Because the distance between each degree of latitude is approximately 69 miles.

December 2

As the stars, though spheres, present an outline of many little points of light to our eyes, like a flower of light, so I notice to-night the horns of the new moon appear split.

The skeleton which at first sight excites only a shudder in all mortals becomes at last not only a pure but suggestive and pleasing object to science. The more we know of it, the less we associate it with any goblin of our imaginations. The longer we keep it, the less likely it is that any such will come to claim it. We discover that the only spirit which haunts it is a universal intelligence which has created it in harmony with all nature.

Science never saw a ghost, nor does it look for any, but it sees everywhere the traces, and it is itself the agent, of a Universal Intelligence.

A communication to a newspaper, dated Bangor, 28th (November), says of the Penobscot :

“The navigation is closed here, the anchor ice with the surface ice making an obstruction of several feet thickness. There are enclosed in the ice from 60 to 80 vessels with full cargoes, besides the steamers. The ice obstruction extends about five miles," etc.

There is still no ice in the Concord River, or the skimming which forms along the shore in the night almost entirely disappears in the day. On the 30th I paddled on it in the afternoon, and there was not a particle of ice, and even in the morning my constantly wet hands were not cold.

The latitude of Lynn church is 42° 27' 51".

Calling Concord, at a venture, 42° 27', Bangor being 44° 47' 50', the difference equals about 2° 21'.

The length of a degree of latitude in Italy (43° 1') being, according to Boscovich and Lemaire's measurement, 68.998 English miles, call it in this case 69 miles, and the difference of latitude in miles between B. and C. is about 162 miles.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, December 2, 1853

I notice to-night the horns of the new moon appear split. See August 8, 1851 (“The moon has not yet quite filled her horns”); December 23, 1851 (“ I detect, just above the horizon, the narrowest imaginable white sickle of the new moon.”); July 20, 1852 ("The horns of the moon only three or four days old look very sharp , still cloud like , in the midst of a blue space , prepared to shine a brief half - hour before it sets . . . and, as it sinks in the west . . . the outline of the old moon in its arms is visible if you do not look directly at it.”)

Penobscot navigation is closed. See January 20, 1857 (" I hear that Boston Harbor froze over on the 18th, down to Fort Independence."); January 26, 1857 ("Saw  Boston Harbor frozen over (for some time). Reminded me of, I think, Parry's Winter Harbor, with vessels frozen in . . . [Ice did not finally go out till about Feb. 15th.] ")

 

There is still no ice in the Concord River. . . the skimming which forms along the shore in the night almost entirely disappears in the day. See December 2, 1852 ("Started in boat before 9 A.M. down river to Billerica . . .. I do not remember when I have taken a sail or a row on the river in December before. . . . The banks are white with frost. The air is calm, and the water smooth.") Compare November 30, 1855 ("River skimmed over . . . remained iced over all day."); November 30, 1858 ("The river may be said to have frozen generally last night."); December 4, 1856 ("Dark waves are chasing each other across the river . . . Smooth white reaches of ice, as long as the river, on each side are threatening to bridge over its dark-blue artery any night. They remind me of a trap that is set for it, which the frost will spring. "); December 5, 1853 ("The river frozen over thinly in most places and whitened with snow, which was sprinkled on it this noon"); December 5, 1856 ("The river is well skimmed over in most places . . . The ice trap was sprung last night")

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species.

November 20.

It is a common saying among country people that if you eat much fried hasty pudding it will make your hair curl. My experience, which was considerable, did not confirm this assertion.

Horace Hosmer was picking out to-day half a bushel or more of a different and better kind of cranberry, as he thought, separating them from the rest. They are very dark red, shaded with lighter, harder and more oblong, somewhat like the fruit of the sweet-briar or a Canada red plum, though I have no common cranberry to compare with them. He says that they grow apart from the others.

I must see him about it.

It may prove to be one more of those instances in which the farmer detects a new species and makes use of the knowledge from year to year in his profession, while the botanist expressly devoted to such investigation has failed to observe it. The farmer, in picking over many bushels of cranberries year after year, finds at length, or has forced upon his observation, a new species of that berry, and avails himself thereafter of his discovery for many years before the naturalist is aware of the fact.

Desor, who has been among the Indians at Lake Superior this summer, told me the other day that they had a particular name for each species of tree, as of the maple, but they had but one word for flowers; they did not distinguish the species of the last.

