Large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction.

April 28.

April 28, 2019

8.30 a. m. — Row to Carlisle Bridge with Blake and Brown. 

See black ducks and sheldrakes still. 

The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. 

A small hawk, perhaps pigeon hawk. 

A gull. 

Sit on Ball's Hill. The water partly over the Great Meadows. The wind is northeast, and at the western base of the hill we are quite sheltered; yet the waves run quite high there and still further up the river, — waves raised by the wind beyond the hill, — while there are very slight waves or ripples over the meadow south of the hill, which is much more exposed, evidently because the water is shallow there and large waves are not so easily formed on account of friction. 

S. Higginson brought me the arbutus in bloom on the 26th, one twig only out. 

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. 

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above as far as I could see. 

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 28, 1859


The first myrtle-bird that I have noticed. See April 28, 1855 ( ("There are a great many myrtle-birds here, — they have been quite common for a week.");  April 28, 1858 (“I see the myrtle-bird in the same sunny place, south of the Island woods, as formerly.”)

Ball’s Hill. See March 16, 1859 (“As we look over the lively, tossing blue waves for a mile or more eastward and northward, our eyes fall on these shining russet hills, and Ball's Hill appears in this strong light at the verge of this undulating blue plain, like some glorious newly created island of the spring, just sprung up from the bottom in the midst of the blue waters. ”)

See a shad-fly, one only, on water. See April 24, 1857 (“Sail to Ball's Hill. The water is at its height, higher than before this year. I see a few shad-flies on its surface.”). Compare May 1, 1854 ("The water is strewn with myriads of wrecked shad-flies, erect on the surface, with their wings up like so many schooners all headed one way.”)

A little snake, size of little brown snake, on pine hill, but uniformly grayish above. See October 29, 1857  (“I see evidently what Storer calls the little brown snake (Coluber ordinatus). . . . Above it is pale-brown, with a still lighter brown stripe running down the middle of the back”)

E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin. See April 18, 1859 (“Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium.. . .Two salamanders, . . . One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)”); December 5, 1858 (“How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection.”); December 3, 1858 ("brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back; the tail is waved on the edge (upper edge, at least); has a pretty, bright eye. Its tail, though narrower, reminds me of the pollywog.")

So each man looks at things from his own point of view.

April 18.

8 a. m. — To the south part of Acton, surveying, with Stedman Buttrick. 

When B. came to see me the other evening, and stood before the door in the dark, my mother asked, 

"Who is it?"

 to which he replied, quite seriously,

 "Left-tenant Stedman Buttrick.” 

B. says that he shot some crossbills which were opening pine cones in the neighborhood of the Easterbrook place some years ago, that he saw two dildees here as much as a month ago at least, and that they used to breed on that island east of his house, — I think he called it Burr's Island. 

He sees the two kinds of telltale here. 

Once shot an eider duck here. Has often shot the pintail (he calls it spindle-tail) duck here. Thinks he has killed four (? !) kinds of teal here. 

Once shot a sheldrake which had a good-sized sucker in its throat, the tail sticking out its bill, so that, as he thought, it could not have flown away with it. It was a full-plumaged male. 

Once, in the fall, shot a mackerel gull on what I call Dove Rock. 

Once shot a whole flock of little ducks not more than two thirds the size of a pigeon, yet full-grown, near the junction of the two rivers. Also got two ducks, the female all white and the male with a long and conspicuous bottle-green crest above the white. looked through Audubon, but could find no account of them. 

Sees two kinds of gray ducks, one larger than a black duck. Has seen the summer duck here carrying its young to the water in her bill, as much as thirty rods. Says that teal have bred here. 

His boy found, one February, as much as a peck of chestnuts in different parcels within a short distance of one another, just under the leaves in Hildreth's chestnut wood, placed there, as he says, by the chip-squirrel, which they saw eating them. 

He has seen the cross fox here. 

I am looking for acorns these days, to sow on the Walden lot, but can find very few sound ones. Those which the squirrels have not got are mostly worm-eaten and quite pulverized or decayed. A few which are cracked at the small [end], having started last fall, have yet life in them, perhaps enough to plant. Even these look rather discolored when you cut them open, but Buttrick says they will do for pigeon-bait. 

So each man looks at things from his own point of view. 

I found by trial that the last or apparently sound acorns would always sink in water, while the rotten ones would float, and I have accordingly offered five cents a quart for such as will sink. You can thus separate the good from the bad in a moment. I am not sure, however, but the germs of many of the latter have been injured by the frost. 

