Get yourself therefore a name.

November 15

Here is a rainy day, which keeps me in the house.

Asked Therien this afternoon if he had got a new idea this summer.

“Good Lord ” says he, “a man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. Maybe the man you work with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds.”

I am pleased to read in Stoever's Life of Linnæus (Trapp's translation) that his father, being the first learned man of his family, changed his family name and borrowed that of Linnæus (Linden-tree-man ) from a lofty linden tree which stood near his native place, “a custom,” he says, “not unfrequent in Sweden, to take fresh appellations from natural objects.”

What more fit than that the advent of a new man into a family should acquire for it, and transmit to his posterity, a new patronymic? Such a custom suggests, if it does not argue, an unabated vigor in the race, relating it to those primitive times when men did, indeed, acquire a name, as memorable and distinct as their characters.

It is refreshing to get to a man whom you will not be satisfied to call John's son or Johnson's son, but a new name applicable to himself alone, he being the first of his kind. We may say there have been but so many men as there are sur names, and of all the John-Smiths there has been but one true John Smith, and he of course is dead.

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all.

There was one enterprising boy came to school to me whose name was “Buster,” and an honorable name it was. He was the only boy in the school, to my knowledge, who was named.

What shall we say of the comparative intellectual vigor of the ancients and moderns, when we read of Theophrastus, the father of botany, that he composed more than two hundred treatises in the third century before Christ and the seventeenth before printing, about twenty of which remain, and that these fill six volumes in folio printed at Venice? Among the last are two works on natural history and the generation of plants. What a stimulus to a literary man to read his works! They were opera, not an essay or two, which you can carry between your thumb and finger.

Dioscorides (according to Stoever), who lived in the first century after Christ, was the first to inquire into the medicinal properties of plants, “the literary father of the materia medica." His work remains.

And next comes Pliny the Elder, and “by his own avowal (?), his natural history is a compilation from about twenty five hundred (?) different authors."

Conrad Gesner, of the Sixteenth Century, the first botanist of note among the moderns; also a naturalist generally.

In this century botany first “became a regular academical study.”

I think it would be a good discipline for Channing, who writes poetry in a sublimo-lipshod style, to write Latin, for then he would be compelled to say something always, and frequently have recourse to his grammar and dictionary. Methinks that what a man might write in a dead language could be more surely translated into good sense in his own language, than his own language could be translated into good Latin, or the dead language.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 15, 1851 

Get yourself therefore a name, and better a nickname than none at all. See Walking (1861 ("Travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but earned it, and among some tribes he acquired a new name with every new exploit.. . .So every man has an original wild name. . . . Our true names are nicknames."); August 19, 1851  ("There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal"); June 4, 1856 ("He pointed out the site of “Perch” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain.")

Theophrastus, the father of botany, . . Dioscorides . . . Pliny the Elder.. .Conrad Gesner. See February 17, 1852 ("If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science.")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed

August 20

2 p. m. — To Lee's Bridge via Hubbard's Wood, Potter's field, Conantum, returning by Abel Minott's house, Clematis Brook, Baker's pine plain, and railroad.

 I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed, — for I pull away the withered grass with my hands, — uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. 

They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other's song? It would be a curious ear, indeed, that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. 

Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one's song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth's axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night or day.

The Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco, meets me at every turn. At first I suspect some new bluish flower in the grass, but stooping see the inflated pods. Tasting one such herb convinces me that there are such things as drugs which may either kill or cure.[A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it, be cause it makes him slobber badly.]

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. 

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe a flower's leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in describing a psychological fact. 

Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field, or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and confusion we describe men. The precision and copiousness of botanical language applied to the description of moral qualities! 

The neottia, or ladies'-tresses, behind Garfield's house. 

The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. 

Here are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. 

The grasshoppers seem no drier than the grass.

In Lee's field are two kinds of plantain. Is the common one found there? 

The willow reach by Lee's Bridge has been stripped for powder. None escapes. This morning, hearing a cart, I looked out and saw George Dugan going by with a horse-load of his willow toward Acton powder-mills, which I had seen in piles by the turnpike. Every traveller has just as particular an errand which I might like wise chance to be privy to. 