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species. It would be strange if it were not so. But we are accustomed properly to call that only a scientific discovery which knows the relative value of the thing discovered, uncovers a fact to mankind.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, November 20, 1850

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new species.  See May 31, 1853 ("When I thought I knew the flowers so well, the beautiful purple azalea should be shown me by the hunter who found it. ") May 31, 1853 ("I went on to Melvin's house . . . I told him he had better tell me where it was; I was a botanist and ought to know.")  See also August 23, 1854 (“I find a new cranberry on the sphagnum amid the A. calyculata, — V. Oxycoccus");January 9, 1855 (“Make a splendid discovery this afternoon. Walking through Holden’s white spruce swamp, I see peeping above the snow-crust some slender delicate evergreen shoots very much like the Andromeda Polifolia, amid sphagnum, lambkill, Andromeda calyculata, blueberry bushes, etc., though there is very little to be seen above the snow. It is, I have little doubt, the Kalmia glauca var. rosmarinifolia.”); August 30, 1856 ("I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus . . . I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella .”); January 27, 1857 ("The most poetic and truest account of objects is generally by those who first observe them, or the discoverers of them, whether a sharper perception and curiosity in them led to the discovery or the greater novelty more inspired their report."); November 4, 1858 ("We cannot see any thing until we are possessed with the idea of it, and then we can hardly see anything else. In my botanical rambles I find that first the idea, or image, of a plant occupies my thoughts, though it may at first seem very foreign to this locality, and for some weeks or months I go thinking of it and expecting it unconsciously, and at length I surely see it, and it is henceforth an actual neighbor of mine. This is the history of my finding a score or more of rare plants which I could name."); November 26, 1858 (" A new species"); November 28, 1858 ("And all the years that I have known Walden these striped breams have skulked in it without my knowledge!"); November 30, 1858 ("When my eyes first rested on Walden the striped bream was poised in it, though I did not see it.. . ."How wild it makes the pond and the township to find a new fish in it!")

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, November 20

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

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!”)

 

Causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved.

January 14. 

Coldest morning yet; 20° (?).

Pliny says, "In minimis Natura praestat” (Nature excels in the least things).

The Wellingtonia gigantea, the famous California tree, is a great thing; the seed from which it sprang, a little thing; and so are all seeds or origins of things.

Richard Porson said:

"We all speak in metaphors. Those who appear not to do it, only use those which are worn out, and are overlooked as metaphors. The original fellow is therefore regarded as only witty; and the dull are consulted as the wise."

He might have said that the former spoke a dead language.

John Horne Tooke is reported in "Recollections” by Samuel Rogers as having said:

 "Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author, and have forgotten the particulars."

I think that the opposite would be the truer statement, books differ so immensely in their nutritive qualities, and good ones are so rare.

Gosse, in his "Letters from Alabama,” says that he thinks he saw a large dragon-fly (Æslona), which was hawking over a brook, catch and devour some minnows about one inch long, and says it is known that "the larvæ of the greater water-beetles (Dyticidæ) devour fish."

It is the discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth's surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws.

The same is true in detail also.

It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are "spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i. e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved.

It is a common saying that "little strokes fall great oaks,” and it does not imply much wisdom in him who originated it. The sound of the axe invites our attention to such a catastrophe; we can easily count each stroke as it is given, and all the neighborhood is informed by a loud crash when the deed is consummated.

But such, too, is the rise of the oak; little strokes of a different kind and often repeated raise great oaks, but scarcely a traveller hears these or turns aside to converse with Nature, who is dealing them the while.

Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance; she knows that seeds have many other uses than to reproduce their kind. In raising oaks and pines, she works with a leisureliness and security answering to the age and strength of the trees. If every acorn of this year's crop is destroyed, never fear! she has more years to come. It is not necessary that a pine or an oak should bear fruit every year, as it is that a pea-vine should.

So, botanically, the greatest changes in the landscape are produced more gradually than we expected. If Nature has a pine or an oak wood to produce, she manifests no haste about it.

Thus we should say that oak forests are produced by a kind of accident, i. e. by the failure of animals to reap the fruit of their labors. Yet who shall say that they have not a fair knowledge of the value of their labors — that the squirrel when it plants an acorn, has not a transient thought for its posterity? 

Possibly here, a thousand years hence, every oak will know the human hand that planted it.

How many of the botanist's arts and inventions are thus but the rediscovery of a lost art, i.e. lost to him here or elsewhere! 

