At the East India Marine Hall

September 24. 

What that singular spiny plant, otherwise like chenopodium, which I found on a wharf in Salem?

Saw at the East India Marine Hall a bay lynx killed in Danvers July 21st (I think in 1827); another killed in Lynnfield in March, 1832. These skins were, now at any rate, quite light dirty-whitish or white wolfish color, with small pale-brown spots. The animals much larger than I expected. 

Saw a large fossil turtle, some twenty inches in diameter, with the plates distinct, in a slate colored stone from western New York; also a sword in its scabbard, found in the road near Concord April 19, 1775, and supposed to have belonged to a British officer. 

Cape Ann, from Beverly round to Squam, is bristling with little capes, projecting from the main one and similar to it.

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

Saw at the East India Marine Hall a bay lynx killed in Danvers. See September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.");  September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover,. . . thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry.")  and note to February 15, 1858 (' Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains.")

A tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.

February 15. 

To Cambridge and Boston. 

Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains. It looked much like a monstrous gray cat standing on stilts, with its tail cut down to five inches, a tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 15, 1858

February 14. February 15. February 16

Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx . . .with its tail cut down to five inches, a tuft of hair on each ear and a ruff under the throat.  See September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago."); October 20, 1857 ("It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats."); September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . . From his description I judged it to be a Canada lynx . . . I measured the stuffed skin carefully . . . Tail stout and black at the abrupt end, 5 inches . . . tuft on ear ( black and thin ) , 1½ inches . . .Ears, without  broadly edged with black half an inch or more wide  the rest being a triangular white. There was but a small muffler, chiefly a triangular whitish and blackish tuft on the sides of the face or neck, not noticeably under the chin."); September 13, 1860 ("They who have seen this generally suppose that it got out of a menagerie; others that it strayed down from far north. They call it Canada lynx."); October 17, 1860 ("While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, - in each case forgetting, or ignoring ,that it belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx.") 

How surely the desmodium or the bidens prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat!

September 29.

 P. M. — To Grape Cliff. 

September 29, 2016

The pea-vine fruit is partly ripe, little black-dotted beans, about three in a pod. 

I can hardly clamber along the grape cliff now with out getting my clothes covered with desmodium ticks, — there especially the rotundifolium and paniculatum. Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes, — often piece of a saw blade with three teeth. You pause at a convenient place and spend a long time picking them off, which it took so short a time to attach. They will even cling to your hand as you go by. They cling like babes to the mother's breast, by instinct. Instead of being caught and detained ourselves by birdlime, we are compelled to catch these seeds and carry them with us. 

These almost invisible nets, as it were, are spread for us, and whole coveys of desmodium and bidens seeds and burs steal transportation out of us. I have found myself often covered, as it were with an imbricated scaly coat of the brown desmodium seeds or a bristling chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, and had to spend a quarter of an hour or more picking them off at some convenient place; and so they got just what they wanted, deposited in another place. 

How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff-side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat! 

I am late for grapes; most have fallen. The fruit of what I have called Vitis aestivalis has partly fallen. It is dark-purple, about seven sixteenths of an inch in diameter, very acid and commonly hard. Stem and petiole smooth and purplish, but leaf not smooth or green beneath. Should not this be called frost grape, rather than the earlier one I ate at Brattleboro? Grapes are singularly various for a wild fruit, like many cultivated ones. 

Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago, when he was teaching school in Tewksbury; thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry. Its large track was seen in the snow in Tewksbury and traced to Andover and back. They saw where it had leaped thirty feet! and where it devoured rabbits. Was on a tree when shot. Skin stuffed some where.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 29, 1856

Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes, — often piece of a saw blade with three teeth.  See August 7, 1856 ("At Blackberry Steep, apparently an early broad-leafed variety of Desmodium paniculatum, two or three days. This and similar plants are common there and may almost name the place . . . All these plants seem to love a dry open hillside, a steep one. Are rarely upright, but spreading, wand-like."); August 26, 1856 ("These desmodiums are so fine and inobvious that it is difficult to detect them. I go through a grove in vain, but when I get away, find my coat covered with their pods. They found me, though I did not them.”); September 10, 1851 ("The Desmodium paniculatum of De Candolle and Gray (Hedysarum paniculatum of Linnaeus and Bigelow), tick-trefoil, with still one blossom, by the path-side up from the meadow. The rhomboidal joints of its loments adhere to my clothes. One of an interesting family that thus disperse themselves.")     See also October 2, 1852 ("The beggar-ticks (Bidens) now adhere to my clothes. I also find the desmodium sooner thus. . . than if I used my eyes alone."); October 23, 1853 ("I find my clothes all bristling as with a chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, which hold on for many days. A storm of arrows these weeds have showered on me, as I went through their moats. How irksome the task to rid one's self of them! We are fain to let some adhere. Through thick and thin I wear some; hold on many days. In an instant a thousand seeds of the bidens fastened themselves firmly to my clothes, and I carried them for miles, planting one here and another there. “);  October 12, 1851 ("The seeds of the bidens,-without florets, beggar-ticks, with four-barbed awns like hay-hooks, now adhere to your clothes, so that you are all bristling with them. Certainly they adhere to nothing so readily as to woolen cloth, as if in the creation of them the invention of woolen clothing by man had been foreseen. How tenacious of its purpose to spread and plant its race. By all methods nature secures this end, whether by the balloon, or parachute, or hook, or barbed spear like this, or mere lightness which the winds can waft.")

