With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

June 2. 

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. 

Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. 

P. M. —With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction.

Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. 

See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April. 

Returned by bridle-road. 

Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more.

English hawthorn will open apparently in two days.

Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat. 

5 P. M. —To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime.

Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? 

White maple keys conspicuous. 

In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton ” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “ Philosophical Transactions ” at five hundred feet distance.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 2, 1856

Perez Blood (1785  - 1856) was an amateur astronomer living in Concord near the Carlisle border. In 1847 HDT and Emerson looked through Blood’s 85 power telescope and saw "Saturn’s rings, and the mountains in the moon, and the shadows in their craters, and the sunlight on the spurs of the mountains in the dark portion . . ..”   On July 7, 1851 with Anthony Wright HDT looked through  Blood's telescope a second time, and concluded " I am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye.” See September 29, 1854 (“ When I look at the stars, nothing which the astronomers have said attaches to them . . . One might say that all views through a telescope or microscope were purely visionary, for it is only by his eye and not by any other sense —not by his whole man —that the beholder is there where he is presumed to be. It is a disruptive mode of viewing as far as the beholder is concerned.”)

Carum, i. e. caraway, in garden. See June 3, 1855 ("Caraway in garden apparently three days out.")
Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars . . . See March 13, 1854 ("Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. . . . Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark uses; fifty-odd dollars apiece.")

Ranunculus recurvatus [in prime] . . . See May 26, 1855 ("Ranunculus recurvatus at Corner Spring up several days at least; pollen.")

To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. See May 25, 1856 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden."); June 2, 1855 ("The Azalea nudiflora now in its prime"): May 29, 1855 ("Azalea nudiflora in garden");May 31, 1853 ("I am going in search of the Azalea nudiflora.")

White maple keys conspicuous. See June 6, 1855 ("The white maple keys are about half fallen.It is remarkable that this happens at the time the emperor moth (cecropia) comes out."); June 2, 1855 ("From that cocoon of the Attacus cecropiawhich I found. . . came out this forenoon a splendid moth. "); May 29, 1854 ("The white maple keys have begun to fall and float down the stream like the wings of great insects.”)

June 2. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 2

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Yellow butterflies in the damp road.

September 3.

September 3, 2023

Fair weather and a clear atmosphere after two days of mizzling, cloudy, and rainy weather and some smart showers at daylight and in the night. The street is washed hard and white. 

P. M. —- With Minot Pratt into Carlisle.

Woodbine berries purple. 

Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. 

Pratt showed me a tobacco flower, long and tubular, slightly like a datura. 

In the meadow southwest of Hubbard's Hill saw white Polygala sanguinea, not described.

Close to the left-hand side of bridle-road, about a hundred rods south of the oak, a bayberry bush without fruit, probably a male one. 

It made me realize that this was only a more distant and elevated sea-beach and that we were within reach of marine influences. My thoughts suffered a sea-turn.

North of the oak (four or five rods), on the left of the bridle-road in the pasture next to Mason’s, tried to find the white hardback still out, but it was too late. 

Found the mountain laurel out again, one flower, close sessile on end of this year’s shoot. There were numerous blossom-buds expanding, and they may possibly open this fall.

A white hardback out of bloom by a pile of stones (on which I put another) in Robbins’s field, and a little south of it a clump of red huckleberries.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 3, 1854

Even at this season I see some fleets of yellow butterflies in the damp road after the rain, as earlier. See July 26, 1854 ("Today I see in various parts of the town the yellow butterflies in fleets in the road, on bare damp sand, twenty or more collected within a diameter of five or six inches in many places . . . I do not know what attracts them thus to sit near together , like a fleet in a haven; why they collect in groups.") See also July 14, 1852 ("See to-day for the first time this season fleets of yellow butterflies in compact assembly in the road”); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed"); July 19, 1856 ("Fleets of yellow butterflies on road.");  October 18, 1856 (“I still see a yellow butterfly occasionally zigzagging by the roadside”); October 20, 1858 ("I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be perpetual.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Yellow Butterflies

September 3.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, September 3

Again see fleets of 

yellow butterflies in the 

damp road after rain.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Yellow butterflies in the damp road

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

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540903