you were looking for it.

H. D. Thoreau, JournaL December 25, 1857

I find the true line between Richardson and Mrs. Bigelow. See November 30, 1857 ("Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow's wood-lot are several hornbeams . . .”)

The clothes of an honest man.

December 8. 

Staples says he came to Concord some twenty-four years ago a poor boy with a dollar and three cents in his pocket, and he spent the three cents for drink at Bigelow’s tavern, and now he ’s worth “twenty hundred dollars clear.” 

He remembers many who inherited wealth whom he can buy out to-day. 

I told him that he had done better than I in a pecuniary respect, for I had only earned my living.

 “Well,” said he, “that ’s all I’ve done, and I don’t know as I’ve got much better clothes than you.” 

I was particularly poorly clad then, in the woods; my hat, pants, boots, rubbers, and gloves would not have brought four pence, and I told the Irishman that it wasn’t  everybody could afford to have a fringe round his legs, as I had, my corduroys not preserving a selvage.

Staples said there was one thing he liked. 

“What is that?” 

“An honest man.” 

If he lent a man money, and when it became due he came and asked for more time because he could not pay, he excused him, but if, after it had become due, he went to the man, and he then made the same excuse, he lost all confidence in him.

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

My corduroys not preserving a selvage. See May 8, 1857 ("Within a week I have had made a pair of corduroy pants, which cost when done $1.60. . . .[B]eside being very strong, they will look about as well three months hence as now, — or as ill, some would say.")

Staples. See April 18, 1860 ("As I go by the site of Staples' new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well and are bricking it up.")

A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day.

November 30

A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. 

Surveying the J. Richardson lot. 

The air is full of geese. I saw five flocks within an hour, about 10 A. M., containing from thirty to fifty each, and afterward two more flocks, making in all from two hundred and fifty to three hundred at least, all flying southwest over Goose and Walden Ponds. The former was apparently well named Goose Pond. 

You first hear a faint honking from one or two in the northeast and think there are but few wandering there, but, looking up, see forty or fifty coming on in a more or less broken harrow, wedging their way southwest. I suspect they honk more, at any rate they are more broken and alarmed, when passing over a village, and are seen falling into their ranks again, assuming the perfect harrow form. Hearing only one or two honking, even for the seventh time, you think there are but few till you see them. 

According to my calculation a thousand or fifteen hundred may have gone over Concord to-day. When they fly low and near, they look very black against the sky. [I hear that one was killed by Lee in the Corner about this time.]

Northwest of Little Goose Pond, on the edge of Mrs. Bigelow's wood-lot, are several hornbeams (Carpinus). Looking into a cleft in one of them about three feet from the ground, which I thought might be the scar of a blazing, I found some broken kernels of corn, probably placed there by a crow or jay. This was about half a mile from a corn-field. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 30, 1857

A still, warm, cloudy, rain-threatening day. The air is full of geese all flying southwest. See November 8 , 1857 ("A warm, cloudy, rain-threatening morning. About 10 A.M. a long flock of geese are going over from northeast to southwest  . . .  In the afternoon. . .was the third flock to-day. Now if ever, then, we may expect a change in the weather."); November 13, 1855 ("Seventy or eighty geese, in three harrows successively smaller, flying southwest—pretty well west—over the house. A completely overcast, occasionally drizzling forenoon. "); November 18, 1854 (" Sixty geese go over the Great Fields, in one waving line, broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while."); November 20, 1853 ("Methinks the geese are wont to go south just before a storm");  December 1, 1857 ("I hear of two more flocks of geese going over to-day.”)

The first freezing day-- the crunching sound of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet

November 14. 

P. M. – Ride to limestone quarries on old Carlisle road with E. Hoar. 

This morning it was considerably colder than for a long time, and by noon very much colder than heretofore, with a pretty strong northerly wind. The principal flight of geese was November 8th, so that the bulk of them preceded this cold turn five days. 

You need greatcoat and buffalo and gloves now, if you ride. I find my hands stiffened and involuntarily finding their way to my pockets. No wonder that the weather is a standing subject of conversation, since we are so sensitive. 