I am late for grapes; most have fallen.  See September 27, 1858 ("Grapes have begun to shrivel on their stems. They drop off on the slightest touch, and if they fall into the water are lost, going to the bottom. You see the grape leaves touched with frost curled up and looking crisp on their edges"); October 1, 1853 ("Grapevines, curled, crisped, and browned by the frosts, are now more conspicuous than ever. Some grapes still hang on the vines."); October 2, 1857 ("Grape leaves were killed and crisped by the last frost.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Grape

A Canada lynx killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago .See Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared "); March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country."); September 9, 1856) ("The most interesting sight I saw in Brattleboro was the skin and skull of a panther . . .It gave one a new idea of our American forests and the vigor of nature here."); September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . ."); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past."); October 17, 1860 ("[I]t belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx."); November 29, 1860("I have thought that a lynx was a bright-eyed, four-legged, furry beast of the cat kind. But he knew it to be a draught drawn by the cashier of the wildcat bank on the State treasury, payable at sight.")

I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.

March 23.

I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me. 

Very significant are the flight of geese and the migration of suckers, etc., etc. But when I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country. Would not the motions of those larger and wilder animals have been more significant still? 

Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature that I am conversant with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all its warriors. Do not the forest and the meadow now lack expression, now that I never see nor think of the moose with a lesser forest on his head in the one nor, of the beaver in the other? 

When I think what were the various sounds and notes, the migrations and works, and changes of fur and plumage which ushered in the spring and marked the other seasons of the year, I am reminded that this my life in nature, this particular round of natural phenomena which I call a year, is lamentably incomplete. I listen to a concert in which so many parts are wanting. The whole civilized country is to some extent turned into a city, and I am that citizen whom I pity. Many of those animal migrations and other phenomena by which the Indians marked the season are no longer to be observed. 

I seek acquaintance with Nature, -- to know her moods and manners. 

Primitive Nature is the most interesting to me. 

I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. 

I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. 

All the great trees and beasts, fishes and fowl are gone.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1856

the nobler animals have been exterminated. ...See January 29, 1856 ("It is observable that not only the moose and the wolf disappear before the civilized man, but even many species of insects, such as the black fly and the almost microscopic 'no-see-em.'"); April 11, 1857 ("The very fishes in countless schools are driven out of a river by the improvements of the civilized man, as the pigeon and other fowls out of the air. . . .That river which the aboriginal and indigenous fishes have not deserted is a more primitive and interesting river to me. "); Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ")

to know Nature's moods and manners. See June 22, 1851 ("My pulse must beat with Nature");  September 7, 1851 ("My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature."); January 11, 1852 ("Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes."); March 11, 1856; ("I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me"); September 24, 1859 ("I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover.").  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

The value of the Concord Lynx

November 29. 

I told a man the other day that I had got a Canada lynx here in Concord, and his instant question was, "Have you got the reward for him?"

What reward?

Why, the ten dollars which the State offers.

As long as I saw him he neither said nor thought anything about the lynx, but only about this reward.

“Yes," said he, "this State offers ten dollars reward."

You might have inferred that ten dollars was something rarer in this neighborhood than a lynx even, and he was anxious to see it on that account. I have thought that a lynx was a bright-eyed, four-legged, furry beast of the cat kind. But he knew it to be a draught drawn by the cashier of the wildcat bank on the State treasury, payable at sight.

The fact was that, instead of receiving ten dollars for the lynx, I had paid away some dollars in order to get him.

Though we are never made truly rich by the possession of money, the value of things generally is commonly estimated by the amount of money they will fetch. A thing is not valuable - e.g. a fine situation for a house – until it is convertible into so much money, that is, can cease to be what it is and become something else which you prefer. The mean and low values of anything depend on its convertibility into something else and have nothing to do with its intrinsic value.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 29, 1860

