The vertebrae and talons of a partridge in the dry excrement of a fox, left on a rock.

June 11 

Saturday. Another fog this morning. 

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. 

On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs. 

The black willow, having shed its fuzzy seeds and expanded its foliage, now begins to be handsome, so light and graceful. 

The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds. They are greenest when only the blade is seen. 

In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood. 

Probably blackbirds were never less numerous along our river than in these years. They do not depend on the clearing of the woods and the cultivation of or chards, etc. Streams and meadows, in which they delight, always existed. Most of the towns, soon after they were settled, were obliged to set a price upon their heads. In 1672, according to the town records of Concord, instruction was given to the selectmen, "That incorigment be given for the destroying of blackbirds and jaies." (Shattuck, page 45.) 

Murder will out. I find, in the dry excrement of a fox left on a rock, the vertebrae and talons of a partridge (?) which he has consumed. They are memoires pour servir. 

I remember Helen's telling me that John Marston of Taunton told her that he was on board a vessel during the Revolution, which met another vessel, — and, as I think, one hailed the other, — and a French name being given could not be understood, whereupon a sailor, probably aboard his vessel, ran out on the bowsprit and shouted "La Sensible,"  and that sailor's name was Thoreau. 

["La Sensible," was] the vessel in which John Adams was being brought back from or carried out to France. My father has an idea that he stood on the wharf and cried this to the bystanders.] 

My father tells me that, when the war came on, my grandfather, being thrown out of business and being a young man, went a-privateering. I find from his Diary that John Adams set sail from Port Louis at L'Orient in the French frigate Sensible, Captain Chavagnes, June 17th, 1779, the Bonhomme Richard, Captain Jones, and four other vessels being in company at first, and the Sensible arrived at Boston the 2d of August. 

On the 13th of November following, he set out for France again in the same frigate from Boston, and he says that a few days before the 24th, being at the last date "on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland," "we spoke an American privateer, the General Lincoln, Captain Barnes." If the above-mentioned incident occurred at sea, it was probably on this occasion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1853

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. At dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.  See June 7, 1858 "Mosquitoes quite troublesome here."); June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome."); June 16, 1852 ("The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening"). See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .")


A partridge which he has consumed.  See January 27, 1855 ("What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning!”); January 1, 1856 (“In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.”); June 25, 1860 ("What an unfailing supply of small game it secures that its excrement should be so generally of fur! ")

The French frigate Sensible sailed from L'Orient, France to Boston, Ma between June 17-August 2, 1779, carrying John Adams and his son, and also the french minister to the U.S., Chevalier Anne-Cesar de La Luzerne. See John Adams Journals.  The ship sailed from Boston, MA destination France on November 14, 1779, but a storm damaged the hull and she ended up in Ferrol, Spain on December 8, 1779. John Adams and two suns were traveling with it.  see link.  From Adam's diary:

November 24 1779

We were on the Grand Bank of Newfound Land, and about this time, We spoke with an American Privateer, The General Lincoln Captain Barnes. He came on board and our Captain supplied him with some Wood and other Articles he wanted. 

Jean Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey, April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General Lincoln, November, 1779

Old growth blueberry bushes.

February 8.

 P. M. — To Walden and Goose Pond. 

The ground is so completely bare this winter, and therefore the leaves in the woods so dry, that on the 5th there was a fire in the woods by Walden (Wheeler’s), and two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. 

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick, or even a little less, and it has not been thicker. You can almost drive an axe through it at one blow. In many places about the shore it is open a dozen feet wide, as when it begins to break up in the spring. 

I observe, as usual, the shore heaved up near where my house was. It is evidently the result of its thawing. It is lifted up with an abrupt, nearly perpendicular edge nearly a foot high (but looks as if it had been crowded up by the ice), while the part under water probably has not been frozen, or has not been thawed. But in the water close to the shore I observe singular dimples in the sand, sometimes perfectly circular tunnels, etc., as if a stone had been turned round and round and then lifted out. Perhaps this ridge thus lifted up remains somewhat loose through the summer, not falling entirely back, and the next winter, therefore, freezes yet deeper and is heaved up yet higher, and so gains a little from year to year. Thus a pond may create a barrier for itself along an adjacent meadow. When it thus lifts up the shore, it lifts the trees with it, and they are upset.

 At Little Goose Pond, where I am surprised to find the ice no thicker than at Walden, I raked in the middle and brought up the branches of white pines two inches thick, but perfectly sound, four rods or more from the shore. The wood has been cut about seventeen years on one side, and at least twelve or fourteen on the other, pines that formerly fell into the pond. They would long since decayed on land.

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. I see many which have thirty rings of annual growth. These grow quite on the edge, where they have escaped being cut with the wood, and have all the appearance of age, gray and covered with lichens, commonly crooked, zigzag, and intertwisted with their neighbors,— so that when you have cut one off it is hard to extract it, —and bending over nearly to the ice, with lusty young shoots running up straight by their sides. I cut one, which measured eight and a half inches in circumference at the butt, and I counted pretty accurately forty-two rings. From another I cut a straight and sound club, four feet long and six and a half inches in circumference at the small end. It is a heavy and close-grained wood. 

This is the largest of the Vaccinieoa which grows here, or is described in Gray’s Botany. Some may have borne fruit before I was born, or forty and odd years ago. Older than my cultivated fruit trees. Nobody could tell me what kind of wood it was. 

The biggest panicled andromeda that I saw thereabouts was only a little more than an inch in diameter and apparently not half as old. It has a much more yellow wood, with a twist to its grain. 

Mrs. Monroe says that her mother respected my grandfather very much, because he was a religious man. She remembers his calling one day and inquiring where blue vervain grew, which he wanted, to make a syrup for his cough, and she, a girl, happening to know, ran and gathered some.

H. D. Thoreu, Journal, February 8, 1858

The ground is so completely bare this winter.  See February 8, 1857 ("The snow is gone off very rapidly in the night, and much of the earth is bare, and the ground partially thawed. ")

Two or three-acres were burned over, set probably by the engine. Such a burning as commonly occurs in the spring. See April 4, 1856 ("Already I hear of a small fire in the woods in Emerson’s lot, set by the engine, the leaves that are bare are so dry.")

The ice which J. Brown is now getting for his ice house from S. Barrett’s is from eight to nine plus inches thick, but I am surprised to find that Walden ice is only six inches thick. See January 27, 1854 ("Cut this afternoon a cake of ice out of Walden and brought it home in a pail, another from the river, and got a third, a piece of last year's ice from Sam Barrett's Pond, at Brown's ice-house, and placed them side by side . . .”); January 23, 1856 ("Brown is filling his ice-house. The clear ice is only from one and a half to four inches thick; all the rest, or nearly a foot, is snow ice, ")

I walked about Goose Pond, looking for the large blueberry bushes. See December 27, 1857 ("I cut a blueberry bush this afternoon, a venerable looking one bending over Goose Pond, . . . some of those old gray blueberry bushes which overhang the pond-holes have attained half the age of man.")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, February 8

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 ©  2009-2023