Horace Mann told me some days ago that he found, near the shore in that muddy bay by the willows in the rear of Mrs. Ripley's, a great many of the Sternothærus odoratus, assembled, he supposed, at their breeding time, or, rather, about to come out to lay their eggs. He waded in [and] collected — I think he said-about a hundred and fifty of them for Agassiz! 

I see in the Boston Journal an account of robins in numbers on the savin trees in that neighborhood, feeding on their berries. This suggests that they may plant its berries as well as the crows.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, January 14, 1861

The discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth's surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. See Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830–33); Stephen Jay Gould, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle,

Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance. See September 7, 1839 ("Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace."); November 8, 1860 ("Consider how persevering Nature is, and how much time she has to work in, though she works slowly.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Nature

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

— Lao Tzu

There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws. Compare May 23, 1841 ("All nature is a new impression every instant"); January 20, 1855 (“The world is not only new to the eye, but is still as at creation.”); October 18, 1860 ("The development theory implies a greater vital force in nature, equivalent to a sort of constant new creation. We find ourselves in a world that is already planted, but is also still being planted as at first.")

Porson said: "We all speak in metaphors." See September 1851 (“All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy.”); May 10, 1853 ("He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to describe his life. If I am overflowing with life, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry,- all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be expressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant.")

It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are "spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i. e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved. See The Succession of Forest Trees  ("As for the heavy seeds and nuts which are not furnished with wings , the notion is still a very common one that , when the trees which bear these spring up where none of their kind were noticed before, they have come from seeds or other principles spontaneously generated there in an unusual manner, or which have lain dormant in the soil for centuries, or perhaps been called into activity by the heat of a burning  I do not believe these assertions, and I will state some of the ways in which, according to my observation, such forests are planted and raised.")

Nature is slow but sure – 

she works no faster 

than need be.

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts.

March 5.

March 5, 2020

The meadows skim over at night. 

White pine cones half fallen. 

The old naturalists were so sensitive and sympathetic to nature that they could be surprised by the ordinary events of life. It was an incessant miracle to them, and therefore gorgons and flying dragons were not incredible to them. The greatest and saddest defect is not credulity, but our habitual forgetfulness that our science is ignorance. 

Chickweed and shepherd's-purse in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter, or each month.

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. 

I see some tame ducks in the river, six of them. It is amusing to see how exactly perpendicular they will stand, with their heads on the bottom and their tails up, plucking some food there, three or four at once. Perhaps the grass, etc., is a little further advanced there for them. 

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge. The best time to hunt them is early morning and evening. His father goes out at daybreak, and can kill more in one hour after that than from that time to near sunset. He says that he has found eleven young in one musquash, and that Joel Barrett observed that one pair near his house bred five times in one year. Thought it would hardly pay to shoot them for their fur alone, but would if you owned river-meadow banks, they undermine them so. 

So far as the natural history is concerned, you often have your choice between uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood. 

As the ancients talked about ”hot and cold, moist and dry,” so the moderns talk about ”electric” qualities. 

As we sat under Lupine Promontory the other day, watching the ripples that swept over the flooded meadow and thinking what an eligible site that would be for a cottage, C. declared that we did not live in the country as long as we lived on that village street and only took walks into the fields, any more than if we lived in Boston or New York. We enjoyed none of the immortal quiet of the country as we might here, for instance, but per chance the first sound that we hear in the morning, instead of the tinkling of a bird, is your neighbor hawking and spitting.

Our spiræas have been considerably unfolded for several days. 

Ways fairly settled generally.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, March 5, 1860

White pine cones half fallen. See February 25, 1860 (“ The white pine cones have been blowing off more or less in every high wind ever since the winter began, and yet perhaps they have not more than half fallen yet.”); March 7, 1855 ("Picked up a very handsome white pine cone some six and a half inches long by two and three eighths near base and two near apex, perfectly blossomed. It is a very rich and wholesome brown color, of various shades as you turn it in your hand, —a light ashy or gray brown, somewhat like unpainted wood. as you look down on it, or as if the lighter brown were covered with a gray lichen, seeing only those parts of the scales always exposed, —with a few darker streaks or marks and a drop of pitch at the point of each scale. Within, the scales are a dark brown above (i.e. as it hangs) and a light brown beneath, Very distinctly being marked beneath by the same darker brown, down the centre and near the apex somewhat anchor wise. “) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

Gorgons and flying dragons. See February 18, 1860 ("The old writers have left a more lively and lifelike account of the gorgon than modern writers give us of real animals.")