If we had not gone through several winters, we might well be alarmed at the approach of cold weather. With this keener blast from the north, my hands suddenly fail to fulfill their office, as it were begin to die. We must put on armor against the new foe. I am almost world-ridden suddenly. I can hardly tie and untie my shoe-strings. 

What a story to tell an inhabitant of the tropics, – perchance that you went to walk, after many months of warmth, when suddenly the air became so cold and hostile to your nature, that it benumbed you so that you lost the use of some of your limbs, could not untie your shoe-strings or unbutton your clothes! 

This cold weather makes us step more briskly.

I hear that the Indians say we are to have a hard winter, because of the abundance of acorns, also because of the unusual thickening of corn-husks in the summer! 

The stone at those quarries strikes northeasterly and southwesterly, or apparently with the rocks of Curly-pate, a third of a mile off. The strata appear to be nearly vertical. In the most southwesterly quarry, I noticed in the side of an upright sliver of rock, where the limestone had formerly been blasted off, the bottom of the nearly perpendicular hole which had been drilled for that purpose, two or three inches deep and about two and a half feet from the ground.

 In this I found two fresh chestnuts, a dozen or more amphicarpaea seeds, as many apparently either prinos (?) or rose (?) seeds (single seeds and fresh), and several fresh barberry seeds mixed with a little earth and rubbish. 

What placed them there? Squirrel, mouse, jay, or crow? At first I thought that a quadruped could hardly have reached this hole, but probably it could easily, and it was a very cunning place for such a deposit.  I brought them all home in order to ascertain what the seeds were and how they came there. 

Examining the chestnuts carefully in the evening and wondering if so small a bird as a chickadee could transport one, I observed near the larger end of one some very fine scratches, which it seemed to me might have been made by the teeth of a very small animal when carrying it, but certainly not by the bill of a bird, since they had pricked sharply into the shell, rucking it up one way. I then looked to see where the teeth of the other jaw had scratched it, but could discover no marks and was therefore still somewhat in doubt. 

Coming up-stairs an hour afterward, I examined those scratches with a microscope, and saw plainly that they had been made by some fine and sharp cutting instrument like a fine chisel, a little concave, and had plowed under the surface of the shell a little, toward the big end of the nut, raising it up; and, looking farther, I now discovered, on the larger end of the nut, at least two corresponding marks made by the lower incisors, plowing toward the first and about a quarter of an inch distant. These were a little less obvious to the unarmed eye, but no less plain through the glass. 

I now had no doubt that they were made by the incisors of a mouse, and, comparing them with the incisors of a deer mouse (Mus leucopus) whose skull I have, I found that one or two of the marks were just the width of its two incisors combined (a twentieth of an inch), and the others, though finer, might have been made by them. On one side, at least, it had taken fresh hold once or twice. I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. 

The other nut, which had no marks on it, I suppose was carried by the star end, which was gone from both. There was no chestnut tree within twenty rods. These seeds thus placed in this recess will account for chestnut trees, barberry bushes, etc., etc., growing in chinks and clefts where we do not see how the seeds could have fallen. There was earth enough even in this little hole to keep some very small plant alive. 

I hear that Gardiner Heywood caught a trout in Walden Pond the other day and that it weighed five pounds. [And a little over. Speared it about a week ago, and saw another not quite so large. Henry and John Bigelow put a couple into the pond some ten years ago. Were these the ones?]

It seems that the Abel Davis who caught the pickerel in Temple Brook, which would make such a meal for his “Lavinia” and himself, was addicted to talking to himself, thinking aloud. He was once talked of for captain of the company, and about that time, they say, was overheard saying to himself, “Captain Abel Davis! What a fine-looking man!”  

Can those straight ridges running north by west and south by east over the most level part of Curly-pate have anything to do with diluvial furrows? 

Returning along the edge of Calla Swamp, under the fern-clad hill, I feel the crunching sound  of frost-crystals in the heaving mud under my feet, and see and feel the sphagnum already stiffened into a crust, and what probably in the forenoon was water trickling from a fern-clad rock is now half a dozen icicles, six or eight inches long. 

Such is the first freezing day. Such phenomena are first observed under the north side of a hill in a cold swamp like this. Such are the first advances of winter. Ice-crystals shoot in the mud, the sphagnum becomes a stiffened mass, and dropping water in these cold places, a rigid icicle. 

