The value of any statement may be measured by its susceptibility to be expressed in popular language.

March 2.

If the sciences are protected from being carried by assault by the mob, by a palisade or chevaux de-frise of technical terms, so also the learned man may sometimes ensconce himself and conceal his little true knowledge behind hard names.

Perhaps the value of any statement may be measured by its susceptibility to be expressed in popular language.

The greatest discoveries can be reported in the newspapers.

I thought it was a great advantage both to speakers and hearers when, at the meetings of scientific gentlemen at the Marlborough Chapel, the representatives of all departments of science were required to speak intelligibly to those of other departments, therefore dispensing with the most peculiarly technical terms.

A man may be permitted to state a very meagre truth to a fellow student, using technical terms, but when he stands up before the mass of men, he must have some distinct and important truth to communicate; and the most important it will always be the most easy to communicate to the vulgar.

If anybody thinks a thought, how sure we are to hear of it! Though it be only a half-thought or half a delusion, it gets into the newspapers, and all the country rings with it.

But how much clearing of land and plowing and planting and building of stone wall is done every summer without being reported in the newspapers or in literature! Agricultural literature is not as extensive as the fields, and the farmer's almanac is never a big book.

And yet I think that the history (or poetry) of one farm from a state of nature to the highest state of cultivation comes nearer to being the true subject of a modern epic than the siege of Jerusalem or any such paltry and ridiculous resource to which some have thought men reduced.

Was it Coleridge? The Works and Days of Hesiod, the Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil, are but leaves out of that epic.

The turning a swamp into a garden, though the poet may not think it an improvement, is at any rate an enterprise interesting to all men.

A wealthy farmer who has money to let was here yesterday, who said that fourteen years ago a man came to him to hire two hundred dollars for thirty days.

He told him that he should have it if he would give proper security, but the other, thinking it exorbitant to require security for so short a term, went away.

But he soon returned and gave the security.

“And,” said the farmer, "he has punctually paid me twelve dollars a year ever since. I have never said a word to him about the principle.”

It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion of cooking.

The farmer increases the extent of the habitable earth.

He makes soil.

That is an honorable occupation.

 

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 2, 1852

Perhaps the value of any statement may be measured by its susceptibility to be expressed in popular language. See December 16, 1859 (“How much better to describe your object in fresh English words rather than in conventional Latinisms!”)

 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom.

April 3. 

Saturday.


Nothing is more saddening than an ineffectual and proud intercourse with those of whom we expect sympathy and encouragement. I repeatedly find myself drawn toward certain persons but to be disappointed. No concessions which are not radical are the least satisfaction. By myself I can live and thrive, but in the society of incompatible friends I starve. To cultivate their society is to cherish a sore which can only be healed by abandoning them. I can not trust my neighbors whom I know any more than I can trust the law of gravitation and jump off the Cliffs. 

The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire, — thinner than the paper on which it is printed, — then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them. 

No fields are so barren to me as the men of whom I expect everything but get nothing. In their neighborhood I experience a painful yearning for society, which cannot be satisfied, for the hate is greater than the love. 

P. M. – To Cliffs. 

At Hayden's I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. 

The little croakers, too, are very lively there. I get close to them and witness a great commotion and half hopping, half swimming, about, with their heads out, apparently in pursuit of each other, — perhaps thirty or forty within a few square yards and fifteen or twenty within one yard. There is not only the incessant lively croaking of many together, as usually heard, but a lower, hoarser, squirming, screwing kind of croak, perhaps from the other sex. As I approach nearer, they disperse and bury themselves in the grass at the bottom; only one or two remain outstretched on the surface, and, at another step, these, too, conceal themselves. 

Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue — while looking at it in a direction diagonal to this, i. e. northeast, it was nearly slate-colored. 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. It was, as it were, by mere accident that I found it. I had not observed any particular forwardness in it, when, happening to look under a projecting rock in a little nook on the south side of a stump, I spied one little plant which had opened three or four blossoms high up the Cliff. 

Evidently you must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower, such is the advantage of position, and when you have postponed a flower for a week and are turning away, a little further search may reveal it.

Some flowers, perhaps, have advantages one year which they have not the next. This spring, as well as the past winter, has been remarkably free from snow, and this reason, and the plant being hardy withal, may account for its early blossoming.

With what skill it secures moisture and heat, growing commonly in a little bed of moss which keeps it moist, and lying low in some cleft of the rock! The sunniest and most sheltered exposures possible it secures. This faced the southeast, was nearly a foot under the eaves of the rock, of buds in the least above the level of its projecting, calyx-like leaves. It was shelter within shelter. The blasts sweep over it. Ready to shoot upward when it shall be warm. The leaves of those which have been more exposed are turned red. It is a very pretty, snug plant with its notched leaves, one of the neatest and prettiest leaves seen now. 