Chickweed in bloom in C.'s garden, and probably all winter. See February 2, 1853 ("The Stellaria media is full of frost-bitten blossoms, containing stamens, etc., still and half-grown buds. Apparently it never rests.")

The song sparrows begin to sing hereabouts. See March 2, 1860 ("Looking up a narrow ditch in a meadow, I see a modest brown bird flit along it furtively, — the first song sparrow, -- and then alight far off on a rock. Ed. Hoar says he heard one February 27th.");  March 3, 1860 (" The first song sparrows are very inconspicuous and shy on the brown earth. You hear some weeds rustle, or think you see a mouse run amid the stubble, and then the sparrow flits low away.");  March 11, 1854 ("On Tuesday, the 7th, I heard the first song sparrow chirp, and saw it flit silently from alder to alder. This pleasant morning after three days' rain and mist, they generally forthburst into sprayey song from the low trees along the river. The developing of their song is gradual but sure, like the expanding of a flower. This is the first song I have heard.”);  March 11, 1859 ("By riverside I hear the song of many song sparrows, the most of a song of any yet. . . .The birds anticipate the spring; they come to melt the ice with their songs.") See also note to February 24, 1857 ("I am surprised to hear the strain of a song sparrow from the riverside.") and A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Song Sparrow (Fringilla melodia)

George Buttrick thinks that forty musquash have been killed this spring between Hunt's and Flint's Bridge.  See February 24, 1860 ("The river risen and quite over the meadows yesterday and to-day, and musquash begun to be killed."); March 2, 1860 ("Men shooting musquash these days.")

This is a world where there are flowers.

August 19.

 

AUGUST 19, 2017

Clematis Virginiana; calamint; Lycopus Europeus, water horehound. This is a world where there are flowers. 

Now, at 5 a. m., the fog, which in the west looks like a wreath of hard-rolled cotton-batting, is rapidly dispersing. The echo of the railroad whistle is heard the horizon round; the gravel train is starting out. The farmers are cradling oats in some places.

For some days past I have noticed a red maple or two about the pond, though we have had no frost. The grass is very wet with dew this morning.

 The way in which men cling to old institutions after the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves, reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails, — aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond the hunter's reach long after they are dead. It is of no use to argue with such men. They have not an apprehensive intellect, but merely, as it were, a prehensile tail. Their intellect possesses merely the quality of a prehensile tail. The tail itself contracts around the dead limb even after they themselves are dead, and not till sensible corruption takes place do they fall.

The black howling monkey, or caraya. According to Azara, it is extremely difficult to get at them, for "when mortally wounded they coil the tail round a branch, and hang by it with the head downwards for days after death, and until, in fact, decomposition begins to take effect." The commenting naturalist says, "A singular peculiarity of this organ is to contract at its extremity of its own accord as soon as it is extended to its full length." I relinquish argument, I wait for decomposition to take place, for the subject is dead; as I value the hide for the museum. They say, " Though you 've got my soul, you sha'n't have my carcass." 

P. M. — To Marlborough Road via Clamshell Hill, Jenny Dugan's, Round Pond, Canoe Birch Road (Deacon Dakin's), and White Pond. 

How many things concur to keep a man at home, to prevent his yielding to his inclination to wander! If I would extend my walk a hundred miles, I must carry a tent on my back for shelter at night or in the rain, or at least I must carry a thick coat to be prepared for a change in the weather. So that it requires some resolution, as well as energy and foresight, to undertake the simplest journey. Man does not travel as easily as the birds migrate. He is not everywhere at home, like flies. When I think how many things I can conveniently carry, I am wont to think it most convenient to stay at home. My home, then, to a certain extent is the place where I keep my thick coat and my tent and some books which I cannot carry; where, next, I can depend upon meeting some friends; and where, finally, I, even I, have established myself in business. But this last in my case is the least important qualification of a home. 

The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind, as the astronomer watches the aspects of the heavens. What might we not expect from a long life faithfully spent in this wise? The humblest observer would see some stars shoot. A faithful description as by a disinterested person of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten, as when one reports the number and character of the vehicles which pass a particular point. 

As travellers go round the world and report natural objects and phenomena, so faithfully let another stay at home and report the phenomena of his own life, — catalogue stars, those thoughts whose orbits are as rarely calculated as comets. It matters not whether they visit my mind or yours, — whether the meteor falls in my field or in yours, — only that it come from heaven.