E. Hoar tells me that his partner, having a new adobe house, or perhaps roof to it, built in Santa Barbara, on the California coast, corrected the bad levelling of his carpenters by taking such a position as to make the ridge-pole coincide with the horizon line where the Pacific appeared to meet the sky. 

The thermometer is 27° at 6 P. M. The mud in the street is stiffened under my feet this evening. 

Where there is a wall near a pitch pine wood, I see the scales of the cones which the squirrels have carried to the wall and stripped, strewn all along the wall on the ground.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 14, 1857

I have but little doubt that these seeds were placed there by a Mus leucopus, our most common wood mouse. See November 19, 1857 (" What pretty fruit for the mice, these bright prinos berries! They run up the twigs in the night and gather this shining fruit, take out the small seeds, and eat their kernels at the entrance to their burrows. The ground is strewn with them there.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wild Mouse

The crunching sound of frost-crystals under my feet, such is the first freezing day. See November 14, 1858 ("It is all at once perfect winter. I walk on frozen ground two thirds covered with a sugaring of dry snow.")

This cold weather makes us step more briskly. See November 12, 1858 ("All people move the brisker for the cold, yet are braced and a little elated by it. They love to say, “Cold day, sir.” Though the days are shorter, you get more work out of a hired man than before, for he must work to keep warm. ")

Very warm to-day; rainy in forenoon. Settle a boundary dispute.

November 9. 

Surveying for Stedman Buttrick and Mr. Gordon. 

Jacob Farmer says that he remembers well a particular bound (which is the subject of dispute between the above two men) from this circumstance: He, a boy, was sent, as the representative of his mother, to witness the placing of the bounds to her lot, and he remembers that, when they had fixed the stake and stones, old Mr. Nathan Barrett asked him if he had a knife about him, upon which he pulled out his knife and gave it to him. Mr. Barrett cut a birch switch and trimmed it in the presence of young Farmer, and then called out, “Boy, here's your knife,” but as the boy saw that he was going to strike him when he reached his hand for the knife, he dodged into a bush which alone received the blow. And Mr. Barrett said that if it had not been for that, he would have got a blow which would have made him remember that bound as long as he lived, and explained to him that that was his design in striking him. He had before told his mother that since she could not go to the woods to see what bounds were set to her lot, she had better send Jacob as a representative of the family. 

This made Farmer the important witness in this case. He first, some years ago, saw Buttrick trimming up the trees, and told him he was on Gordon's land and pointed out this as the bound between them. 

One of the company to-day told of George Melvin once directing Jonas Melvin, for a joke, to go to the widow Hildreth's lot (along which we were measuring) and gather the chestnuts. They were probably both working there. He accordingly took the oxen and cart and some ladders and another hired man, and they worked all day and got half a bushel.

Mr. Farmer tells me that one Sunday he went to his barn, having nothing to do, and thought he would watch the swallows, republican swallows. The old bird was feeding her young, and he sat within fifteen feet, overlooking them. There were five young, and he was curious to know how each received its share; and as often as the bird came with a fly, the one at the door (or opening) took it, and then they all hitched round one notch, so that a new one was presented at the door, who received the next fly; and this was the invariable order, the same one never receiving two flies in succession. 

At last the old bird brought a very small fly, and the young one that swallowed it did not desert his ground but waited to receive the next, but when the bird came with another, of the usual size, she commenced a loud and long scolding at the little one, till it resigned its place, and the next in succession received the fly. 

Bigelow, the tavern-keeper, once, wrote C., put up this advertisement in the streets of Concord, “All those who are in favor of the universal salvation of mankind, are requested to meet at the school-house (?) next Saturday evening (?), to choose officers.” 

Very warm to-day; rainy in forenoon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 9, 1857

postscript 11/13/57:

My assistants and company in surveying on the 9th were, Gordon and Buttrick, the principals in the dispute; Jacob Farmer, the principal witness; George Buttrick, son of Stedman; and French, son-in-law of Gordon. 

I had the most to do with Gordon, who came after me. He was quite eloquent at our house on the subject of two neighbors disputing at his time of life about a ‘ seemed really to have a very good heart; thought that the main thing in this life was to keep up friendly relations; and as he rode along, would quote Scrip ture in a low tone, and put his whole soul into some half-whispered expression which I could not hear, but nevertheless nodded assent to. He thought it was too bad that he should have spent his seventy-third birthday settling that dispute in the woods. Apparently did not know it till afterwards. 