Now that I am at the extremity of my walk, I see a threatening cloud blowing up from the south, which however, methinks, will not compel me to make haste. 

Apios tuberosa, or Glycine Apios, ground-nut. 

The prenanthes now takes the place of the lactucas, which are gone to seed. 

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. 

Scutellaria lateriflora, side-flowering skullcap, here. 

This brook deserves to be called Clematis Brook (though that name is too often applied), for the clematis is very abundant, running over the alders and other bushes on its brink. Where the brook issues from the pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five or six feet each way, with its red berries now ripe. It grows, too, at the upper end of the pond. But if it is the button-bush that grows in the now low water, it should rather be called the Button-Bush Pond. Now the tall rush is in its prime on the shore here, and the clematis abounds by this pond also. 

I came out by the leafy-columned elm under Mt. Misery, where the trees stood up one above another, higher and higher, immeasurably far to my imagination, as on the side of a New Hampshire mountain. . 

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far apart, with a wiry grass between, and goldenrod and hardhack and St. John's-wort and blackberry vines, each tree merely keeping down the grass for a space about itself, meditating to make a forest floor; and here and there younger pines are springing up. Further in, you come to moss-covered patches, dry, deep white moss, or almost bare mould, half covered with pine needles. Thus begins the future forest floor.

 The sites of the shanties that once stood by the railroad in Lincoln when the Irish built it, the still remaining hollow square mounds of earth which formed their embankments, are to me instead of barrows and druidical monuments and other ruins. It is a sufficient antiquity to me since they were built, their material being earth. Now the Canada thistle and the mullein crown their tops. I see the stones which made their simple chimneys still left one upon another at one end, which were sur mounted with barrels to eke them out ; and clean boiled beef bones and old shoes are strewn about. Otherwise it is a clean ruin, and nothing is left but a mound, as in the graveyard. 

Sium lineare, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom resembles the Cicuta maculata. The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes.

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1851

The song of the crickets fails not in its season, night or day. See August 20. 1858 (" the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady"); August 18, 1856 (" I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,")

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); and note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. See March 1, 1852 (" I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses"); January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it.");  August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.")

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers. See August 27, 1856 ("The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw.")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. Compare August 6, 1851 ("How often it happens that the traveller's principal distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a native! "); April 16, 1852 ("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs"); September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")

Winter sky

February 17. 

February 17, 2018

Perhaps the peculiarity of those western vistas was partly owing to the shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at 3 o'clock p. m., when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day, when I travelled, as it were, between the portals of the night, and the path was narrow as well as blocked with snow. Then, too, the sun has the last opportunity to fill the air with vapor.

I see on the Walden road that the wind through the wall is cutting through the drifts, leaving a portion adhering to the stones. 

It is hard for the traveller when, in a cold and blustering day, the sun and wind come from the same side. To-day the wind is northwest, or west by north, and the sun from the southwest. 

The apothecium of lichens appears to be a fungus, — all fruit. 

I saw Patrick Riordan carrying home an armful of fagots from the woods to his shanty, on his shoulder. How much more interesting an event is that man's supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, or perchance to steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat must be sweet. 

It was something to hear that the women of Waltham used the Parmelia saxatilis ( ?) in dyeing. 

If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science. Read Linnaeus at once, and come down from him as far as you please. I lost much time reading the florists. It is remarkable how little the mass of those  interested in botany are acquainted with Linnaeus. 

His "Philosophia Botanica," which Rousseau, Sprengel, and others praised so highly, — I doubt if it has ever been translated into English. It is simpler, more easy to understand, and more comprehensive, than any of the hundred manuals to which it has given birth. A few pages of cuts representing the different parts of plants, with the botanical names attached, is worth whole volumes of explanation. 

