As I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly.

May 1. 

Hear the ruby-crowned wren. 

We accuse savages of worshipping only the bad spirit, or devil, though they may distinguish both a good and a bad; but they regard only that one which they fear and worship the devil only. We too are savages in this, doing precisely the same thing. 

This occurred to me yesterday as I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly. 

We are not chiefly interested in birds and insects, for example, as they are ornamental to the earth and cheering to man, but we spare the lives of the former only on condition that they eat more grubs than they do cherries, and the only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” 

We too admit both a good and a bad spirit, but we worship chiefly the bad spirit, whom we fear. We do not think first of the good but of the harm things will do us. 

The catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, which of course is applicable mainly to God as seen in his works. Yet the only account of its beautiful insects — butterflies, etc. — which God has made and set before us which the State ever thinks of spending any money on is the account of those which are injurious to vegetation!

This is the way we glorify God and enjoy him forever. Come out here and behold a thousand painted butterflies and other beautiful insects which people the air, then go to the libraries and see what kind of prayer and glorification of God is there recorded. Massachusetts has published her report on "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," and our neighbor the "Noxious Insects of New York.” 

We have attended to the evil and said nothing about the good. This is looking a gift horse in the mouth with a vengeance.

Children are attracted by the beauty of butterflies, but their parents and legislators deem it an idle pursuit. The parents remind me of the devil, but the children of God. Though God may have pronounced his work good, we ask, "Is it not poisonous?” 

Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature.

P. M. — To Second Division. Very warm. 

Looking from Clamshell over Hosmer's meadow, about half covered with water, see hundreds of turtles, chiefly picta, now first lying out in numbers on the brown pieces of meadow which rise above the water. You see their black backs shine on these hummocks left by the ice, fifty to eighty rods off. They would rapidly tumble off if you went much nearer.

This heat and stillness draws them up. It is remarkable how surely they are advertised of the first warm and still days, and in an hour or two are sure to spread themselves over the hummocks. There is to-day a general resurrection of them, and there they bask in the sun. It is their sabbath. 

At this distance, if you are on the lookout, especially with a glass, you can discover what numbers of them there are, but they are shy and will drop into the water on a near approach. All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day. 

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind on a small scale, which carried up the oak leaves from that Island copse in the meadow. The oak leaves now hang thinly and are very dry and light, and these small whirlwinds, which seem to be occasioned by the sudden hot and calm weather (like whirlpools or dimples in a smooth stream), wrench them off, and up they go, somewhat spirally, in countless flocks like birds, with a rustling sound; and higher and higher into the clear blue deeps they rise above our heads, till they are fairly lost to sight, looking, when last seen, mere light specks against the blue, like stars by day, in fact. I could distinguish some, I have no doubt, five or six hundred feet high at least, but if I looked aside a moment they were lost. The largest oak leaves looked not bigger than a five-cent-piece. These were drifting eastward, — to descend where? Methought that, instead of decaying on the earth or being consumed by fire, these were being translated and would soon be taken in at the windows of heaven. I had never observed this phenomenon so remarkable.

The flight of the leaves. 

This was quite local, and it was comparatively still where we sat a few rods on one side. Thousands went up together in a rustling flock. Many of the last oak leaves hang thus ready to go up. 

I noticed two or more similar whirlwinds in the woods elsewhere this afternoon. One took up small twigs and clusters of leaves from the ground, matted together. I could easily see where it ran along with its nose (or point of its tunnel) close to the ground, stirring up the leaves as it travelled, like the snout of some hunting or rooting animal. 

See and hear chewink. 

See a little snake on the dry twigs and chips in the sun, near the arbutus, uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side. It is apparently Coluber amamus (?), except that it has the yellowish ring. 

Luzula campestris. Also the Oryzopsis Canadensis by the Major Heywood path-side, say a day, or April 30th, six inches high or more, with fine bristle-like leaves. 

See a thrasher.

What is that rush at Second Division? It now forms a dense and very conspicuous mass some four rods long and one foot high. The top for three inches is red, and the impression at a little distance is like that made by sorrel. Certainly no plant of this character exhibits such a growth now, i. e. in the mass. It surprises you to see it, carries your thoughts on to June. 

The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1859



The only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” See April 6, 1857 ("To New Bedford Library. . . Take out Emmons’s Report on the insects injurious to vegetation in New York.

See a plate of the Colias Philodice, or common sulphur-yellow butterfly, male and female of different tinge.”)

It is a turtle day.  See August 28, 1856 ("Has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Painted Turtle

A little snake uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side.  Probably the ring-neck snake (Coluber punctatus) -- slate gray, black or brown back with complete yellow ring just behind the head, bright yellow or rarely orange belly and occasionally small black spots. Snakes of Massachusetts ringneck snake. Compare HDT’s other "Coluber amaenus” snakes, conforming generally to the redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata):  October 11, 1856 (“It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long . . . It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back.”); September 9, 1857 ("It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus”); April 29, 1858 (“A little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?”)  