Buttrick is a rather large man, in more senses than one. His portly body as he stood over the bound was the mark at which I sighted through the woods, rather too wide a one for accuracy. He did not cease to regret for a day or two that I should have had no dinner, but Gordon detained me. Buttrick said that he had a piece of meat cooked and expected me at his house. Thought it too bad in Gordon to make a man go without his dinner, etc. He offered me a glass of gin, or wine, as I chose. Lamented the cutting down of apple orchards and scarcity of cider-mills. 

Told of an orchard in the town of Russell, on the side of a hill, where the apples rolled down and lay four feet deep (?) against a wall on the lower side, and this the owner cut down. 

Farmer, half a dozen years since, saw Buttrick trimming up the trees there and observed [to] him, “You are on Mr. Gordon's land.” This was the beginning of the trouble. Buttrick adhered to the bounds which Abel Brooks, who sold to him, had pointed out. 

Farmer was sure of the bounds between them, be cause when Jacob Brown's Bateman wood-lot was divided between Mrs. Farmer (his mother) and her sister, the mother of Mrs. Gordon, he had witnessed the setting of the bounds as the representative of his mother, and came near being whipped at this one.

Ripe sand cherry.

July 28

At 1.30 a thunder-shower, which was much needed, the corn having rolled and trees suffered. 

3.30 p. m. — To Climbing Fern.

Virgin's-bower, apparently two or three days.

Nabalus albus, a day or two. 

Sand cherry ripe. The fruit droops in umble-like clusters, two to four peduncles together, on each side the axil of a branchlet or a leaf. Emerson and Gray call it dark-red. It is black when ripe. 

Emerson, Gray, and Bigelow speak of it as rare in this State! It is common enough here. I have seen it as abundant as anywhere on Weir (or Ware) Hill in Sudbury, Bigelow's own town. 

Cherry three eighths of an inch diameter, peduncle seven sixteenths long. Emerson calls it eatable! 

On Linnaea Hill. By factory road clearing, the small rough sunflower, two or three days. 

Gerardia flava, apparently several days.

Cicuta bulbosa, several days. 

Richweed at Brown's oak, several days (since 16th; say 22d).

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 28, 1856

To Climbing Fern. See November 24, 1851 ("Found on the south side of the [Ministerial] swamp the Lygodium palmatum, which Bigelow calls the only climbing fern in our latitude, an evergreen."); November 30, 1851 (“The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods”); August 14, 1854 ("3 P.M. To climbing fern with E. Hoar. It takes a good deal of care and patience to unwind this fern without injuring it"); October 2, 1859 (“The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns.”); May 1, 1859 ("The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.")

Nabalus albus, a day or two. See September 6, 1851 ("Gray calls Nabalus albus, white lettuce or rattlesnake-root.");  August 27, 1858 ("The Nabalus albus has been out some ten days,"); September 13, 1857 ("The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime"); September 17, 1857 (“I go to Fair Haven Hill, looking at the varieties of nabalus, which have a singular prominence now in all woods and roadsides. ”); September 23, 1857 ("Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint's Pond road in the woods.”)

Sand cherry ripe. See August 10, 1860 ("Sand cherry is well ripe — some of it — and tolerable, better than the red cherry or choke-cherry.")

By factory road clearing, the small rough sunflower, two or three days. See July 29, 1853 (“The sight of the small rough sunflower about a dry ditch bank and hedge advances me at once further toward autumn.”); August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats”); August 1, 1855 ("Small rough sunflower a day or two.”)

Gerardia flava, apparently several days. See July 28, 1853 ("The Gerardia flava in the hickory grove behind Lee's Cliff.") See also July 22, 1854 ("Gerardia flava, apparently two or three days, Lupine Hillside up railroad, near fence") [Gerardia flava now know as Aureolaria flava (smooth false foxglove)]

July 28. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 28

Sand cherry. Ripe fruit

droops from peduncles in

umble-like clusters.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Ripe sand cherry. 

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 ©  2009-2026

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