Hear a field sparrow. 

Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. 

• He has two minnows from the brook, which I think must be the banded minnow; a little more than an inch long with very conspicuous broad black transverse bars. 

• Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. 

• Also several kinds of larvae in the water, — one very like a dragon fly, with three large feather-like appendages to the tail, small gyrinus, which he says nibbled off the legs of the skater (?), etc., etc., but no dragon fly grubs. 

• Two salamanders, one from Ripple Lake and the other from the pool behind my house that was 

• One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis. (This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall.) (This is pale-brown above.)

• The other two thirds as large, a very handsome bright orange salmon, also with vermilion spots, which must be the true S. symmetrica. Both thickly sprinkled with black dots. The latter's tail comparatively thick and straight-edged. 

Haynes (Heavy) says that trout spawn twice in a year, — once in October and again in the spring. 

Saw snow ice a yard across to-day under the north side of a wood.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, April 18, 1859


Hear a field sparrow. See April 18, 1855 ("The rush sparrows tinkle now at 3 P. M. far over the bushes, and hylodes are peeping in a distant pool.”); April 18, 1857 ("Hear the huckleberry-bird”). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Field Sparrow (Fringilla juncorum)

Ed. Emerson shows me his aquarium. See April 29, 1859 (“E. Emerson's Salamandra dorsalis has just lost its skin.”)

Some Rana sylvatica spawn just begun to flat out. See April 18, 1858 ("The Rana sylvatica tadpoles have mostly wiggled away from the ova")

This I suspect is what I called S. symmetrica last fall. See December 3, 1858 ("The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back”); see also note to April 21, 1859 (“The vermilion-spotted salamanders are darting at the various grotesque-formed larvae of the lake.”)

He has seen the cross fox here. See note to May 20, 1858 (“This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon”)

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses recall past winters.

December 5. 

Some sugar maples, both large and small, have still, like the larger oaks, a few leaves about the larger limbs near the trunk. 

P. M. — To Walden. 

Snowed yesterday afternoon, and now it is three or four inches deep and a fine mizzle falling and freezing to the twigs and stubble, so that there is quite a glaze. The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters. These humble withered plants, which have not of late attracted your attention, now arrest it by their very stiffness and exaggerated size. Some grass culms eighteen inches or two feet high, which nobody noticed, are an inexhaustible supply of slender ice-wands set in the snow. The grasses and weeds bent to the crusty surface form arches of various forms. It is surprising how the slenderest grasses can support such a weight, but the culm is buttressed by an other icy culm or column, and the load gradually taken on. 

In the woods the drooping pines compel you to stoop. In all directions they are bowed down, hanging their heads. 

The large yellowish leaves of the black oak (young trees) are peculiarly conspicuous, rich and warm, in the midst of this ice and snow, and on the causeway the yellowish bark of the willows gleams warmly through the ice. 

The birches are still upright, and their numerous parallel white ice-rods remind me of the recent gossamer-like gleams which they reflected. 

How singularly ornamented is that salamander! Its brightest side, its yellow belly, sprinkled with fine dark spots, is turned downward. Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection, and poor eyes fail to discover them even then, as I have found.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 5, 1858

The stiffened ice-coated weeds and grasses on the causeway recall past winters.See December 26, 1855("The weeds and grasses, being so thickened by this coat of ice, appear much more numerous in the fields. It is surprising what a bristling crop they are."); December 5, 1859 ("The perfect silence -- the stillness and motionless of the twigs and of the very weeds and withered grasses; it is as if the whispering and creaking earth were muffled on her axle")

That salamander! See December 3, 1858 ("The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back")

I walk with unbuttoned coat, taking in the influences of the hour.

December 3

December 3, 2011

P. M. — To Walden. 

A deliciously mild afternoon, though the ground is covered with snow. The cocks crowed this morning as of yore.

I carry hatchet and rake in order to explore the Pout’s Nest for frogs and fish, —the pond not being frozen. A small part of that chink of the 26th is not yet frozen, and is crowded with pollywogs, mostly of large size, and very many have legs more or less developed. 

With my small iron rake, about a foot long by four inches wide, I jerk on to the ice at one jerk forty five pollywogs, and more than as many more fall into the water. Many of the smallest pollywogs have bright copper-red bellies, prettily spotted, while the large are commonly pale-yellow, either clear or spotted. Many are dying. They have crowded so thickly along the open chink three or four inches wide by the side of a boat in the ice that, when I accidentally rock it, about a hundred are washed out on to the ice. 