 (I am not concerned to express that kind of truth which Nature has expressed. Who knows but I may suggest some things to her? Time was when she was indebted to such suggestions from another quarter, as her present advancement shows. I deal with the truths that recommend themselves to me, — please me, — not those merely which any system has voted to accept.) 

A meteorological journal of the mind. You shall observe what occurs in your latitude, I in mine. Some institutions — most institutions, indeed — have had a divine origin. But of most that we see prevailing in society nothing but the form, the shell, is left; the life is extinct, and there is nothing divine in them. Then the reformer arises inspired to reinstitute life, and whatever he does or causes to be done is a reestablishment of that same or a similar divineness. But some, who never knew the significance of these instincts, are, by a sort of false instinct, found clinging to the shells. 

Those who have no knowledge of the divine appoint themselves defenders of the divine, as champions of the church, etc. I have been astonished to observe how long some audiences can endure to hear a man speak on a subject which he knows nothing about, as religion for instance, when one who has no ear for music might with the same propriety take up the time of a musical assembly with putting through his opinions on music. 

This young man who is the main pillar of some divine institution, — does he know what he has undertaken? If the saints were to come again on earth, would they be likely to stay at his house? would they meet with his approbation even ? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. They who merely have a talent for affairs are forward to express their opinions. A Roman soldier sits there to decide upon the righteousness of Christ. The world does not long endure such blunders, though they are made every day.

The weak-brained and pusillanimous farmers would fain abide by the institutions of their fathers. Their argument is they have not long to live, and for that little space let them not be disturbed in their slumbers; blessed are the peacemakers; let this cup pass from me, etc. 

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had given vent to the stream at the lower end and consequently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of thought burst forth and fertilize my brain. You need to increase the draught below, as the owners of meadows on Concord River say of the Billerica Dam. Only while we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical, wooden, dull to read. 

The grass in the high pastures is almost as dry as hay.

The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it.

How much of the year is spring and fall! how little can be called summer! The grass is no sooner grown than it begins to wither. How much Nature herself suffers from drought ! It seems quite as much as she can do to produce these crops. 

The most inattentive walker can see how the science of geology took its rise. The inland hills and promontories betray the action of water on their rounded sides as plainly as if the work were completed yesterday. He sees it with but half an eye as he walks, and forgets his thought again. Also the level plains and more recent meadows and marine shells found on the tops of hills. The geologist painfully and elaborately follows out these suggestions, and hence his fine-spun theories. 

The goldfinch, though solitary, is now one of the commonest birds in the air. What if a man were earnestly and wisely to set about recollecting and preserving the thoughts which he has had ! How many perchance are now irrecoverable! Calling in his neighbors to aid him.

I do not like to hear the name of particular States given to birds and flowers which are found in all equally, — as Maryland yellow -throat, etc., etc. The Canadenses and Virginicos may be suffered to pass for the most part, for there is historical as well as natural reason at least for them. Canada is the peculiar country of some and the northern limit of many more plants. And Virginia, which was originally the name for all the Atlantic shore, has some right to stand for the South. 

The fruit of the sweet-gale by Nut Meadow Brook is of a yellowish green now and has not yet its greasy feel. 

The little red-streaked and dotted excrescences on the shrub oaks I find as yet no name for. 

Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hypericum Canadense.

 White goldenrod is budded along the Marlborough road. Chickadees and jays never fail. 

The cricket's is a note which does not attract you to itself. It is not easy to find one.

I fear that the character of my knowledge is from year to year becoming more distinct and scientific; that, in exchange for views as wide as heaven's cope, I am being narrowed down to the field of the microscope. I see details, not wholes nor the shadow of the whole. I count some parts, and say, "I know."

The cricket's chirp now fills the air in dry fields near pine woods. 

Gathered our first watermelon to-day. 

By the Marlborough road I notice the richly veined leaves of the Neottia pubescens, or veined neottia, rattlesnake-plantain. I like this last name very well, though it might not be easy to convince a quibbler or proser of its fitness. We want some name to express the mystic wildness of its rich leaves. Such work as men imitate in their embroidery, unaccountably agreeable to the eye, as if it answered its end only when it met the eye of man; a reticulated leaf, visible only on one side; little things which make one pause in the woods, take captive the eye. 

Here is a bees' or wasps' nest in the sandy, mouldering bank by the roadside, four inches in diameter, as if made of scales of striped brown paper. It is singular if indeed man first made paper and then discovered its resemblance to the work of the wasps, and did not derive the hint from them. 

