A luna moth.

July 8.


P. M. — Down river in boat to the Holt.

The small globose white flower in muddy places by river and elsewhere.

The bass on Egg Rock is just ready to expand.

It is perhaps the warmest day yet.

We held on to the abutments under the red bridge to cool ourselves in the shade. No better place in hot weather, the river rippling away beneath you and the air rippling through beneath the abutments, if only in sympathy with the river, while the planks afford a shade, and you hear all the travel and the travellers' talk without being seen or suspected.

The bullfrog it is, methinks, that makes the dumping sound.

There is generally a current of air circulating over water, always, methinks, if the water runs swiftly, as if it put the air in motion. There is quite a breeze here this sultry day.

Commend me to the sub-pontean, the under-bridge, life.

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life, but it is surprising how indifferent some are to it.

What a coarse, foul, busy life we lead, compared even with the South-Sea-Islanders, in some respects.

Truant boys steal away to bathe, but the farmers, who most need it, rarely dip their bodies into the streams or ponds.

M was telling me last night that he had thought of bathing when he had done his hoeing, — of taking some soap and going down to Walden and giving himself a good scrubbing, — but something had occurred to prevent it, and now he will go unwashed to the harvesting, aye, even till the next hoeing is over.

Better the faith and practice of the Hindoos who worship the sacred Ganges.

We have not faith enough in the Musketaquid to wash in it, even after hoeing.

Men stay on shore, keep themselves dry, and drink rum.

Pray what were rivers made for? One farmer, who came to bathe in Walden one Sunday while I lived there, told me it was the first bath he had had for fifteen years.

Now what kind of religion could his be? Or was it any better than a Hindoo's? 

M said that Abel Heywood told him he had been down to the Great Meadows (river meadows) to look at the grass, and that there wasn't a-going to be much of a crop; in some places there wasn't any grass at all. The great freshet in the spring didn't do it any good. 

Under the Salix nigra var. falcata, near that handsomest one, which now is full of scythe-shaped leaves, the larger six inches long by seven eighths wide, with remarkably broad lunar leafy appendages or stipules at their base, I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds.

Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches long, something like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick.

The sight affected me as tropical, and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.

By night it is active, for, though I thought it dying at first, it made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. When the day returns, it apparently drops wherever it may be, even into the water, and dozes till evening again.

Is it called the emperor moth? [The luna moth.] 

Yesterday I observed the arrow-wood at Saw Mill Brook, remarkably tall, straight, and slender. It is quite likely the Indians made their arrows of it, for it makes just such shoots as I used to select for my own arrows. It appears to owe its straightness partly to its rapid growth, already two feet from the extremities chiefly.

The pontederia begins to make a show now.

The black willow has branches horizontal or curving downward to the water first,  branching at once at the ground.

The Sium latifolium, water parsnip, — except that the calyx-leaves are minute and the fruit ribbed, — close to the edge of the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1852

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life. See July 9, 1852  ("Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

  It made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. Is it called the emperor moth? See July 26, 1852 ("Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds. . . . The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

How speedily the night comes on now!

November 13. 

Some rain in the night. 

I see, on a white oak on Egg Rock, where the squirrels have lately made a nest for the winter of the dry oak leaves, probably using those on the tree before they fell. Now that the top of the oak is bare, this is a dark round mass against the sky, as big as a peck measure, very conspicuous. There are considerable many still hanging on the lower parts. I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest. 

I observed on the 7th, between the site of Paul Adams's and Bateman's Pond, in quite open land, some very prominent Indian corn-hills. I should say that they were higher above the intermediate surface than when they were first made. It was a pasture, and they were thickly covered with grass and lichens. Perhaps the grass had grown better on the hillocks, and so they had grown while the intermediate spaces had been more trodden by the cows. These very regular round grassy hillocks, extending in straight rows over the swells and valleys, had a singular effect, like the burial-ground of some creatures. 

I find that I can see the sun set from almost any hill in Concord, and some within the confines of the neighboring towns, and though this takes place at just about 5 P.M., when the cows come in, get to the post-office by the time the mail is distributed. 

See the sun rise or 

set if possible each day. 

Let that be your pill. 

How speedily the night comes on now! There is some duskiness in the afternoon light before you are aware of it, the cows have gathered about the bars, waiting to be let out, and, in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended. It remains only to get home again. 

Who is weary? Why do we cease work and go to bed? Who taught men thus to spend their nights and days? Yet I must confess that I am surprised when I find that particular wise and independent persons conform so far as regularly to go to bed and get up about the same time with their neighbors. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 13, 1857

I suspect it is a gray squirrel's nest.  See March 6, 1856 (“ [A](probably) gray squirrel’s nest high in a pitch pine, and acorn shells about on it. ”); January 24, 1856 (“That Wheeler swamp is a great place for squirrels. I observe many of their tracks along the riverside there. The nests are of leaves, and apparently of the gray species.”);  November 5, 1860 ("[T]here are the nests of several gray squirrels in the trees.")