The genus Storeria consists of five species, four of which are known as brown snakes, and the other of which is known as the redbelly snake. Most Storeria are a variant of brown in color. They sometimes have a lighter-colored stripe down the center of the back, and small black blotches along the body, and just behind the head. The underside is usually lighter brown-colored, yellow, or in the case of the redbelly snake, reddish in color. They rarely grow beyond 13 inches.

The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered. CLIMBING FERN, or Hartford Fern (Lygodium palmatum) . A species of fern found, rarely, from Massachusetts to Kentucky and southward, remarkable for climbing or twining around weeds and shrubs ~ Wikisource. See 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.”); November 30, 1851 (“The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods”)

I sat in the woods

admiring the beauty of

the blue butterfly. 

The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent.

August 6. 

P. M. —— Walk to Boulder Field. 

The broom is quite out of bloom; probably a week or ten days. It is almost ripe, indeed. I should like to see how rapidly it spreads. The dense roundish masses, side by side, are three or four feet over and fifteen inches high. They have grown from near the ground this year. The whole clump is now about eighteen feet from north to south by twelve wide. 

Within a foot or two of its edge, I detect many slender little plants springing up in the grass, only three inches high, but, on digging, am surprised to find that they are two years old. They have large roots, running down straight as well as branching, much stouter than the part above ground. Thus it appears to spread slowly by the seed falling from its edge, for I detected no runners. 

It is associated there with indigo, which is still abundantly in bloom. 

I then looked for the little groves of barberries which some two months ago I saw in the cow-dung thereabouts, but to my surprise I found some only in one spot after a long search. They appear to have generally died, perhaps dried up. These few were some two inches high; the roots yet longer, having penetrated to the soil beneath. Thus, no doubt, some of those barberry clumps are formed; but I noticed many more small barberry plants standing single, most commonly protected by a rock. 

Cut a couple of those low scrub apple bushes, and found that those a foot high and as wide as high, being clipped by the cows, as a hedge with shears, were about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty.

If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast. 

Emerson is gone to the Adirondack country with a hunting party. Eddy says he has carried a double-barrelled gun, one side for shot, the other for ball, for Lowell killed a bear there last year. But the story on the Mill-Dam is that he has taken a gun which throws shot from one end and ball from the other! 

I think that I speak impartially when I say that I have never met with a stream so suitable for boating and botanizing as the Concord, and fortunately nobody knows it. I know of reaches which a single country seat would spoil beyond remedy, but there has not been any important change here since I can remember. The willows slumber along its shore, piled in light but low masses, even like the cumuli clouds above. 

We pass haymakers in every meadow, who may think that we are idlers. But Nature takes care that every nook and crevice is explored by some one. While they look after the open meadows, we farm the tract between the river’s brinks and behold the shores from that side. We, too, are harvesting an annual crop with our eyes, and think you Nature is not glad to display her beauty to us? 

Early in the day we see the dewdrops thickly sprinkled over the broad leaves of the potamogeton. These cover the stream so densely in some places that a web footed bird can almost walk across on them. 

Nowadays we hear the squealing notes of young hawks. 

The kingfisher is seen hovering steadily over one spot, or hurrying away with a small fish in his mouth, sounding his alarum nevertheless. 

The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent. 

This is pure summer; no signs of fall in this, though I have seen some maples, as above the Assabet Spring, already prematurely reddening, owing to the water, and for some time the Cornus sericea has looked brownish red. 

Every board and chip cast into the river is soon occupied by one or more turtles of various sizes. The sternothaerus oftenest climbs up the black willows, even three or more feet.

I hear of pickers ordered out of the huckleberry-fields, and I see stakes set up with written notices forbidding any to pick there. Some let their fields, or allow so much for,the picking. Sic transit gloria ruris.

We are not grateful enough that we have lived part of our lives before these evil days came. What becomes of the true value of country life? What if you must go to market for it? Shall things come to such a pass that the butcher commonly brings round huckleberries in his cart? It is as if the hangman were to perform the marriage ceremony, or were to preside at the communion table. 

Such is the inevitable tendency of our civilization, — to reduce huckleberries to a level with beef-steak. The butcher’s item on the door is now “calf’s head and huckleberries.” 