Canoe birches by road to Dakin's. Cuticle stripped off; inner bark dead and scaling off; new (inner) bark formed. 

The Solomon's-seals are fruited now, with finely red-dotted berries. There was one original name well given, Buster Kendal.

The fragrance of the clethra fills the air by water sides. 

In the hollows where in winter is a pond, the grass is short, thick, and green still, and here and there are tufts pulled up as if by the mouth of cows. 

Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White Pond, — Helianthus divaricatus.  

Lespedeza capitata, shrubby lespedeza, White Pond road and Marlborough road. 

L. polystachya, hairy lespedeza, Corner road beyond Hubbard's Bridge.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 19,  1851

This is a world where there are flowers.See April 18, 1852 "Why should just these sights and sounds accompany our life ,,, why just this circle of creatures completes this world? ") Walden ("Why do precisely these objects which we behold make a world?") 

A faithful description as by a disinterested person of the thoughts which visited a certain mind in threescore years and ten, as when one reports the number and character of the vehicles which pass a particular point. See December 28, 1852 ("Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars. What are threescore years and ten hurriedly and coarsely lived to moments of divine leisure in which your life is coincident with the life of the universe?")

The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating point than at any other. If you are not out at the right instant, the summer may go by and you not see it. See July 19, 1851 ("Yesterday it was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn."); June 6, 1857 ("Each season is but an infinitesimal point. It no sooner comes than it is gone. It has no duration."); August 23, 1858 ("There is no plateau on which Nature rests at midsummer, but she instantly commences the descent to winter.")

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live! See September 2, 1851 ("We cannot write well or truly but what we write with gusto. . . . Expression is the act of the whole man. . . A writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is the corn and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It is always essential that we love to do what we are doing, do it with a heart.”); May 6, 1854 ("Every important worker will report what life there is in him.”); January 23, 1858. (" It is in vain to write on the seasons unless you have the seasons in you."); see also October 18, 1855 (“Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.”); November 18, 1857 "Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of .”); April 29, 1852 (“The art of life, of a poet's life, is, not having anything to do, to do something”);

I am being narrowed down to the field of the microscope. I see details, not wholes. See March 5, 1852 ("Such is the mood of my mind, and I call it studying lichens. The habit of looking at things microscopically, as the lichens on the trees and rocks, really prevents my seeing aught else in a walk")

The poet must be continually watching the moods of his mind. See June 6, 1857 ("Each experience reduces itself to a mood of the mind."); June 25, 1852 ("There is a flower for every mood of the mind."); August 28, 1851 The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods as narrowly as a cat does a mouse. See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Moods and Seasons of the Mind.

August 19. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 19

As I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly.

May 1. 

Hear the ruby-crowned wren. 

We accuse savages of worshipping only the bad spirit, or devil, though they may distinguish both a good and a bad; but they regard only that one which they fear and worship the devil only. We too are savages in this, doing precisely the same thing. 

This occurred to me yesterday as I sat in the woods admiring the beauty of the blue butterfly. 

We are not chiefly interested in birds and insects, for example, as they are ornamental to the earth and cheering to man, but we spare the lives of the former only on condition that they eat more grubs than they do cherries, and the only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” 

We too admit both a good and a bad spirit, but we worship chiefly the bad spirit, whom we fear. We do not think first of the good but of the harm things will do us. 

The catechism says that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, which of course is applicable mainly to God as seen in his works. Yet the only account of its beautiful insects — butterflies, etc. — which God has made and set before us which the State ever thinks of spending any money on is the account of those which are injurious to vegetation!

This is the way we glorify God and enjoy him forever. Come out here and behold a thousand painted butterflies and other beautiful insects which people the air, then go to the libraries and see what kind of prayer and glorification of God is there recorded. Massachusetts has published her report on "Insects Injurious to Vegetation," and our neighbor the "Noxious Insects of New York.” 

We have attended to the evil and said nothing about the good. This is looking a gift horse in the mouth with a vengeance.

Children are attracted by the beauty of butterflies, but their parents and legislators deem it an idle pursuit. The parents remind me of the devil, but the children of God. Though God may have pronounced his work good, we ask, "Is it not poisonous?” 

Science is inhuman. Things seen with a microscope begin to be insignificant. So described, they are as monstrous as if they should be magnified a thousand diameters. Suppose I should see and describe men and houses and trees and birds as if they were a thousand times larger than they are! With our prying instruments we disturb the balance and harmony of nature.