See the sun rise or set if possible each day. See December 20, 1851 ("Go out before sunrise or stay out till sunset.") January 20, 1852 ("To see the sun rise or go down every day would preserve us sane forever, — so to relate ourselves, for our mind's and body's health, to a universal fact.”);  June 5, 1854 ("I have come to this hill to see the sun go down, to recover sanity and put myself again in relation with Nature.”); December 29, 1856 (“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day.")

How speedily the night comes on now!. . .in twenty minutes, candles gleam from distant windows, and the walk for this day is ended. See November 27, 1853 ("The days are short enough now. The sun is already setting before I have reached the ordinary limit of my walk, . . ."); November 28, 1859 ("We make a good deal of the early twilights of these November days, they make so large a part of the afternoon.”); December 5, 1853 ("Now for the short days and early twilight. . . The sun goes down behind a low cloud, and the world is darkened."); December 9, 1856 ("The worker who would accomplish much these short days must shear a dusky slice off both ends of the night") December 11, 1854 ("The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely; the morning and the evening twilight make the whole day.”); Compare January 20, 1852 (“ The days are now sensibly longer,”); January 3, 1854 ("The twilight appears to linger. The day seems suddenly longer."); January 23, 1854 ("The increased length of the days is very observable of late."); J

Three bits of white cotton string.

June 27

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

June 27, 2014

See apparently a young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. 

The garlic not even yet quite. 

In the Wheeler meadow, the bushy one southwest of Egg Rock, the coarse sedge [wool-grass] — I think the same with that in the Great Meadows — evidently grows in patches with a rounded outline; i.e., its edge is a succession of blunt, rounded capes, with a very distinct outline amid the other kinds of grass and weeds. 

I cannot find one of the three bits of white cotton string which I tied to willows in that neighborhood in the spring, and I have no doubt that the birds, perhaps crow blackbirds, have got every one for their nests. I must drive down a stake for a mark next time.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 27, 1857

A young bobolink fluttering over the meadow. See July 2, 1855 (". Young bobolinks are now fluttering over the meadow, but I have not been able to find a nest, so concealed in the meadow-grass."); and note to July 12, 1857 ("I hear the occasional link note from the earliest bobolinks of the season").See also .A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

The garlic not even yet quite. See June 25, 1854 ("Garlic open, eighteen inches high or more"); see also June 26, 1857 ("I must be near bobolinks' nests many times these days, — in E. Hosmer's meadow by the garlic.")

This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow.

January 16. 

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

This morning was one of the coldest. It improves the walking on the river, freezing the overflow beneath the snow. 

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice generally. The ice therefor a few feet in width slants up to it, and, owing to this, the snow is blown off it. This edging of ice revealed is peculiarly green by contrast with the snow, methinks. So, too, where the ice, settling, has rested on a rock which has burst it and now holds it high above the surrounding level. The same phenomena, no doubt, on a much larger scale occur at the north. 

I observe that the holes which I bored in the white maples last spring were nearly grown over last summer, commonly to within a quarter or an eighth of an inch, but in one or two instances, in very thriftily growing trees, they were entirely closed. 

When I was surveying Shattuck's Merrick's pasture fields the other day, McManus, who was helping me, said that they would be worth a hundred or two hundred dollars more if it were not for the willow-rows which bound and separate them, for you could not plow parallel with them within five rods on account of the roots, you must plow at right angles with them. Yet it is not many years since they were set out, as I remember. However, there should be a great amount of root to account for their wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year when trimmed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 16, 1857

As I pass the Island (Egg Rock), I notice the ice-foot adhering to the rock about two feet above the surface of the ice. See January 1, 1857 (" I observe a shelf of ice — what arctic voyagers call the ice-belt or ice-foot (which they see on a very great scale sledging upon it) — adhering to the walls and banks at various heights, the river having fallen nearly two feet since it first froze"); February 1, 1859 ("Also an ice-belt adheres to the steep shores . . .and you see where this hard and thick ice has bent under its own weight."); February 14, 1859 ("The ice-belt which I still see along the steep bank of the Assabet is now some three weeks old.");  February 15, 1860 ("The river is rapidly falling, is more than a foot lower than it was a few days ago, so that there is an ice-belt left where the bank is steep, and on this I skate in many places.")