According to Linnaeus's classification, I come under the head of the Miscellaneous Botanophilists, — " Botanophili sunt, qui varia de vegetabilibus tradiderunt, licet ea non proprie de scientiam Botanicam spectant," — either one of the Biologi (Panegyrica plerumque exclamarunt) or Poetae.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 17, 1852

The peculiarity of those western vistas. See January 11, 1852 ("The glory of these afternoons, though the sky may be mostly overcast, is in the ineffably clear blue, or else pale greenish-yellow, patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never so elysian. Windows to heaven, the heavenward windows of the earth. “); January 17, 1852 (“In proportion as I have celestial thoughts, is the necessity for me to be out and behold the western sky sunset these winter days. . . .Those western vistas through clouds to the sky show the clearest heavens, clearer and more elysian than if the whole sky is comparatively free from clouds.”); February 10, 1852 (“We have none of those peculiar clear, vitreous, crystalline vistas in the western sky before sundown of late. There is perchance more moisture in the air. Perhaps that phenomenon does not belong to this part of the winter.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Western Sky

The apothecium of lichens appears to be a fungus, — all fruit. See March 5, 1852 ("The minute apothecium of the pertusaria, which the woodchopper never detected, occupies so large a space in my eye at present”)

The morning and the evening literally make the whole day. See December 11, 1854 (“The day is short; it seems to be composed of two twilights merely”)

A few pages of cuts representing the different parts of plants, with the botanical names attached, is worth whole volumes of explanation. See March 12, 1852 (“I have learned in a shorter time and more accurately the meaning of the scientific terms used in botany from a few plates of figures at the end of the “Philosophia Botanica,” with the names annexed , than a volume of explanations or glossaries could teach .”)

I come under the head of the miscellaneous botanophilists:(“Lovers of botany are those who have handed down various things about plants although they look at these things not exclusively concerning the knowledge of botany." ) [On Feb 3 Thoreau had checked out Linnaeus' Philosophia botanica by Carl von Linnaeus from Harvard Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).]

From year to year we look at Nature with new eyes.

December 4.

Ceased raining and mizzling last evening, and cleared off, with a high northwest wind, which shook the house, coming in fitful gusts, but only they who slept on the west sides of houses knew of it. 

December 4, 2017

7.30 a. m. — Take a run down the riverside. 

Scare up a few sparrows, which take shelter in Keyes's arborvitae row. The snow has now settled, owing to the rain, and presents no longer a level surface, but a succession of little hills and hollows, as if the whole earth had been a potato or corn field, and there is a slight crust to it. 

Dark waves are chasing each other across the river from northwest to southeast and breaking the edge of the snow ice which has formed for half a rod in width along the edge, and the fragments of broken ice, what arctic voyagers call "brash," carry forward the undulation. 

I am pleased to see from afar the highest water-mark of a spring freshet on Cheney's boat-house, a level light-colored mark about an inch wide running the whole length of the building, now several years old, where probably a thin ice chafed it. 

2 p. m. — By Clamshell and back over Hubbard's Bridge. 

I notice that the swallow-holes in the bank behind Dennis's, which is partly washed away, are flat-elliptical, three times or more as wide horizontally as they are deep vertically, or about three inches by one. 

Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white-barred bird, perched on a large and solitary white birch. So clean and tough, made to withstand the winter. This color reminds me of the upper side of the shrub oak leaf.

I love the few homely colors of Nature at this season, — her strong wholesome browns, her sober and primeval grays, her celestial blue, her vivacious green, her pure, cold, snowy white.

An F. hyemalis also. 

In the sprout-land by the road, in the woods this side of C. Miles's, much gray goldenrod is mixed with the shrub oak. It reminds me of the color of the rabbits which run there. Thus Nature feeds her children chiefly with color. 

I have no doubt that it is an important relief to the eyes which have long rested on snow, to rest on brown oak leaves and the bark of trees. We want the greatest variety within the smallest compass, and yet without glaring diversity, and we have it in the colors of the withered oak leaves. 

• The white, so curled and shrivelled and pale; 
• the black (?), more flat and glossy and darker brown;
•  the red, much like the black, but perhaps less dark, and less deeply cut. 
• The scarlet still occasionally retains some blood in its veins. 

Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark- blue artery any night. They remind me of a trap that is set for it, which the frost will spring. Each day at present, the wriggling river nibbles off the edges of the trap which have advanced in the night. It is a close contest between day and night, heat and cold.

Already you see the tracks of sleds leading by unusual routes, where will be seen no trace of them in summer, into far fields and woods, crowding aside and pressing down the snow to where some heavy log or stone has thought itself secure, and the spreading tracks also of the heavy, slow-paced oxen, of the well-shod farmer, who turns out his feet. Ere long, when the cold is stronger, these tracks will lead the walker deep into remote swamps impassable in summer. All the earth is a highway then. 

I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand miles this grain is scattered over the earth, under the feet of all walkers, in Boxboro and Cambridge alike! and rarely an eye distinguishes it.

Sophia says that just before I came home Min caught a mouse and was playing with it in the yard. It had got away from her once or twice, and she had caught it again; and now it was stealing off again, as she lay complacently watching it with her paws tucked under her, when her friend Riordan's stout but solitary cock stepped up inquisitively, looked down at it with one eye, turning his head, then picked it up by the tail and gave it two or three whacks on the ground, and giving it a dexterous toss into the air, caught it in its open mouth, and it went head foremost and alive down his capacious throat in the twinkling of an eye, never again to be seen in this world, Min, all the while, with paws comfortably tucked under her, looking on unconcerned. What matters it one mouse more or less to her? 

The cock walked off amid the currant bushes, stretched his neck up, and gulped once or twice, and the deed was accomplished, and then he crowed lustily in celebration of the exploit. It might be set down among the gesta (if not digesta) Gallorum. There were several human witnesses. It is a question whether Min ever understood where that mouse went to. Min sits composedly sentinel, with paws tucked under her, a good part of her days at present, by some ridiculous little hole, the possible entryway of a mouse. She has a habit of stretching or sharpening her claws on all smooth hair-bottomed chairs and sofas, greatly to my mother's vexation. 

He who abstains from visiting another for magnanimous reasons enjoys better society alone. 

I for one am not bound to flatter men. That is not exactly the value of me. 

How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow? The granary of the birds. They were not observed against the dark ground, but the first snow comes and reveals them. Then I come to fields in which the fragrant everlasting, straw-colored and almost odorless, and the dark taller St. John's-wort prevail. 

When I bought my boots yesterday, Hastings ran over his usual rigmarole. Had he any stout old-fashioned cowhide boots? Yes, he thought he could suit me. 

"There 's something that 'll turn water about as well as anything. Billings had a pair just like them the other [day], and he said they kept his feet as dry as a bone. But what 's more than that, they were made above a year ago upon honor. They are just the thing, you may depend on it. I had an eye to you when I was making them."

"But they are too soft and thin for me. I want them to be thick and stand out from my foot."

"Well, there is another pair, maybe a little thicker. I 'll tell you what it is, these were made of dry hide."

Both were warranted single leather and not split. I took the last. But after wearing them round this cold day I found that the little snow which rested on them and melted wet the upper leather through like paper and wet my feet, and I told H. of it, that he might have an offset to Billings's experience.

"Well, you can't expect a new pair of boots to turn water at first. I tell the farmers that the time to buy boots is at midsummer, or when they are hoeing their potatoes, and the pores have a chance to get filled with dirt."

It is remarkably good sleighing to-day, considering the little snow and the rain of yesterday, but it is slippery and hobbly for walkers. 

My first botany, as I remember, was Bigelow's "Plants of Boston and Vicinity," which I began to use about twenty years ago, looking chiefly for the popular names and the short references to the localities of plants, even without any regard to the plant. I also learned the names of many, but without using any system, and forgot them soon. I was not inclined to pluck flowers; preferred to leave them where they were, liked them best there. I was never in the least interested in plants in the house. 

But from year to year we look at Nature with new eyes. 

About half a dozen years ago I found myself again attending to plants with more method, looking out the name of each one and remembering it. I began to bring them home in my hat, a straw one with a scaffold lining to it, which I called my botany- box. I never used any other, and when some whom I visited were evidently surprised at its dilapidated look, as I deposited it on their front entry table, I assured them it was not so much my hat as my botany-box. 