P. M. — To Second Division. Very warm. 

Looking from Clamshell over Hosmer's meadow, about half covered with water, see hundreds of turtles, chiefly picta, now first lying out in numbers on the brown pieces of meadow which rise above the water. You see their black backs shine on these hummocks left by the ice, fifty to eighty rods off. They would rapidly tumble off if you went much nearer.

This heat and stillness draws them up. It is remarkable how surely they are advertised of the first warm and still days, and in an hour or two are sure to spread themselves over the hummocks. There is to-day a general resurrection of them, and there they bask in the sun. It is their sabbath. 

At this distance, if you are on the lookout, especially with a glass, you can discover what numbers of them there are, but they are shy and will drop into the water on a near approach. All up and down our river meadows their backs are shining in the sun to-day. It is a turtle day. 

As we sat on the steep hillside south of Nut Meadow Brook Crossing, we noticed a remarkable whirlwind on a small scale, which carried up the oak leaves from that Island copse in the meadow. The oak leaves now hang thinly and are very dry and light, and these small whirlwinds, which seem to be occasioned by the sudden hot and calm weather (like whirlpools or dimples in a smooth stream), wrench them off, and up they go, somewhat spirally, in countless flocks like birds, with a rustling sound; and higher and higher into the clear blue deeps they rise above our heads, till they are fairly lost to sight, looking, when last seen, mere light specks against the blue, like stars by day, in fact. I could distinguish some, I have no doubt, five or six hundred feet high at least, but if I looked aside a moment they were lost. The largest oak leaves looked not bigger than a five-cent-piece. These were drifting eastward, — to descend where? Methought that, instead of decaying on the earth or being consumed by fire, these were being translated and would soon be taken in at the windows of heaven. I had never observed this phenomenon so remarkable.

The flight of the leaves. 

This was quite local, and it was comparatively still where we sat a few rods on one side. Thousands went up together in a rustling flock. Many of the last oak leaves hang thus ready to go up. 

I noticed two or more similar whirlwinds in the woods elsewhere this afternoon. One took up small twigs and clusters of leaves from the ground, matted together. I could easily see where it ran along with its nose (or point of its tunnel) close to the ground, stirring up the leaves as it travelled, like the snout of some hunting or rooting animal. 

See and hear chewink. 

See a little snake on the dry twigs and chips in the sun, near the arbutus, uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side. It is apparently Coluber amamus (?), except that it has the yellowish ring. 

Luzula campestris. Also the Oryzopsis Canadensis by the Major Heywood path-side, say a day, or April 30th, six inches high or more, with fine bristle-like leaves. 

See a thrasher.

What is that rush at Second Division? It now forms a dense and very conspicuous mass some four rods long and one foot high. The top for three inches is red, and the impression at a little distance is like that made by sorrel. Certainly no plant of this character exhibits such a growth now, i. e. in the mass. It surprises you to see it, carries your thoughts on to June. 

The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1859



The only account of the insects which the State encourages is of the "Insects Injurious to Vegetation.” See April 6, 1857 ("To New Bedford Library. . . Take out Emmons’s Report on the insects injurious to vegetation in New York.

See a plate of the Colias Philodice, or common sulphur-yellow butterfly, male and female of different tinge.”)

It is a turtle day.  See August 28, 1856 ("Has not the great world existed for them as much as for you?”) See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Painted Turtle

A little snake uniformly brown (or reddish-brown) above except a yellowish ring on the occiput, the head also lighter than the body; beneath vermilion, with apparently a row of light dots along each side.  Probably the ring-neck snake (Coluber punctatus) -- slate gray, black or brown back with complete yellow ring just behind the head, bright yellow or rarely orange belly and occasionally small black spots. Snakes of Massachusetts ringneck snake. Compare HDT’s other "Coluber amaenus” snakes, conforming generally to the redbelly snake (Storeria occipitomaculata occipitomaculata):  October 11, 1856 (“It is apparently Coluber amaenus, the red snake. Brown above, light-red beneath, about eight inches long . . . It is a conspicuous light red beneath, then a bluish-gray line along the sides, and above this brown with a line of lighter or yellowish brown down the middle of the back.”); September 9, 1857 ("It was a dark ash-color above, with darker longitudinal lines, light brick-red beneath. There were three triangular buff spots just behind the head, one above and one each side. It is apparently Coluber amaenus”); April 29, 1858 (“A little brown snake with blackish marks along each side of back and a pink belly. Was it not the Coluber amaenus?”)  