One salamander among them, and four of the new breams, much larger, darker, and richer-colored than any I had found. 

I have often seen pollywogs in small numbers in the winter, in spring-holes, etc., but never such crowding to air-holes in the ice. All that is peculiar in this case is that this small pond has recently been cut off from the main pond by the falling of the water and that it is crowded with vegetable matter, chiefly target-weed, so that apparently the stagnant water has not only killed the breams and perch (of which last I find three dead) but many pollywogs, and compels others to seek the surface. 

As I return home by the Shanty Field and the railroad, I cannot help contrasting this evening with the 30th (on Fair Haven Hill-side). Now there is a genial, soft air, and in the west many clouds of purplish dove color. I walk with unbuttoned coat, taking in the influences of the hour. Coming through the pitch pines east of the Shanty Field, I see the sun through the pines very yellow and warm-looking, and every twig of the pines and every weed is lit with yellow light (not silvery). 

The other night the few cloudy islets about [the] setting sun (where it had set) were glitteringly bright afar through the cold air. Now (when I get to the causeway) all the west is suffused with an extremely rich, warm purple or rose-color, while the edges of what were dove-colored clouds have a warm saffron glow, finally deepening to rose or damask when the sun has set. The other night there was no reddening of the clouds after sunset, no afterglow, but the glittering clouds were almost immediately snapped up in the crisped air. 

I improve every opportunity to go into a grist-mill, any excuse to see its cobweb-tapestry. I put questions to the miller as an excuse for staying, while my eye rests delighted on the cobwebs above his head and per chance on his hat. 

The salamander above named, found in the water of the Pout’s Nest, is the Salamandra symmetrica It is some three inches long, brown (not dark-brown) above and yellow with small dark spots beneath, and the same spots on the sides of the tail; a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back; the tail is waved on the edge (upper edge, at least); has a pretty, bright eye. Its tail, though narrower, reminds me of the pollywog. Why should not it lose its tail as well as that?

The largest of the four breams (vide November 26th) two and nine twentieths inches long, by one inch broad and nine twentieths thick. The back, sides forward, tail, and anal fin black or blackish or very dark; the transverse dark bars few and indistinct except in middle of fish; sides toward tail yellowish-Olive. Rear of abdomen has violet reflections (and about base of anal fin). Operculums tinged, streaked, and spotted with golden, coppery, greenish, and violet reflections. A vertical dark mark or line, corresponding to the stripes, through the eye. Iris copper-color or darker. 

The others, about two inches long, are differently colored, not so dark, more olive, and distinctly barred. The smallest are the lightest-colored, but the larger on the whole richer, as well as darker. The fins, especially the dorsal, caudal, and anal, are remarkably pretty, in color a fine network of light and dark. The lower jaw extends about three fortieths of an inch beyond the upper. The rich dark, almost black, back, with dark-barred sides alternating with yellowish olive, and the fine violet purple reflections from the sides of the abdomen, like the nacre of a shell, as coin-like they lie flat in a basin, — such jewels they swam between the stems (clothed in transparent jelly) of the target-weed. 

R. W. E. saw quite a flock of ducks in the pond (Walden) this afternoon;

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 3, 1858

I have often seen pollywogs in small numbers in the winter, in spring-holes, etc., but never such crowding to air-holes in the ice. See December 21, 1857 ("They appear to keep in motion in such muddy pond-holes, where a spring wells up from the bottom till midwinter, if not all winter.”)

Four of the new breams, much larger, darker, and richer-colored than any I had found. See November 26, 1858 (" a great many minnows about one inch long . . . shaped like bream, but had the transverse bars of perch.”); November 27, 1858 ("I got seventeen more of those little bream of yesterday. “); November 30, 1858 (“How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!”)

The 30th (on Fair Haven Hill-side). . . .there was no reddening of the clouds after sunset, no afterglow, but the glittering clouds were almost immediately snapped up in the crisped air. See December 2, 1858 ("[November 30th] was at the same time the most brilliant of sunsets, the clearest and crispiest of winter skies."); November 30, 1858 ("At sunset, we saw a large, long, dusky cloud in the northwest horizon, apparently just this side of Wachusett, or at least twenty miles off, which was snowing, when all the rest was clear sky ") 

All the west is suffused with an extremely rich, warm purple or rose-color, while the edges of what were dove-colored clouds have a warm saffron glow, finally deepening to rose or damask when the sun has set. See December 14, 1852 ("Ah, who can tell the serenity and clarity of a New England winter sunset?"); See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Winter Sunsets

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

This mild afternoon

I walk with unbuttoned coat

taking in the the hour.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Taking in the influences of the hour

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 © 2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-581203

I passed through that chestnut wood in the hollow southeast of Curly-pate.