The wonderful vivaciousness, making seven or eight feet in a year, of Shattuck's willow row. See December 4, 1855 ("The younger osiers on Shattuck’s row do shine."); January 19, 1856 ("The willow osiers of last year’s growth on the pollards in Shattuck’s row, Merrick’s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shrivelled in the bark.")


As I pass the Island (Egg Rock). . .Egg Rock is an outcrop at the confluence of the Assabet and Sudbury rivers, where they form the Concord River. Thoreau surveyed Nawshawtuct Hill in December 1856 and January 1857, producing a map which included Egg Rock. ~ Wikipedia

January 16 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, January 16

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 © 2009-2022

The North Branch — it is all solid.

March 24.

Very pleasant day. Thermometer 48° at noon. 

9 A. M. -- Start to get two quarts of white maple sap and home at 11.30. One F. hyemalis in yard. Spend the forenoon on the river at the white maples. 

I hear a bluebird’s warble and a song sparrow’s chirp. So much partly for being out the whole forenoon. Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time, as I hear. The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. 

Cross the river behind Monroe’s. Go everywhere on the North Branch — it is all solid — and crust bears in the morning. Yet last year I paddled my boat to Fair Haven Pond on the 19th of March!

The snow is so coarse-grained and hard that you can hardly get up a handful to wash your hands with, except the dirty surface.  Before noon I slump two feet in the snow. 

The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long; yet I detect no flow of sap. 

The white maple sap does not flow fast generally at first, —or 9 A. M., — not till about ten. You bore a little hole with your knife, and presently the wounded sap—wood begins to glisten with moisture, and anon a clear crystalline tear-like drop flows out and runs down the bark, or drops at once to the snow. This is the sap of which the far-famed maple sugar is made. That’s the sweet liquor which the Indians boiled a thousand years ago. 

My sugar-making was spoiled by putting in much soda instead of saleratus by accident. I suspect it would have made more sugar than the red did. It proved only brittle black candy. This sap flowed just about as fast as that of the red maple. It is said that a great deal of sap will run from the yellow birch. 

Cut a piece of Rhus Toxicodendron resting on rock at Egg Rock, five eighths of an inch in diameter, which had nineteen rings of annual growth. It is quite hard and stiff.

The river begins to open generally at the bends for ten or twenty rods, and I see the dark ice alternating with dark water there, while the rest of the river is still covered with snow.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 24, 1856

 Bluebirds seen in all parts of the town to-day for first time.  Compare February 24, 1857 ("As I cross from the causeway to the hill, thinking of the bluebird, I that instant hear one's note from deep in the softened air. It is already 40°, and by noon is between 50° and 60°. As the day advances I hear more bluebirds and see their azure flakes settling on the fence-posts."); See  March 9, 1856 ("Thermometer at 2 P. M. 15°, sixteen inches of snow on a level in open fields, hard and dry, ice in Flint’s Pond two feet thick, and the aspect of the earth is that of the middle of January in a severe winter. Yet this is about the date that bluebirds arrive commonly.") ;March 10, 1856 ("A bluebird would look as much out of place now as the 10th of January . . . It is hard to believe the records of previous years."); March 26, 1860 ("The bluebird may be seen February 24, as in '50, '57 and '60 or not till March 24, as in '56.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring: Listening for the Bluebird 

The F. hyemalis has been seen two or three days. See March 24, 1854 (“Great flocks of hyemalis drifting about with their jingling note.”); March 18, 1857 ("I hear the chill-lill or tchit-a-tchit of the slate-colored sparrow, and see it.”); March 19, 1858 ("Hear the pleasant chill-lill of the F. hyemalis, the first time have heard this note."); ; March 20, 1855 ("At my landing I hear the F. hyemalis”); March 20, 1852 ("And now, within a day or two, I have noticed the chubby slate-colored snowbird (Fringilla hyemalis?),. . . It has two white feathers in its tail."); March 23, 1852 ("Apparently they sing with us in the pleasantest days before they go northward.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Dark-eyed Junco; and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Signs of the Spring, the note of the dark-eyed junco going northward

The early aspen buds down very conspicuous, half an inch long See February 6, 1856 ("The down is just peeping out from some of the aspen buds."); February 27. 1852 ("The buds of the aspen show a part of their down or silky catkins."); March 4, 1860 ("Aspen down a quarter of an inch out."); March 18, 1854 ("The willow catkins this side M. Miles's five eighths of an inch long and show some red. Poplar catkins nearly as large, color somewhat like a gray rabbit");  March 21, 1855 ("Early willow and aspen catkins are very conspicuous now."); March 22, 1860 ("The phenomena of an average March . . .willow catkins become silvery, aspens downy"); March 25, 1856 ("The willow and aspen catkins have pushed out considerably since the 1st of February in warm places.")

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