I remember gazing with interest at the swamps about those days and wondering if I could ever attain to such familiarity with plants that I should know the species of every twig and leaf in them, that I should be acquainted with every plant (excepting grasses and cryptogamous ones), summer and winter, that I saw. Though I knew most of the flowers, and there were not in any particular swamp more than half a dozen shrubs that I did not know, yet these made it seem like a maze to me, of a thousand strange species, and I even thought of commencing at one end and looking it faithfully and laboriously through till I knew it all. I little thought that in a year or two I should have attained to that knowledge without all that labor. 

Still I never studied botany, and do not to-day systematically, the most natural system is still so artificial. 

I wanted to know my neighbors, if possible, — to get a little nearer to them. 

I soon found myself observing when plants first blossomed and leafed, and I followed it up early and late, far and near, several years in succession, running to different sides of the town and into the neighboring towns, often between twenty and thirty miles in a day. I often visited a particular plant four or five miles distant, half a dozen times within a fortnight, that I might know exactly when it opened, beside attending to a great many others in different directions and some of them equally distant, at the same time. At the same I had an eye for birds and whatever else might offer.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 4, 1856

Saw and heard cheep faintly one little tree sparrow, the neat chestnut crowned and winged and white- barred bird. See December 17, 1856 ("That feeble cheep of the tree sparrow, like the tinkling of an icicle, or the chafing of two hard shrub oak twigs, is probably a call to their mates, by which they keep together. These birds, when perched, look larger than usual this cold and windy day; they are puffed up for warmth, have added a porch to their doors.") See also  A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Tree Sparrow and December 11, 1855 ("The incredible phenomenon of small birds in winter. There is no question about the existence of these delicate creatures, their adaptedness to their circumstances.")

The tree sparrow comes

from the north in the winter

to get its dinner

January 16, 1860

I love the few homely colors of Nature at this season, — her strong wholesome browns, her sober and primeval grays, her celestial blue, her vivacious green, her pure, cold, snowy white. See December 21, 1855 ("A few simple colors now prevail.”); December 31, 1854 ("The shadows on the snow are indigo-blue. The pines look very dark. The white oak leaves are a cinnamon-color, the black and red oak leaves a reddish brown or leather-color.’) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Colors

An F. hyemalis also. See December 1, 1856 ("Slate-colored snowbirds flit before me in the path, feeding on the seeds on the snow, the countless little brown seeds that begin to be scattered over the snow, so much the more obvious to bird and beast."); December 3, 1854 ("Snowbirds in garden in the midst of the snow in the afternoon."); December 28, 1856 ("Am surprised to see the F. hyemalis here"); December 29, 1856 ("Do not the F. hyemalis, lingering yet, and the numerous tree sparrows foretell an open winter?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

How many thousand acres are there now of pitchered blue-curls and ragged wormwood rising above the shallow snow? The first snow comes and reveals them. See November 18, 1855 ("Now first mark the stubble and numerous withered weeds rising above the snow. They have suddenly acquired a new character."); November 30, 1856 (“Now see the empty chalices of the blue-curls and the rich brown-fruited pinweed above the crust.”); December 1, 1856 (“The blue-curls' chalices stand empty, and waiting evidently to be filled with ice.”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue-Curls

The granary of the birds. See March 14, 1855 (“I observe the tracks of sparrows leading to every little sprig of blue-curls amid the other weeds which (its seemingly empty pitchers) rises above the snow. There seems, however, to be a little seed left in them. This, then, is reason enough why these withered stems still stand, - that they may raise these granaries above the snow for the use of the snowbirds.”)

I began to bring them home in my hat, a straw one with a scaffold lining to it, which I called my botany-box. See June 23, 1852 ("I am inclined to think that my hat, whose lining is gathered in midway so as to make a shelf, is about as good a botany-box as I could have.”); September 7, 1852  ("We reach . . . Concord . . . four hours from the time we were picking blueberries on the mountain, with the plants of the mountain fresh in my hat.”).