November 6. 

Very warm but rather cloudy weather, after rain in the night. 

Wind southwest. Thermometer on north of the house 70° at 12 M. Indian summer. The cocks crow in the soft air. They are very sensitive to atmospheric changes. 

P. M. — To Curly-pate via old Carlisle road. 

Stedman Buttrick tells me that Dr. Ripley used to have his pork packed with the best pieces at the top of the barrel, and when some parishioner wondered at it, that he should thus eat these first, he answered that when packed thus the topmost were the best all the way through. 

He said that his grandfather lived in the Jarvis house, and that the other old house whose upper story projected over the lower like the Hunt house, and which I saw in the picture of Concord Fight, stood close to his own house, and he pulled it down when he was sixteen. 

I passed through that chestnut wood in the hollow southeast of Curly-pate. Turning over the wet chestnut leaves in the hollows, looking for nuts, I found a red backed salamander, between three and four inches long, bluish-gray beneath (Salamandra erythronota). It jerked itself about in a lively manner, trying to hide itself under the leaves, and would quickly slip out of my fingers. Its motions appeared to partake of those of a snake and a frog, — between a squirm and a hop. It was not particularly swift, yet, from the character of the motion and its glossiness, it was glancing. 

A dozen rods further I turned another, very similar but without a red back, but rather slightly clay-colored. I did not observe any transverse bands; else it might be the S. fasciata. 

When I came out on to the old Carlisle road in the dusk on my return, I saw Brooks Clark coming homeward, with his axe in his hand and both hands behind his back, being bent almost double. He said he was over eighty. Some years ago he bought some land up that way, and, the birches having sprung up there, he called it his birch pasture. There was enough birch wood there to carry him through the winter, and he was now cutting it. 

He remembered when they began to burn lime there, and bought the right to get out stone of Easterbrooks more than sixty years ago. It was Peter Barrett that began it. The lime sold for $5.00 a cask (larger casks than now). But the stone was difficult to get out.

He remembers seeing the mowers at work in the meadow where Stedman Buttrick's handsome pine and maple wood is, seventy years ago, and where there was a large old chestnut by the roadside there, which being cut, two sprouts came up which have become the largest chestnut trees by the wall now. 

As for the yellow birch cellar-hole, Ephraim Brown told him that old Henry Flint (an ancestor of Clark's wife) dug it, and erected the frame of a house there, but never finished it, selling out, going to live by the river. It was never finished. 

Clark's father told him that he remembered when there were no fences between his house and Lawrence's; it was all open. This road was the new one; the bridle-road the old one. 

Minott is a very pleasing figure in nature. He improves every scenery, — he and his comrades, Harry Hooper, John Wyman, Oliver Williams, etc. If he gets into a pond hole he disturbs it no more than a water-spirit for me.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 6, 1857

The yellow birch cellar-hole. See May 18, 1857 ("There is a very grand and picturesque old yellow birch in the old cellar northwest the yellow birch swamp."); September 2, 1857 ("The third, or largest, yellow birch, at the cellar was. . . ten feet nine inches in circumference.. . .The roots inclose some cellar stones. ")

I found a red backed salamander, between three and four inches long, bluish-gray beneath (Salamandra erythronota). See June 17, 1856 ("Went to Rev. Horace James’s reptiles (Orthodox). . . .Showed me . . . alive in bottle, with moss and water, the violet-colored salamander (S. venenosa) with yellow spots (five or six inches long), probably same I found in stump at Walden; and, in spirits, smaller, the S. erythronota, with a conspicuous red back.")

Brooks Clark remembers seeing the mowers at work in the meadow where Stedman Buttrick's handsome pine and maple wood is, seventy years ago . . .See October 20, 1857 ("That very dense and handsome maple and pine grove opposite the pond-hole on this old Carlisle road is Ebby Hubbard's. [Sted Buttrick's, according to Melvin.] Melvin says there are those alive who remember mowing there.")

Still cold and blustering.

March 25.

Still cold and blustering. The ditches where I have seen salamanders last year before this are still frozen up. 

Was it not a sucker I saw dart along the brook beyond Jenny’s? 

