THIS DATE, FROM HENRY DAVID THOREAU'S JOURNAL

January 17, 1860

I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [you] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neighboring tree, and so I lost him. Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. There are many holes though the snow into the ground, and many more where they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark-fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. 

 

January 3, 1860

Saw four snow buntings by the railroad causeway, just this side the cut, quite tame. They arose and alighted on the rail fence as we went by. Very stout for their length. Look very pretty when they fly and reveal the clear white space on their wings next the body, - white between the blacks. They were busily eating the seed of the piper grass on the embankment there, and it was strewn over the snow by them like oats in a stable. Melvin speaks of seeing flocks of them on the river meadows in the fall, when they are of a different color.

December 1, 1860

P. M. - To Fair Haven Hill.

Yesterday, rain, raising river somewhat. Examined the young hickories on Fair Haven Hill slope to see how old they are. I sawed off three at two or three inches below the surface, and also higher up. These were about three feet high. The rings are very hard to discern, but I judge the smallest of them (which is about one inch in diameter and three feet high) to be seven years old. The other two are probably older, yet not nearly so old as the pines whose beginning I remember. It therefore must be that these hickories have sprung up from nuts within seven to twenty-five years past. They are most numerous in openings four or five rods over amid the pines, and are also found many rods from the pines in the open pasture, and also especially along walls, though yet very far from other trees of any kind. I infer, therefore, that animals plant them, and perhaps their growing along walls may be accounted for in part by the fact that the squirrels with nuts oftenest take that road.

November 26, 1860

The value of these wild fruits is not in the mere possession or eating of them, but in the sight or enjoyment of them. The very derivation of the word “fruit” would suggest this. It is from the Latin fructus, meaning that which is used or enjoyed. If it were not so, then going a berrying and going to market would be nearly synonymous expressions. Of course it is the spirit in which you do a thing which makes it interesting, whether it is sweeping a room or pulling turnips. Peaches are unquestionably a very beautiful and palatable fruit, but the gathering of them for the market is not nearly so interesting as the gathering of huckleberries for your own use.

A man fits out a ship at a great expense and sends it to the West Indies with a crew of men and boys, and after six months or a year it comes back with a load of pineapples. Now, if no more gets accomplished than the speculator commonly aims at, - if it simply turns out what is called a successful venture, - I am less interested in this expedition than in some child’s first excursion a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world, experiences a new development, though it brings home only a gill of huckleberries in its basket. I know that the newspapers and the politicians declare otherwise, but they do not alter the fact. Then, I think that the fruit of the latter expedition was finer than that of the former. It was a more fruitful expedition. The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it. If a New England boy’s dealings with oranges and pineapples have had more to do with his development than picking huckleberries or pulling turnips have, then he rightly and naturally thinks more of the former; otherwise not.

November 17, 1860

I frequently see the heads of teasel, called fuller’s thistle, floating on our river, having come from factories above, and thus the factories which use it may distribute its seeds by means of the streams which turn their machinery, from one to another. The one who first cultivated the teasel extensively in this town is said to have obtained the seed when it was not to be purchased - the culture being monopolized - by sweeping a wagon which he had loaned to a teasel-raiser.

November 16, 1860

Here, too, coming to water, I see the swamp white oak rising out of it, elm-like in its bark and trunk. Red maples also appear here with them. It is interesting to see thus how surely the character of the ground determines the growth. It is evident that in a wood that has been let alone for the longest period the greatest regularity and harmony in the disposition of the trees will be observed, while in our ordinary woods man has often interfered and favored the growth of other kinds than are best fitted to grow there naturally. To some, which he does not want, he allows no place at all.

November 13, 1860

On top of Mt. Misery looked again at those old stumps (of the 18th). there are three or four quite plain, just showing themselves above the surface, with rounded, flaky, decaying and crumbling edge, close to the recent stump of the shoot or shoots which sprang from them and which were cut last winter. One of these recent stumps, counted to-night, gives sixty years, but the first two or three are uncertain. Hence this old stump is as old as the century.

There are several perfectly dry and exposed stumps on bare rocky shelves, or else lying on rocks on their sides, quite well preserved and showing the marks of the axe, while I have but little doubt are of the same age, preserved by being tipped out of the earth many years ago.

October 25, 1860

Dug up and brought home last night three English cherry trees from Heywood’s Peak by Walden. There are a dozen or more there, and several are as handsome as any that you will find in a nursery. They remind me of some much larger which used to stand above the cliffs. This species too comes up in sprout-lands like the wild rum cherry. The amount of it is that such a tree, whose fruit is a favorite with birds, will spring up far and wide and wherever the earth is bared of trees, but since the frost overpowers and destroys them, and also cultivation, they are only found young in sprout-lands or grown up along fences. It looks as if this species preferred a hilltop. Whether the birds are more inclined to convey the seeds there or they find the light and exposure and the soil there which they prefer. These have each one great root, somewhat like a long straight horn, making a right angle with the stem and running far off one side close to the surface.

October 19, 1860

P. M. - To Conantum.

Indian-summer-like and gossamer.

That white oak in Hubbard Grove which on the 7th was full of those glossy black acorns is still hanging full, to my surprise. Suspecting the cause, I proceed to cut them open, and find that they are all decayed or decaying. Even if not black within, they are already sour and softened. Yet Rice told me that he collected from this tree about a week ago some thousands of acorns and planted them in Sudbury. I can tell him that probably not more than half a dozen of them were alive, though they may then have looked well, as they do now externally. First, then, I was surprised at the abundance of the crop this year. Secondly, by the time I had got accustomed to that fact I was surprised at the vast proportion that were killed, apparently by frost. The squirrels are wiser than to gather these, but I see where they have gathered many black oak acorns, the ground beneath being strewn with their cups, which have each a piece bitten out in order to get out the acorn. I suspect that black and red oak acorns are not so easily injured by frost. Indeed, I find this to be the case as far as I look.

Sophia tells me that the large swamp white oak acorns in their cups, which she gathered a fortnight ago, are now all mouldy about the cups, or base of the acorn.

It is a remarkable fact, and looks like a glaring imperfection in Nature, that the labor of the oaks for the year should be lost to this extent. The softening or freezing of cranberries, the rotting of potatoes, etc., etc., seem trifling in comparison. The pigeons, jays, squirrels, and woodlands are thus impoverished. It is hard to say what great purpose is served by this seeming waste.

October 17, 1860

You would say that the squirrels, etc., went further for chestnuts than for acorns in proportion as they were a greater rarity. I suspect that a squirrel may convey them sometimes a quarter or a half a mile even, and no doubt as soon as a young chestnut fifteen or twenty feet high, far advanced beyond the chestnut woods, bears a single bur, which no man discovers, a squirrel or bird is almost sure to gather it and plant it in that neighborhood or still further forward. A squirrel goes a-chestnutting perhaps as far as the boys do, and when he gets there he does not have to shake or club the tree or wait for frost to open the burs; he walks [?] up to the bur and cuts it off, and strews the ground with them before they have opened. And the fewer they are in the wood the more certain it is that he will appropriate every one, for it is no transient afternoon’s picnic with him, but the pursuit of his life, a harvest that he gets as surely as the farmer his corn.