From year to year we look at Nature with new eyes. See April 7, 1853 ("If you make the least correct observation of nature this year, you will have occasion to repeat it with illustrations the next, and the season and life itself is prolonged."); October 26, 1853 ("You only need to make a faithful record of an average summer day's experience and summer mood, and read it in the winter, and it will carry you back to more than that summer day alone could show. ")

I see where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales and winged seeds have been blown into the numerous hollows of the thin crusted snow. See December 4, 1854 ("Already the bird-like birch scales dot the snow.”); see also December 18, 1852 ("The crust of the slight snow covered in some woods with the scales (bird-shaped) of the birch, and their seeds.");   December 30, 1855 ("For a few days I have noticed the snow sprinkled with alder and birch scales. I go now through the birch meadow southwest of the Rock. The high wind is scattering them over the snow there.")

It is a question whether Min ever understood where that mouse went to. See June 2, 1856 ("Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat")

But they are too soft and thin for me. I want them to be thick and stand out from my foot. See December 3, 1856 ("Bought me a pair of cowhide boots, to be prepared for winter walks. The shoemaker praised them"); September 1, 1859 ("I have learned to respect my own opinion in this matter.")

December 4. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, December 4. 

Little tree sparrow

made to withstand the winter

perched on a white birch

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, From year to year we look at Nature with new eyes

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 ©  2009-2024

tinyurl.com/HDT561204

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers?

February 6

The artificial system has been very properly called the dictionary, and the natural method, the grammar, of the science of botany, by botanists themselves. But are we to have nothing but grammars and dictionaries in this literature? 

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? I asked a learned and accurate naturalist, who is at the same time the courteous guardian of a public library, to direct me to those works which contained the more particular popular account, or biography, of particular flowers, from which the botanies I had met with appeared to draw sparingly, - for I trusted that each flower had had many lovers and faithful describers in past times, but he informed me that I had read all; that no one was acquainted with them, they were only catalogued like his books. 

3 P. M. Round by C. Miles's place.

It is still thawy. A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing.

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens (parmelias?) on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly.  Methinks I would have lichens on some of my rails.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, February 6, 1852

Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? See February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.");  December 16, 1859 ("To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard's Herbal. His admirable though quaint descriptions are, to my mind, greatly superior to the modern more scientific ones. He describes not according to rule but to his natural delight in the plants. He brings them vividly before you, as one who has seen and delighted in them. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves."); September 22, 1860 (" I rarely read a sentence in a new botany which reminds me of flowers or living plants. The early botanists, like Gerard, were prompted and compelled to describe their plants, but most nowadays only measure them, as it were.The former is affected by what he sees and so inspired to portray it; the latter merely fills out a schedule prepared for him. . . very few indeed write as if they had seen the thing they pretend to describe.")

A mistiness makes the woods look denser, darker, and more imposing. See  November 29, 1850 ("The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen through the mist..."); April 22, 1852 ("The mist to-day makes those near distances which Gilpin tells of."); August 4, 1854 ("Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects."); January 11, 1855 ("the air so thick with snowflakes . . .Single pines stand out distinctly against it in the near horizon"); November 7, 1855 ("The view is contracted by the misty rain . . . I am compelled to look at near objects.");  December 16, 1855 ("The mist makes the near trees dark and noticeable"); February 7, 1856  ("During the rain the air is thick, the distant woods bluish, and the single trees on the hill, under the dull mist-covered sky, remarkably distinct and black."); September 20, 1857 ("The outlines of trees are more conspicuous and interesting such a day as this, being seen distinctly against the near misty background, – distinct and dark.");January 13, 1859 ("I can see about a quarter of a mile through the mist, and when, later, it is somewhat thinner, the woods, the pine woods, at a distance are a dark-blue color."); February 7, 1859 ("Evidently the distant woods are more blue in a warm and moist or misty day in winter.")

Near the C. Miles house there are some remarkably yellow lichens on the rails, -- ever as if the sun were about to shine forth clearly. See February 5, 1853 ("It is a lichen day. . . . All the world seems a great lichen and to grow like one to-day, - a sudden humid growth.”); February 7, 1859 ("Going along the Nut Meadow or Jimmy Miles road, when I see the sulphur lichens on the rails brightening with the moisture.")

