I think I see how this tree is propagated.

July 9. 

July 9, 2017

Could see no yellow wasps about the nest over my window at 6 a. m., but did just before 6.30.  I hear of still a second nest at Mrs. Brown's and one at Julius Smith's. 

Another Attacus Promethea, a male from the same young black birch, was out and on the window this morning. Q. v. I dipped the body into alcohol before it had fairly spread its wings, but so discolored it, i. e. the white line with dots on the side of the abdomen. 

I see that the seeds of the Salix nigra gathered on the catkins on the 7th, or two days since, put in tumblers of water in my window, have already germinated ! and show those two little roundish green leaves. 

P. M. — Up Assabet with Sophia. 

There is now but little black willow down left on the trees. They will be handsomest somewhat later than this, when there is no down on them, and the new growth has more invested the stems. 

I think I see how this tree is propagated by its seeds. Its countless minute brown seeds, just perceptible to the naked eye in the midst of their cotton, are wafted with the cotton to the water, — most abundantly about a fortnight ago, — and there they drift and form a thick white scum together with other matter, especially against some alder or other fallen or drooping shrub where there is less current than usual. There, within two or three days, a great many germinate and show their two little roundish leaves, more or less tingeing with green the surface of the scum, — somewhat like grass seed in a tumbler of cotton. 

Many of these are drifted in amid the button-bushes, willows, and other shrubs, and the sedge, along the riverside, and the water falling just at this time, when they have put forth little fibres, they are deposited on the mud just left bare in the shade, and thus probably a great many of them have a chance to become perfect plants. But if they do not drift into sufficiently shallow water and are not left on the mud just at the right time, probably they perish. 

The mud in many such places is now green with them, though perhaps the seed has often blown directly through the air to such places. 

I am surprised to see dense groves of young maples an inch or more high from seed of this year. They have sprung in pure sand, where the seed has been drifted and moisture enough supplied at the water's edge. The seed (now effete) commonly lies on the surface, having sent down its rootlet into the sand. 

I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year, nor at Conantum. 

Am surprised to find how much carburetted hydrogen gas there is in the beds of sawdust by the side of this stream, as at the "Narrows." If I thrust in my paddle and give it a twist, great bubbles two inches or more in diameter rush up with great force and sound, lifting the water an inch or two, as if it were violently boiling, and filling the air with that strong gunpowder scent. 

The bubbles, being lighter than atmospheric air, burst at once, and give me no opportunity to see myself in them, as those which the boat makes in sluggish water.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 9, 1857

See no yellow wasps about the nest over my window. . . See June 28, 1857 ("under the peak of our roof, just over my chamber windows.”)

Another Attacus Promethea, a male from the same young black birch, was out and on the window. See  July 5, 1857 ("There came out this morning, apparently from one of those hard stem-wound cocoons on a black birch in my window, a moth whose wings are spread four and a quarter inches")

I think I see how this tree is propagated by its seeds. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

I see no flowers on the bass trees by this river this year . . . See. July 3, 1853 (" There are no flowers on bass trees commonly this year") and note to July 17, 1856 ("Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood

The beds of sawdust by the side of the stream. . . . See  April 12, 1852 ("The lines of sawdust left at different levels on the shore is just hint enough of a sawmill on the stream above. “); April 1, 1854 ("The lines of sawdust from Barrett's mill at different heights on the steep, wet bank under the hemlocks rather enhance the impression of freshness and wild-ness, as if it were a new country.”); April 19, 1854 ("Yesterday, as I was returning down the Assabet, . . . I was surprised to find the river so full of sawdust from the pail-factory and Barrett's mill that I could not easily distinguish if the stone-heaps had been repaired. There was not a square three inches clear. And I saw the sawdust deposited by an eddy in one place on the bottom like a sand-bank a foot or more deep half a mile below the mill.”);  October 20, 1856 (“ at Hemlocks, in the eddy there, where the white bits of sawdust keep boiling up and down and whirling round as in a pot.”):  April 1, 1858 ("It is remarkable that the river seems rarely to rise or fall gradually, but rather by fits and starts, and hence the water-lines, as indicated now by the sawdust, are very distinct parallel lines four or five or more inches apart.”);  April 1, 1859 ("The river being so low, we see lines of sawdust perfectly level and parallel to one another on the side of the steep dark bank at the Hemlocks. . .”);  July 7, 1859 ("Bathing at Barrett's Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand.”)

The bubbles, being lighter than atmospheric air, burst at once . . .  See  July 14, 1857 ("Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the sawdust shoal with matches, and heard it flash. “);  Compare June 3, 1854 (“On the pond we make bubbles with our paddles on the smooth surface, in which little hemispherical cases we see ourselves and boat, small, black and distinct, with a fainter reflection on the opposite side of the bubble (head to head). These last sometimes a minute before they burst.”); September 14, 1854("Now our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst.”); June 7, 1857 (“Now I notice many bubbles left on the water in my wake, as if it were more sluggish or had more viscidity than earlier. Far behind me they rest without bursting.”)

