The pecuniary value of the book.

November 28

Monday. 

Saw boys skating in Cambridgeport, — the first ice to bear. 

Settled with J. Munroe & Co., and on a new account placed twelve of my books with him on sale. I have paid him directly out of pocket since the book was published two hundred and ninety dollars and taken his receipt for it. This does not include postage on proof-sheets, etc., etc. I have received from other quarters about fifteen dollars. This has been the pecuniary value of the book. 

Saw at the Natural History rooms the skeleton of a moose with horns. The length of the spinal processes (?) over the shoulder was very great. The hind legs were longer than the front, and the horns rose about two feet above the shoulders and spread between four and five, I judged. 

Dr. Harris described to me his finding a species of cicindela at the White Mountains this fall (the same he had found there one specimen of some time ago), supposed to be very rare, found at St. Peter's River and at Lake Superior; but he proves it to be common near the White Mountains.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 28, 1853

Boys skating in Cambridgeport, — the first ice to bear See December 6, 1854 ("I see thick ice and boys skating all the way to Providence, but know not when it froze, I have been so busy writing my lecture."); December 14. 1851 ("The boys have been skating for a week, but I have had no time to skate for surveying. I have hardly realized that there was ice, though I have walked over it about this business."); December 15, 1855 ("The boys have skated a little within two or three days, but it has not been thick enough to bear a man yet.")

I have paid him directly out of pocket since the book was published two hundred and ninety dollars. See November 20, 1853 (“I was obliged to manufacture a thousand dollars' worth of pencils and slowly dispose of and finally sacrifice them, in order to pay an assumed debt of a hundred dollars.”); September 14, 1855 ("It costs so much to publish, would it not be better for the author to put his manuscripts in a safe?”)

The horns rose about two feet above the shoulders and spread between four and five, I judged. See July 23, 1857 ("[Mr. Leonard, of Bangor, a sportsman,] said that the horns of a moose would spread four feet, some times six; would weigh thirty or forty pounds")

Arrive by stage at Moosehead Lake

July 23. 

Thursday. 


Some fifteen caribou were taken by one (?) man about Moosehead last winter. . . . [Mr. Leonard, of Bangor, a sportsman,] said that the horns of a moose would spread four feet, some times six; would weigh thirty or forty pounds (the hide, fifty); squirrels and mice ate the horns when shed. (They told me that the horns were not grown at this season.) . . . 

[Leonard told] also of some panthers which appeared near a house in Foxcroft. . . . 

I observed from the stage many of the Fringilla hyemalis flitting along the fences, even at this season, whence I conclude that they must breed here. 

Also, between Monson and the lake, the now very handsome panicles of the red elder-berry, so much earlier than the black, the most showy objects by the roadside. In one place the tree-cranberry in a yard, already reddening, though nowhere else after was it nearly so early. . . . 

There were two public houses near together, and they wanted to detain us at the first, even took off some of our baggage in spite of us; but, on our protesting, shouted, "Let them go! let them go!" as if it was any of their business. Whereupon we, thanking them for the privilege, rode on, leaving P. behind, who, I knew, would follow his canoe. 

Here we found a spacious house, quite empty, close to the lake, with an attentive landlord, which was what we wanted. A bright wood fire soon burned in the ample barroom, very comfortable in that fresh and cool atmosphere, and we congratulated ourselves on having escaped the crowd at the other house. 

Fogg, the landlord, said that there was scarcely any hemlock about the lake. 

Here was an Indian who came to talk with Polis, who made canoes, had made those two for Leonard. . . . He said that he used the red cedar of uplands (i. e. arbor-vitae ?) for ribs, etc.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 23, 1857

See The Maine Woods. ("Early the next morning (July 23) the stage called for us, the Indian having breakfasted with us, and already placed the baggage in the canoe to see how it would go. . . . When we reached the lake, about half past eight in the evening, it was still steadily raining, and harder than before; and, in that fresh, cool atmosphere, the hylodes were peeping and the toads ringing about the lake universally, as in the spring with us. It was as if the season had revolved backward two or three months, or I had arrived at the abode of perpetual spring. We had expected to go upon the lake at once, and, after paddling up two or three miles, to camp on one of its islands ; but on account of the steady and increasing rain, we decided to go to one of the taverns for the night, though, for my own part, I should have preferred to camp out.”)

July 23. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, July 23

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

moose-horns

July 21. 

Tuesday. 1 p. m. At Bangor. 

— Thatcher's moose-horns hanging in his barn spread two feet eight inches. There is one more prong on one side than the other. This is small.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 21, 1857

See July 23, 1857 ("[Mr. Leonard, of Bangor, a sportsman,] said that the horns of a moose would spread four feet, some times six; would weigh thirty or forty pounds")

I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth.

March 23.

I spend a considerable portion of my time observing the habits of the wild animals, my brute neighbors. By their various movements and migrations they fetch the year about to me. 