See September 11, 1860 ("George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday. . . From his description I judged it to be a Canada lynx."); September 13, 1860 ("They who have seen this generally suppose that it got out of a menagerie; others that it strayed down from far north. They call it Canada lynx . . . I do not think it necessary even to suppose it a straggler, but only very rare hereabouts. I have seen two lynxes that were killed between here and Salem since '27. Have heard of another killed in or near Andover. There may have been many more killed as near within thirty years and I not have heard of it, for they who kill one commonly do not know what it is "); October 17, 1860 ("While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, - in each case forgetting, or ignoring ,that it belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx."); November 10, 1860 ("Richardson in his "Fauna Boreali-Americana," which I consulted at Cambridge on the 7th , says that the French-Canadians call the Canada lynx indifferently Le Chat or Le Peeshoo"); See also September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago"); October 20, 1857 ("Melvin tells me that Skinner says he thinks he heard a wildcat scream in E. Hubbard's Wood, by the Close. It is worth the while to have a Skinner in the town; else we should not know that we had wildcats."); November 28, 1857 ("Spoke to Skinner about that wildcat which he says he heard a month ago in Ebby Hubbard’s woods . . a low sort of growling and then a sudden quick-repeated caterwaul, or yow yow you, or yang yang yang. He says they utter this from time to time when on the track of some prey."); February 15, 1858 ("Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx. ") Compare Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared "); March 23, 1856 ("I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country.”)

Third growth

October 17

October 17.

The noblest trees and those which it took the longest to produce, and which are the longest-lived, as chestnuts, hickories and oaks, are the first to become extinct under our present system and the hardest to reproduce.  Their place is taken by pines and birches, of feebler growth than the primitive pines and birches, for want of a change of soil.

There is many a tract now bearing a poor and decaying crop of birches, or perhaps of oaks, dying when a quarter grown and covered with fungi and excrescences, where two hundred years ago grew oaks or chestnuts of the largest size.

Hereabouts a pine wood, or even a birch wood, is no sooner established than the squirrels and birds begin to plant acorns in it. First the pines, then the oaks; and coniferous trees, geologists tell us, are older, as they are lower in the order of development, — were created before oaks. 

I observe to-day a great many pitch pine plumes cut off by squirrels and strewn under the trees, as I did yesterday.

A month ago I saw the smoke of many burnings in the horizon (even now see one occasionally), and now in my walks I occasionally come to a field of winter-rye already greening the ground in the woods where such a fire was then kindled. 

If any one presumes that, after all, there cannot be so many nuts planted as we see oaks spring up at once when the pines are cut, he must consider that according to the above calculation (two pages back) there are some ten years for the animals to plant the oak wood in; so that, if the tract is ten rods square or contains one hundred square rods, it would only be necessary that they should plant ten acorns in a year which should not be disturbed, in order that there might be one oak to every square rod at the end of ten years. This, or anything like this, does not imply any very great activity among the squirrels. A striped squirrel could carry enough in his cheeks at one trip. 

While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, — in each case forgetting, or ignoring, that it belongs here, — I call it the Concord lynx.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, October 17, 1860





The man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie. See February 15, 1858 ("Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains."); September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.")

The Concord Lynx

September 13.

It is remarkable how slow people are to believe that there are any wild animals in their neighborhood. They who have seen this generally suppose that it got out of a menagerie; others that it strayed down from far north. They call it Canada lynx.

I do not think it necessary even to suppose it a straggler, but only very rare hereabouts. They are nocturnal in their habits, and therefore are the more rarely seen, yet a strange animal is seen in this town by somebody about every year, or its track. I have heard of two or three such within a year, and of half a dozen within fifteen years.

I have seen two lynxes that were killed between here and Salem since '27. Have heard of another killed in or near Andover. Dr. Reynolds tells me of a lynx killed in Andover, in a swamp near Haggerty's Pond, one winter when he kept school in Tewksbury, about 1820. Rice tells of a common wildcat killed in Sudbury some forty years ago, resting on some ice as it was crossing the Sudbury meadows amid ice and water. Boutivell of Groton tells me that a lynx was killed in Dunstable within two or three years.

This makes five that I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 13, 1860

They call it Canada lynx. See February 15, 1858 ("Saw, at a menagerie, a Canada lynx, said to have been taken at the White Mountains."); October 17, 1860 ("While the man that killed my lynx (and many others) thinks it came out of a menagerie, and the naturalists call it the Canada lynx, and at the White Mountains they call it the Siberian lynx, - in each case forgetting, or ignoring ,that it belongs here, - I call it the Concord lynx.")

On March 24, 2000, the contiguous United States population of the Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.  

A Canada Lynx

September 11.

George Melvin came to tell me this forenoon that a strange animal was killed on Sunday, the 9th, near the north line of the town, and it was not known certainly what it was. From his description I judged it to be a Canada lynx. They told me that a boy had seen another this morning, supposed to be its mate, and that they were going out to hunt it toward night.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 11, 1860

Canada lynx. See September 13, 1860 ("Five [lynx] I have heard of (and seen three) killed within some fifteen or eighteen miles of Concord within thirty years past."); and note to September 29, 1856 ("Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago, . . . thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry. Its large track was seen in the snow in Tewksbury and traced to Andover and back. They saw where it had leaped thirty feet! and where it devoured rabbits. Was on a tree when shot. Skin stuffed some where.")