July 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 9



I take a chainsaw into the woods and cut logs that have fallen across the trail. One is a leaner and my saw gets stuck. i leave it hanging, walk back for a hand saw take the chain saw apart then free the chain. The saw does not want to fit back together. Maybe because it is hot. I clear a dozen or so logs and also limb the large beech that fell across the stream in Little Valley. A productive afternoon. At sunset at the view we see ravens soaring in front of us then directly overhead. First one, then two, then four!

In the sunset sky
ravens float on wind and wing
playing in the air.

zphx 20170709

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

The pond is like a weight wound up.

February 28.

P. M. —To Nut Meadow. 

How various are the talents of men! From the brook in which one lover of nature has never during all his lifetime detected anything larger than a minnow, an other extracts a trout that weighs three pounds, or an otter four feet long. How much more game he will see who carries a gun, i. e. who goes to see it! Though you roam the woods all your days, you never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. 

I go on the crust which we have had since the 13th, i. e. on the solid frozen snow, which settles very gradually in the sun, across the fields and brooks. 

The very beginning of the river’s breaking up appears to be the oozing of water through cracks in the thinnest places, and standing in shallow puddles there on the ice, which freeze solid at night. The river and brooks are quite shrunken. The brooks flow far under the hollow ice and snow-crust a foot thick, which here and there has fallen in, showing the shrunken stream far below. The surface of the snow melts into a regular waved form, like raised scales. 

Miles is repairing the damage done at his new mill by the dam giving way. He is shovelling out the flume, which was half filled with sand, standing in the water. His sawmill, built of slabs, reminds me of a new country. He has lost a head of water equal to two feet by this accident. Yet he sets his mill agoing to show me how it works. 

What a smell as of gun-wash when he raised the gate! He calls it the sulphur from the pond. It must be the carburetted hydrogen gas from the bottom of the pond under the ice. It powerfully scents the whole mill. A powerful smelling-bottle.

How pleasant are the surroundings of a mill! Here are the logs (pail stuff), already drawn to the door from a neighboring hill before the mill is in operation. The dammed-up meadow, the melted snow, and welling springs are the serf he compels to do his work. He is unruly as yet, has lately broken loose, filled up the flume, and flooded the fields below. He uses the dam of an old mill which stood here a hundred years ago, which now nobody knows anything about. The mill is built of slabs, of the worm-eaten sap-wood. The old dam had probably been undermined by muskrats. It would have been most prudent to have built a new one. Rude forces, rude men, and rude appliances.   

That strong gun-wash scent from the mill-pond water was very encouraging. I who never partake of the sacrament make the more of it. 

How simple the machinery of the mill! Miles has dammed a stream, raised a pond or head of water, and placed an old horizontal mill-wheel in position to receive a jet of water on its buckets, transferred the motion to a horizontal shaft and saw by a few cog wheels and simple gearing, and, throwing a roof of slabs over all, at the outlet of the pond, you have a mill. 

A weight of water stored up in a meadow, applied to move a saw, which scratches its way through the trees placed before it. So simple is a sawmill. A millwright comes and builds a dam across the foot of the meadow, and a mill-pond is created, in which, at length, fishes of various kinds are found; and muskrats and minks and otter frequent it. The pond is like a weight wound up.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  February 28, 1856

You never will see by chance what he sees who goes on purpose to see it. ... Compare:

August 5, 1851 ("The question is not what you look at, but what you see.”);

August 21, 1851 ("You must walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisitive, not bent upon seeing things")
November 18 1851 ("The chopper who works in the woods all day is more open in some respects to the impressions they are fitted to make than the naturalist who goes to see them. He really forgets himself, forgets to observe, and at night he dreams of the swamp, its phenomena and events. Not so the naturalist; enough of his unconscious life does not pass there. A man can hardly be said to be there if he knows that he is there, or to go there if he knows where he is going. The man who is bent upon his work is frequently in the best attitude to observe what is irrelevant to his work.");

September 13, 1852 ("I must walk more with free senses. I must let my senses wander as my thoughts, my eyes see without looking. Carlyle said that how to observe was to look, but I say that it is rather to see, and the more you look the less you will observe. Be not preoccupied with looking. Go not to the object; let it come to you. What I need is not to look at all, but a true sauntering of the eye.”);

March 23, 1853 ("Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye.”);

June 14, 1853 (". . . you are in that favorable frame of mind described by De Quincey, open to great impressions, and you see those rare sights with the unconscious side of the eye, which you could not see by a direct gaze before.”);

December 11, 1855 ("I saw this familiar fact at a different angle. It is only necessary to behold thus the least fact or phenomenon, however familiar, from a point a hair’s breadth aside from our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by its beauty and significance. To perceive freshly, with fresh senses, is to be inspired.”);

Apirl 8, 1856 (" Most countrymen might paddle five miles along the river now and not see one muskrat, while a sportsman a quarter of a mile before or behind would be shooting one or more every five minutes.");

April 13, 1860 (“It distinctly occurred to me that, perhaps, if I came against my will, as it were, to look at the sweet-gale as a matter of business, I might discover something else interesting.”)