A blackberry vine which lay over the rock was beginning to leave out, as much or more than the gooseberry in the garden, such was the reflected heat. The Missouri currant is perhaps more advanced than the early gooseberry in our garden. 

The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male, west side of railroad at Deep Cut, quite as forward as the male in this situation. 

The male P. grandidentata's a little further west are nearly out.

I should have noticed the fact that the pistillate flower of the hazel peeps forth gradually.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 3, 1853

I hear hylas on two keys or notes. Heard one after the other, it might be mistaken for the varied note of one. See March 31, 1857 (" As I rise the east side of the Hill, I hear the distant faint peep of hylodes . . ..  How gradually and imperceptibly the peep of the hylodes mingles with and swells the volume of sound which makes the voice of awakening nature! If you do not listen carefully for its first note, you probably will not hear it, and, not having heard that, your ears become used to the sound, so that you will hardly notice it at last, however loud and universal.. . . The shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular.");  April 1, 1860 (" I hear the first hylodes by chance, but no doubt they have been heard some time. "); April 2, 1852 ("I hear a solitary hyla for the first time."); 

The little croakers, too, are very lively there. See March 26, 1860 ("The wood frog may be heard March 15, as this year, or not till April 13, as in ’56, — twenty-nine days."); March 31, 1857 ("The dry croaking and tut tut of the frogs (a sound which ducks seem to imitate, a kind of quacking, —and they are both of the water!) is plainly enough down there in some pool in the woods, but the shrill peeping of the hylodes locates itself nowhere in particular."); April 4, 1857 (“Caught a croaking frog in some smooth water in the railroad gutter. Above it was a uniform (perhaps olive?) brown, without green, and a yellowish line along the edge of the lower jaws. . . What frog can it be?”); April 8, 1852 ("To-day I hear the croak of frogs in small pond-holes in the woods,"); April 13, 1855 ("The small croaking frogs are now generally heard in all those stagnant ponds or pools in woods floored with leaves, which are mainly dried up in the summer.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Frog (Rana sylvatica)

 Looking up the river yesterday, in a direction opposite to the sun, not long before it set, the water was of a rich, dark blue. See  April 4, 1855 ("All the earth is bright; the very pines glisten, and the water is a bright blue."); April 5, 1856 ("We overlook the bright-blue flood alternating with fields of ice (we being on the same side with the sun). The first sight of the blue water in the spring is exhilarating. "); April 9, 1856  ("The water on the meadows now, looking with the sun, is a far deeper and more exciting blue than the heavens. "); April 9, 1859 ("For three weeks past, when I have looked northward toward the flooded meadows they have looked dark-blue or blackish." See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blue Waters in Spring

 

To my great surprise the saxifrage is in bloom. under a projecting rock. See April 6, 1858 ("At Lee's Cliff I find no saxifrage in bloom above the rock . . .but on a few small warm shelves under the rocks the saxifrage makes already a pretty white edging.");  April 10, 1855 ("As for the saxifrage, when I had given it up for to-day, having, after a long search in the warmest clefts and recesses, found only three or four buds which showed some white, I at length, on a still warmer shelf, found one flower partly expanded, and its common peduncle had shot up an inch.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Saxifrage in Spring (Saxifraga vernalis)

You must look very sharp and faithfully to find the first flower. See April 17, 1855 ("undoubtedly an insect will have found the first flower before you"); April 2, 1856 ("It will take you half a lifetime to find out where to look for the earliest flower"); February 28, 1857 ("It takes several years' faithful search to learn where to look for the earliest flowers.")  See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Earliest Flower, 

The female Populus tremuliformis catkins, narrower and at present more red and somewhat less downy than the male See March 29, 1853 ("The catkins of the Populus tremuloides are just beginning to open, — to curl over and downward like caterpillars")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aspens

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

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 © 2009-2022

A goldfinch nest

August 9.

Edward Bartlett shows me this morning a nest which he found yesterday. It is saddled on the lowest horizontal branch of an apple tree in Abel Heywood’s orchard, against a small twig, and answers to Nuttall’s description of the goldfinch’s nest, which it probably is. The eggs were five, pure white or with a faint bluish-green tinge, just begun to be developed. 

I did not see the bird. 

It is but little you learn of a bird in this irregular way, — having its nest and eggs shown you. How much more suggestive the sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side!