I suspect that the inhabitants of England and of the Continent of Europe have thus lost their natural rights with the increase of population and of monopolies. The wild fruits of the earth disappear before civilization, or are only to be found in large markets. The whole country becomes, as it were, a town or beaten common, and the fruits left are a few hips and haws.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 6, 1858

If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius,... See August 2, 1856  ("This antediluvian bird, creature of the night, is a fit emblem of a dead stream like this Musketicook. This especially is the bird of the river. There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream, — its slowly lapsing flight, even like the rills of Musketicook and my own pulse sometimes.")

We pass haymakers in every meadow. We, too, are harvesting an annual crop with our eyes, and think you Nature is not glad to display her beauty to us? See July 30, 1856 ("I saw haymakers at work dressed simply in a straw hat, boots, shirt, and pantaloons, the shirt worn like a frock over their pants. The laborer cannot endure the contact with his clothes."); August 3, 1859 ("The haymakers are quite busy on the Great Meadows, it being drier than usual. It being remote from public view, some of them work in their shirts or half naked. "); August 5, 1854 ("I find that we are now in the midst of the meadow-haying season, and almost every meadow or section of a meadow has its band of half a dozen mowers and rakers, either bending to their manly work with regular and graceful motion.")

They appear to have generally died, perhaps dried up. See June 28, 1858 ("I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows."); May 29, 1858 ("I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the barberry, then.")

The note of the wood pewee is now more prominent, while birds generally are silent. See August 9, 1856 ("The notes of the wood pewee and warbling vireo are more prominent of late, and of the goldfinch twittering over"); August 18, 1860 ("The note of the wood pewee sounds prominent of late.”)

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

 

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 

And so, many a fisherman is not seen on the shore who the last spring did not fail here.

March 28

8.30 A. M. — Up river to Fair Haven by boat. 

A pleasant morning; the song of the earliest birds, i.e. tree sparrows, (now decidedly) and song sparrows and bluebirds, in the air. A red-Wing’s gurgle from a willow. 

The Emys picta, now pretty numerous, when young and fresh, with smooth black scales without moss or other imperfection, unworn, and with claws perfectly sharp, is very handsome. When the scales are of this clear, though dull, black, the six middle ones, counting from side to side, are edged forward with broad dull greenish-yellow borders, the others with a narrow whitish border, and the singular vermilion and yellow marks of the marginal scales extend often on to the lateral scales. The concentric lines of growth are in distinguishable. The fore and hind legs and tail are slashed or streaked horizontally with broad clear vermilion and also a fine yellow line or two, answering to those on the hinge scales continued, showing the tenant to be one with the house he occupies. Beneath it is a clear buff.

He who painted the tortoise thus, what were his designs?  

At Lee’s Cliff and this side, I see half a dozen buff edged butterflies (Vanessa Antiopa) and pick up three dead or dying, two together, the edges of their wings gone. Several are fluttering over the dry rock débris under the cliff, in whose crevices probably they have -wintered. Two of the three I pick up are not dead, though they will not fly. Verily their day is a short one. What has checked their frail life? Within, the buff edge is black with bright sky-blue spots, and the main part within is a purplish brown. Those little oblong spots on the black ground are light as you look directly down on them, but from one side they vary through violet to a crystalline rose-purple.

I can remember now some thirty years — after a fashion — of life in Concord, and every spring there are many dead suckers floating belly upward on the meadows. This phenomenon of dead suckers is as constant as the phenomenon of living ones; nay, as a phenomenon it is far more apparent. 

Farmer thinks pickerel may have been frozen through half a day and yet come to. Instances pickerel he caught a very cold day on Bateman’s Pond, which he brought home frozen and put in a pail of water in his cellar and after found them alive. 

A Mr. Parkhurst of Carlisle assures him that though minnows put into a half-hogshead of water will die in forty-eight hours unless you change the water, if you put with it a piece of granite a foot square they will live all winter, and that he keeps his minnows in this way. 

A pleasing sight this of the earlier painted tortoises which are seen along the edge of the flooded meadows, often three or four suddenly dimpling the smooth surface of a ditch, which had been sunning on a tussock, sluggish moving flakes of clear black. Soon they rise again and put their heads out warily, looking about and showing the yellow stripes on their necks. They seem to feel the very jar of the ground as you approach. They rest with their shells at an angle in the water, their heads out and their feet outstretched, or partly bury themselves in the grassy bottom. Often hindered by the bushes, between which their shells are caught. Poking their heads through, they are impeded by their shells. The very earliest I see moving along the bottom on the meadows, but soon after they begin to lie out in the sun on the banks and tussocks as I have mentioned. 

The Emys guttata is found in brooks and ditches. I passed three to-day, lying cunningly quite motionless, with heads and feet drawn in, on the bank of a little grassy ditch, close to a stump, in the sun, on the russet flattened grass, like snails, or rather scales, under which some insects might lurk, with their high-arched backs. When out of water they are the less exposed to observation by their shells drying and their spots being dimmed. 