Very significant are the flight of geese and the migration of suckers, etc., etc. But when I consider that the nobler animals have been exterminated here, — the cougar, panther, lynx, wolverene, wolf, bear, moose, deer, the beaver, the turkey, etc., etc., — I cannot but feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were, emasculated country. Would not the motions of those larger and wilder animals have been more significant still? 

Is it not a maimed and imperfect nature that I am conversant with? As if I were to study a tribe of Indians that had lost all its warriors. Do not the forest and the meadow now lack expression, now that I never see nor think of the moose with a lesser forest on his head in the one nor, of the beaver in the other? 

When I think what were the various sounds and notes, the migrations and works, and changes of fur and plumage which ushered in the spring and marked the other seasons of the year, I am reminded that this my life in nature, this particular round of natural phenomena which I call a year, is lamentably incomplete. I listen to a concert in which so many parts are wanting. The whole civilized country is to some extent turned into a city, and I am that citizen whom I pity. Many of those animal migrations and other phenomena by which the Indians marked the season are no longer to be observed. 

I seek acquaintance with Nature, -- to know her moods and manners. 

Primitive Nature is the most interesting to me. 

I take infinite pains to know all the phenomena of the spring, for instance, thinking that I have here the entire poem, and then, to my chagrin, I hear that it is but an imperfect copy that I possess and have read, that my ancestors have torn out many of the first leaves and grandest passages, and mutilated it in many places. 

I should not like to think that some demigod had come before me and picked out some of the best of the stars. I wish to know an entire heaven and an entire earth. 

All the great trees and beasts, fishes and fowl are gone.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 23, 1856

the nobler animals have been exterminated. ...See January 29, 1856 ("It is observable that not only the moose and the wolf disappear before the civilized man, but even many species of insects, such as the black fly and the almost microscopic 'no-see-em.'"); April 11, 1857 ("The very fishes in countless schools are driven out of a river by the improvements of the civilized man, as the pigeon and other fowls out of the air. . . .That river which the aboriginal and indigenous fishes have not deserted is a more primitive and interesting river to me. "); Natural History of Massachusetts (1842) ("The bear, wolf, lynx, wildcat, deer, beaver, and marten have disappeared ")

to know Nature's moods and manners. See June 22, 1851 ("My pulse must beat with Nature");  September 7, 1851 ("My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, in nature."); January 11, 1852 ("Let me not live as if time was short. Catch the pace of the seasons; have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature, and to entertain every thought that comes."); March 11, 1856; ("I wish so to live ever as to derive my satisfactions and inspirations from the commonest events, every-day phenomena, so that what my senses hourly perceive, my daily walk, the conversation of my neighbors, may inspire me"); September 24, 1859 ("I would know when in the year to expect certain thoughts and moods, as the sportsman knows when to look for plover.").  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

Young Adams of Waltham tells me he has been moose-hunting at Chesuncook.

August 1.

P. M. -- To Conantum by boat. 

Squirrels have eaten and stripped pitch pine cones. 

Small rough sunflower a day or two. 

Diplopappus cornifolius (how long?) at Conant Orchard Grove. 

In the spring there, which has not been cleared out lately, I find a hairworm, eight or nine inches long and big as a pin-wire; is biggest in the middle and tapers thence to tail; at head is abruptly cut off; curly in your fingers like the tendril of a vine. 

I spent half an hour overhauling the heaps of clamshells under the rocks there. Was surprised to find the anodon and the green-rayed clams there. 

alpine enchanter’s-nightshade

(Circaea alpina)

Pennyroyal and alpine enchanter’s-nightshade well out, how long? 

Young Adams of Waltham tells me he has been moose-hunting at Chesuncook. Hunted with a guide in evening without horn, it being too early to call them out. Heard the water dropping from their muzzles when they lifted their heads from feeding on the pads, as they stood in the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  August 1, 1855


Small rough sunflower a day or two. See August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats") See also July 28, 1856 ("By factory road clearing, the small rough sunflower, two or three days."); July 29, 1853 (“The sight of the small rough sunflower about a dry ditch bank and hedge advances me at once further toward autumn.”); August 11, 1858 ("Also the small rough sunflower (now abundant)"); August 19, 1851 ("Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White Pond")

Alpine enchanter’s-nightshade.  See June 19, 1856 ("enchanter’s-nightshade"); July 8, 1856 ("Circaea alpina, some days, a foot high with opaque leaves and bracts . . .  the same with the small, also bracted, one at Corner Spring”);;

Amid the red shirts of the lumbermen

September 20.

There was one woman on board, who got in at the Kineo House, who looked oddly in the one saloon for gentlemen and ladies, amid the red shirts of the lumbermen. It rained very hard while we were aboard the steamer. We had a small sloop in tow, and another stopped to speak with us, to inquire after a man who was missing. 

A fortnight before, he had left his horse and carriage at Sawyer's, saying that he was going to get a moose and should be back in two days. He set out in a birch alone from the south end of the lake. At length they had sent the horse home, which brought on his friends, who were now looking for him and feared that he was lost in the lake. It was not very wise to set out in a canoe from the south end of the lake to kill a moose in two days.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1853