It is surprising to what extent the world is ruled by cliques. They who constitute, or at least lead, New England or New York society, in the eyes of the world, are but a clique, a few “men of the age” and of the town, who work best in the harness provided for them. The institutions of almost all kinds are thus of a sectarian or party character. Newspapers, magazines, colleges, and all forms of government and religion express the superficial activity of a few, the mass either conforming or not attending. The newspapers have just got over that eating-fullness or dropsy which takes place with the annual commencements and addresses before the Philomathean or Alpha Beta Gamma societies. Neither they who make these addresses nor they who attend to them are representative of the latest age. The boys think that these annual recurrences are part and parcel of the annual revolution of the system. There are also regattas and fireworks and “surprise parties” and horse-shows. So that I am glad when I see or hear of a man anywhere who does not know of these things nor recognizes these particular fuglers. 

I was pleased to hear the other day that there were two men in Tamworth, N. H., who had been fishing for trout there ever since May; but it was a serious drawback to be told that they sent their fish to Boston and so catered for the few. The editors of newspapers, the popular clergy, politicians and orators of the day and office-holders, though they may be thought to be of very different politics and religion, are essentially one and homogeneous, inasmuch as they are only the various ingredients of the froth which ever floats on the surface of society. 

I see a pout this afternoon in the Assabet, lying on the bottom near the shore, evidently diseased. He permits the boat [to] come within two feet of him. Nearly half the head, from the snout backward diagonally, is covered with an inky-black kind of leprosy, like a crustaceous lichen. The long feeler on that side appears to be wasting, and there stands up straight in it, about an inch high, a little black tree-like thorn or feeler, branched at top. It moves with difficulty. 

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon, which she thinks is now in its prime there. 

It is surprising what a tissue of trifles and crudities make the daily news. For one event of interest there are nine hundred and ninety-nine insignificant, but about the same stress is laid on the last as on the first. The newspapers have just told me that the transatlantic telegraph-cable is laid. That is important, but they instantly proceed to inform me how the news was received in every larger town in the United States, — how many guns they fired, or how high they jumped, —in New York, and Milwaukee, and Sheboygan; and the boys and girls, old and young, at the corners of the streets are reading it all with glistening eyes, down to the very last scrap, not omitting what they did at New Rochelle and Evansville. And all the speeches are reported, and some think of collecting them into a volume ! ! ! You say that you have travelled far and wide. How many men have you seen that did not belong to any sect, or party, or clique? Did you go further than letters of introduction would avail?

The goldfinch nest of this forenoon is saddled on a horizontal twig of an apple, some seven feet from ground and one third of an inch in diameter, supported on one side by a yet smaller branch, also slightly attached to another small branch. It measures three and one half inches from outside to outside, one and three quarters inside, two and one half from top to bottom, or to a little below the twig, and one and one half inside. It is a very compact, thick, and warmly lined nest, slightly incurving on the edge within. It is composed of fine shreds of bark — grape-vine and other— and one piece of twine, with, more externally, an abundance of pale-brown slender catkins of oak (?) or hickory (?), mixed with effete apple blossoms and their peduncles, showing little apples, and the petioles of apple leaves, some times with half-decayed leaves of this year attached, last year’s heads of lespedeza, and some other heads of weeds, with a little grass stem or weed stem, all more or less disguised by a web of white spider or caterpillar silk, spread over the outside. It is thickly and very warmly lined with (apparently) short thistle-down, mixed with which you see some grape-vine bark, and the rim is composed of the same shreds of bark, catkins, and some fine fibrous stems, and two or three hairs (of horse) mixed with wool (?); for only the hollow is lined with the looser or less tenacious thistle-down. This nest shows a good deal of art. 

The mind tastes but few flavors in the course of a year. We are visited by but few thoughts which are worth entertaining, and we chew the end of these unceasingly. What ruminant spirits we are! I remember well the flavor of that rusk which I bought in New York two or three months ago and ate in the cars for my supper. A fellow-passenger, too, pretended to praise it, and yet, O man of little faith! he took a regular supper at Springfield. They cannot make such in Boston. The mere fragrance, rumor, and reminiscence of life is all that we get, for the most part. If I am visited by a thought, I chew that cud each successive morning, as long as there is any flavor in it. Until my keepers shake down some fresh fodder. Our genius is like a brush which only once in many months is freshly dipped into the paint-pot. It becomes so dry that though we apply it incessantly, it fails to tinge our earth and sky. Applied to the same spot incessantly, it at length imparts no color to it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1858

The sight of the goldfinch going of on a jaunt over the hills, twittering to its plainer consort by its side. See note to August 9, 1856 (". . .the goldfinch twittering over. Does the last always utter his twitter when ascending? These are already feeding on the thistle seeds. ")

Edith Emerson gives me an Asclepias tuberosa from Naushon. See August 29, 1857 ("R. W. E. says that he saw Asclepias tuberosa abundant and in bloom on Naushon last week.")

August 9. SeeA Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9 

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