The genus Storeria consists of five species, four of which are known as brown snakes, and the other of which is known as the redbelly snake. Most Storeria are a variant of brown in color. They sometimes have a lighter-colored stripe down the center of the back, and small black blotches along the body, and just behind the head. The underside is usually lighter brown-colored, yellow, or in the case of the redbelly snake, reddish in color. They rarely grow beyond 13 inches.

The climbing fern is persistent, i. e. retains its greenness still, though now partly brown and withered. CLIMBING FERN, or Hartford Fern (Lygodium palmatum) . A species of fern found, rarely, from Massachusetts to Kentucky and southward, remarkable for climbing or twining around weeds and shrubs ~ Wikisource. See October 2, 1859 (“The climbing fern is perfectly fresh, — and apparently therefore an evergreen, — the more easily found amid the withered cinnamon and flowering ferns.”); November 30, 1851 (“The Lygodium palmatum is quite abundant on that side of the swamp, twining round the goldenrods”)

I sat in the woods

admiring the beauty of

the blue butterfly. 

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science.

February 18

I have a commonplace-book for facts and another for poetry, but I find it difficult always to preserve the vague distinction which I had in my mind, for the most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry and that is their success. They are translated from earth to heaven. I see that if my facts were sufficiently vital and significant, — perhaps transmuted more into the substance of the human mind, — I should need but one book of poetry to contain them all. 

P. M.— To Fair Haven Hill. 

One discovery in meteorology, one significant observation, is a good deal. I am grateful to the man who introduces order among the clouds. Yet I look up into the heavens so fancy free, I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. 

I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. 

The mosses on the rocks look green where the snow has melted. This must be one of the spring signs, when spring comes. 

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science. The poet's second love may be science, not his first, — when use has worn off the bloom. I realize that men may be born to a condition of mind at which others arrive in middle age by the decay of their poetic faculties.

H. D Thoreau, Journal,  February 18, 1852

The most interesting and beautiful facts are so much the more poetry . See May 6, 1854 (“There is no such thing as pure objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i. e. to be significant, must be subjective. ”); November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”)

I am almost glad not to know any law for the winds. See December 25, 1851 ("I witness a beauty in the form or coloring of the clouds which addresses itself to my imagination, for which you account scientifically to my understanding, but do not so account to my imagination. It is what it suggests and is the symbol of that I care for, and if, by any trick of science, you rob it of its symbolicalness, you do me no service and explain nothing.")  September 13, 1852 (“I have the habit of attention to such excess that my senses get no rest, but suffer from a constant strain. When I have found myself ever looking down and confining my gaze to the flowers, I have thought it might be well to get into the habit of observing the clouds as a corrective; but no! that study would be just as bad. It is as bad to study stars and clouds as flowers and stones.”)

I find the partridges among the fallen pine-tops on Fair Haven these afternoons, an hour before sundown, ready to commence budding in the neighboring orchard. See note to  February 11, 1855 (“The dog scares up some partridges out of the soft snow under the apple trees in the Tommy Wheeler orchard”)

 This must be one of the spring signs.  See  February 18, 1854 (“It does not take so much fuel to keep us warm of late. I begin to think that my wood will last. We begin to have days precursors of spring.”); February 18, 1855 ("Now for the first time decidedly there is something spring-suggesting in the air and light. . . . I listen ever for something springlike in the notes of birds, some peculiar tinkling notes.”) See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau., signs of spring: mosses bright green

It is impossible for the same person to see things from the poet's point of view and that of the man of science. See February 13, 1852 ("Color, which is the poet's wealth is so expensive that most take to mere outline or pencil sketches and become men of science."); February 16, 1852 ("Linnæus says elementa are simple, naturalia composed by divine art. And these two embrace all things on earth. Physics treats of the properties of elementa, natural science of naturalia. . . .By the artificial system we learn the names of plants, by the natural their relations to one another; but still it remains to learn their relation to man. The poet does more for us in this department.");  November 5, 1857 ("I think that the man of science makes this mistake, and the mass of mankind along with him: that you should coolly give your chief attention to the phenomenon which excites you as something independent on you, and not as it is related to you.”); February 28, 1860 ("As it is important to consider Nature from the point of view of science, remembering the nomenclature and system of men, and so, if possible, go a step further in that direction, so it is equally important often to ignore or forget all that men presume that they know, and take an original and unprejudiced view of Nature, letting her make what impression she will on you, as the first men, and all children and natural men still do.")