February  6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, February 6

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I love you like I love the sky

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

Gerard's Herbal

September 22.

P. M. – To Clamshell by boat. 

Find more pieces of that Indian pot. Have now thirty- eight in all.

Evidently the recent rise of the river has caused the lower leaves of the button-bush to fall. A perfectly level line on these bushes marks the height to which the water rose, many or most of the leaves so high having fallen.

The clematis yesterday was but just beginning to be feathered, but its feathers make no show. Feathers out next day in house. 

See a large flock of crows. 

The sweet-gale fruit is yet quite green, but perhaps it is ripe. 

The button-bush balls are hardly reddened. 

Moreover the beach plum appears to prefer a sandy place, however far inland, and one of our patches grows on the only desert which we have.

I rarely read a sentence in a new botany which reminds me of flowers or living plants. The early botanists, like Gerard, were prompted and compelled to describe their plants, but most nowadays only measure them, as it were.

The former is affected by what he sees and so inspired to portray it; the latter merely fills out a schedule prepared for him. I am assisted by these books in identifying a particular plant and learning some of its humbler uses, but very few indeed write as if they had seen the thing they pretend to describe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 22, 1860

See a large flock of crows. See September 29, 1854 ("A large flock of crows wandering about and cawing as usual at this season.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the American Crow

I rarely read a sentence in a new botany which reminds me of flowers or living plants . . nowadays [botanists] only measure them, as it were. See February 6, 1852 ("Are there no works written in the language of the flowers? I asked a learned and accurate naturalist, who is at the same time the courteous guardian of a public library,  . . . for I trusted that each flower had had many lovers and faithful describers in past times, but he informed me that I had read all; that no one was acquainted with them, they were only catalogued like his books."); December 16, 1859 ("[Gerard] describes according to his natural delight in the plants. It is a man's knowledge added to a child's keen joy who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends.")

To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard's Herbal.

December 16.

His descriptions are greatly superior to the modern scientific ones. He describes according to his natural delight in the plants. It is a man's knowledge added to a child's keen joy who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends.

He brings them vividly before you. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves. His leaves are leaves; his flowers, flowers; his fruit, fruit. They are green and colored and fragrant. He has really seen, and smelt, and tasted, and reports his sensations.

How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, December 16, 1859


Dec. 16. A.M. — To Cambridge, where I read in Gerard's Herbal. His admirable though quaint de scriptions are, to my mind, greatly superior to the modern more scientific ones. He describes not accord ing to rule but to his natural delight in the plants. He brings them vividly before you, as one who has seen and delighted in them. It is almost as good as to see the plants themselves. It suggests that we can not too often get rid of the barren assumption that is in our science. His leaves are leaves; his flowers, flowers; his fruit, fruit. They are green and colored and fragrant. It is a man's knowledge added to a child's delight. Modern botanical descriptions approach ever nearer to the dryness of an algebraic formula, as if x + y were = to a love-letter. It is the keen joy and discrimination of the child who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends. How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in these conventional Latinisms! He has really seen, and smelt, and tasted, and reports his sensations.

Bought a book at Little & Brown's, paying a nine- pence more on a volume than it was offered me for elsewhere. The customer thus pays for the more elegant style of the store.

His leaves are leaves; his flowers, flowers; his fruit, fruit. . . . He has really seen, and smelt, and tasted, and reports his sensations. See September 4-7, 1851 (I feel that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can write.”); September 2, 1851 ("A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); January 27, 1857 ("The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report.")

It is the keen joy and discrimination of the child who has just seen a flower for the first time and comes running in with it to its friends.  See February 5, 1852 ("I suspect that the child plucks its first flower with an insight into its beauty and significance which the subsequent botanist never retains.")

December 16. See A Book of the Seasons, By Henry Thoreau, December 16 

Describe your object 

in fresh English words rather 

than Latinisms.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, I read in Gerard's Herbal

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 ©  2009-2024