Do I ever see a yellow-spot turtle in the river? Do I ever see a wood tortoise in the South Branch? 

There is consolation in the fact that a particular evil, which perhaps we suffer, is of a venerable antiquity, for it proves its necessity and that it is part of the order, not disorder, of the universe. When I realize that the mortality of suckers in the spring is as old a phenomenon, perchance, as the race of suckers itself, I contemplate it with serenity and joy even, as one of the signs of spring. Thus they have fallen on fate. And so, many a fisherman is not seen on the shore who the last spring did not fail here. 

Flood tells me to-day that he finds no frost to trouble him in Monroe’s garden. He can put his spade or fork in anywhere. 

Chestnut, evidently because it is packed as in a little chest. 

The maple sap has been flowing well for two or three weeks. 

When I witness the first plowing and planting, I acquire a long-lost confidence in the earth, —that it will nourish the seed that is committed to its bosom. I am surprised to be reminded that there is warmth in it. We have not only warmer skies, then, but a warmer earth. The frost is out of it, and we may safely commit these seeds to it in some places. Yesterday I walked with Farmer beside his team and saw one furrow turned quite round his field. What noble work is plowing, with the broad and solid earth for material, the ox for fellow-laborer, and the simple but efficient plow for tool! Work that is not done in any shop, in a cramped position, work that tells, that concerns all men, which the sun shines and the rain falls on, and the birds sing over! You turn over the whole vegetable mould, expose how , many grubs, and put a new aspect on the face of the earth. It comes pretty near to making a world. Redeeming a swamp does, at any rate. A good plowman is a terrae filius. The plowman, we all know, whistles as he drives his team afield. 

The broad buff edge of the Vanessa Antiopa’s wings harmonizes with the russet ground it flutters over, and as it stands concealed in the winter, with its wings folded above its back, in a cleft in the rocks, the gray brown under side of its wings prevents its being distinguished from the rocks themselves. 

Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed, for then I am not confused, only the most significant facts surviving in my memory. Indeed, all that continues to interest me after such a lapse of time is sure to be pertinent, and I may safely record all that I remember. 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 28, 1857

Farmer thinks pickerel may have been frozen through half a day and yet come to. See March 20, 1857("When I began to tell him of my experiment on a frozen fish, he said that Pallas had shown that fishes were frozen and thawed again, but I affirmed the contrary, and then Agassiz agreed with me. "); January 4, 1856 ("[T]hinking of what I had heard about fishes coming to life again after being frozen, on being put into water, I thought I would try it. . . . ")

The mortality of suckers in the spring.  See March 27,1858 ("I saw on the 22d a sucker which apparently had been dead a week or two at least. Therefore they must begin to die late in the winter."); March 20, 1857 ("[the phenomenon I speak of, which last is confined to the very earliest spring or winter."); March 19, 1857 ("I observed yesterday a dead shiner by the riverside, and to-day the first sucker."); April 14, 1856 ("I see the first dead sucker"); April 10, 1855("Saw a tolerably fresh sucker floating."); May 23, 1854 ("How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river!")

At Lee's Cliff and this side, I see half a dozen buff-edged butterflies (Vanessa Antiopa) See March 28, 1858("I start up two Vanessa Antiopa, which flutter about over the dry leaves before, and are evidently attracted toward me, settling at last within a few feet. The same warm and placid day calls out men and butterflies."); see als0 March 21, 1853 ("On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I am surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, . . .Saw two more of those large black and buff butterflies. The same degree of heat brings them out everywhere.");April 2, 1856 ("A large buff-edged butterfly flutters by along the edge of the Cliff, — Vanessa antiopa. Though so little of the earth is bared, this frail creature has been warmed to life again."):; April 9, 1853 ("You see the buff-edged . . . in warm, sunny southern exposures on the edge of woods or sides of rocky hills and cliffs, above dry leaves and twigs, where the wood has been lately cut and there are many dry leaves and twigs about."); April 11, 1853: ("See my first Vanessa Antiopa."); April 17, 1860.(" Dr. Harris says that that early black-winged, buff-edged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa, and is introduced from Europe, and is sometimes found in this state alive in winter.") and A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Buff-edged Butterfly

Often I can give the truest and most interesting account of any adventure I have had after years have elapsed,. . ., and I may safely record all that I remember. See March 27, 1857 ("The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory."). See also July 23, 1851 ("Put an interval between the impression and the expression, - wait till the seed germinates naturally.”); May 5, 1852 ("I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some distance, but enough of freshness."); January 10, 1854 ("What you can recall of a walk on the second day will differ from what you remember on the first day, ... as any view changes to one who is journeying amid mountains when he has increased the distance."); April 20, 1854 ("I find some advantage in describing the experience of a day on the day following.”).