I see where the squirrels have fed extensively on the acorns now exposed on the melting of the snow. The ground is strewn with the freshly torn shells and nibbled meat in some places.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 25, 1855

Still cold and blustering. See March 24, 1855 ("The last four days, including this, have been very cold and blustering.");  March 28, 1855 ("I run about these cold and blustering days, on the whole perhaps the worst to bear in the year.");  See also March 25, 1854 ("Too cold and windy almost for ducks."); March 11, 1860 ("It is cold and blustering walking in the wind, though the thermometer is at 40; i. e., though the temperature is thus high, the strong and blustering northwest winds of March make this notorious March weather, which is worse to bear than severe cold without wind."); April 7, 1858 ("A cold and gusty, blustering day. We put on greatcoats again.")

Cold and blustering.

The ditches open last year 

are still frozen up.

Ripple of life

April 21.

April 21, 2019

 Setting pines all day. This makes two and a half days, with two men and a horse and cart to help me. We have set some four hundred trees at fifteen feet apart diamondwise, covering some two acres. 

I set every one with my own hand, while another digs the holes where I indicate, and occasionally helps the other dig up the trees. 

We prefer bushy pines only one foot high which grow in open or pasture land, yellow-looking trees which are used to the sun, instead of the spindling dark-green ones from the shade of the woods. Our trees will not average much more than two feet in height, and we take a thick sod with them fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. There are a great many more of these plants to be had along the edges and in the midst of any white pine wood than one would suppose. 

One man charged us five or six cents for them about a mile and a half distant! Got about one hundred and twenty from George Heywood's land and the rest from the Brister lot and this Wyman lot itself. 

R. W. E. has bought a quarter of a pound of white pine seed at $4.00 per pound. 

We could not dig up pines on the north side of the wood on the Brister lot to-day on account of frost! Though we had quite forgotten it, and put the winter so far behind us. 

See the Vanessa Antiopa. C. has seen it a week or so. C. sees a cicindela to-day. 

I hear of a robin's nest begun, and that geese go over to-day. 

Put out a fire in the woods, the Brister lot. Quite a warm day. 

Storer's account of the salamanders concludes with these words, "All the salamanders here described, feed upon insects, which they devour in very large numbers, and hence their utility cannot be questioned." The same might be said in behalf of the creatures that devour the salamanders. 

In those little Ripple Lakes in the cool hollows in the woods, there you find these active bright-spotted salamanders, — S. dorsalis, the brown (olive-brown or palish-brown), with carinated and wave-crenate thin tail, and the S. symmetrica, the bright orange salmon, with a thick, straight-edged tail, — both with vermilion spots on back and countless fine black dots above and beneath. 

The first-named is quite voracious, catching many of the larvae in the aquarium, in fact depopulating it. He gulps them down very deliberately after catching them.

What pretty things go to make up the sum of life in any valley! 

This Ripple Lake with the wind playing over it, the bright spotted butterflies that flutter from time to time over the dry leaves, and the minnows and salamanders that dart in the water itself. Beneath this play of ripples which reflect the sky, — a darker blue than the real, — the vermilion-spotted salamanders are darting at the various grotesque-formed larva? of the lake.

H.D. Thoreau, Journal, April 21, 1859

Setting pines all day. See April 19, 1859 ("Began to set white pines in R.W.E.'s Wyman lot."); April 22, 1859 ("When setting the pines at Walden the last three days, I was sung to by the field sparrow.")

The first-named [salamander] is quite voracious, catching many of the larvae in the aquarium, See April 18, 1859 (("Ed Emerson shows me his aquarium. He has two . . . salamanders, one from Ripple Lake and the other from the pool behind my house . . . One some four inches long, with a carinated and waved (crenated) edged tail as well as light-vermilion spots on the back, evidently the Salamandra dorsalis.")

The S. symmetrica, the bright orange salmon, with a thick, straight-edged tail, See April 18, 1859 (“The other two thirds as large, a very handsome bright orange salmon, also with vermilion spots, which must be the true S. symmetrica.”); see also  December 5, 1858 ('Its back is indeed ornamented with two rows of bright vermilion spots, but these can only be detected on the very closest inspection”); December 3, 1858 ("a row of very minute vermilion spots, not detected but on a close examination, on each side of the back”) 

The sum of life. See Darwin, Origin of the Species (November 24, 1859) (Imagine a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth.)

This Ripple Lake with the wind playing over it, ... this play of ripples which reflect the sky,-- a darker blue than the real ... See April 9, 1859 ("Watching the ripples fall and dash across the surface of low-lying and small woodland lakes is one of the amusements of these windy March and April days.”)