26 November 1860 – 2 December 1860

P. M. — To E. Hubbard’s Wood. I see in the open field east of Trilltum Wood a few pitch pines springing up, from seeds blown from the wood a dozen or fifteen rods off. Here is one just noticeable on the sod —though by most it would be mistaken for a single sprig of moss —which came from the seed this year. It is, as it were, a little green star with many rays, half an inch in diameter, lifted an inch and a half above the ground on a slender stem. What a feeble begining for so long-lived a tree! By the next fal] it will be a star of greater magnitude, and in a few years, if not disturbed, these seedlings will alter the face of nature here. How significant, how ominous, the presence of these green moss-like stars is to the grass, heralding its doom! Thus from pasture this por- tion of the earth’s surface becomes forest. These which are now mistaken for mosses in the grass may become lofty trees which will endure two hundred years, under which no vestige of this grass will be left. In Hubbard’s Wood at north end I measure the stump of either a red or black oak: 21 inches [in] diam- eter and 141 rings. I examine quite a number of oak stumps thereabouts and find them all seedlings. This, of course, must be the case with old forests generally, for in the beginning the trees were not cut. A red oak about in middle of the wood 64 feet circumference at 3 ft. A canoe birch, 45 inches FE oaireae* Another “ > 454 “6 sé 66 66 66 A white oak on the east side rather toward south, 7 feet * “aos Some of the white oaks have a very loose scaly bark, commencing half a dozen feet from the ground. I see pitch pine bark four to five inches thick at the ground. There are in this wood many little groves of white pines two to four feet high, quite dense and green, but these are in more open spaces, and are vigorous just in proportion to the openness. ‘There are also seedling oaks and chestnuts ten to thirty years old, yet not nearly’ so numerous as the pines. The large wood is mixed oak and pine, — more oak at the north and more pine, especially pitch pine, at the south. The prospect is that in course of time the white pines will very greatly prevail over all other trees here. This is also the case with Inches’, Blood’s, and Wetherbee’s woods. If I am not mistaken, an evidence of more openness where the little pines are is to be found in the greater prevalence of pyrola and lycopodiums there. There are even some healthy Juniperus repens in the midst of these woods. ‘Though the pitch pines are the prevailing trees at the south end, I see no young pitch pmes under them. Perhaps this is the way that a natural succession takes place. Perhaps oak seedlings do not so readily spring up and thrive within a mixed white pine and oak wood as pines do, —in the more open parts, — and thus, as the oaks decay, they are replaced by pines rather than by oaks. But where did the pitch pines stand originally ? Who cleared the land for its seedlings to spring up in? It is commonly referred to very poor and sandy land, yet I find it growing on the best land also. The expression ‘a pitch pine plain”’ is but another name for a poor and sandy level. It grows both on the sand and [in] the swamp, and the fact that it grows on the sand chiefly is not so much evidence that it prefers it as that other trees have excluded it from better soil. If you cut down the pines on the pitch pine plain, oaks will come up there too. Who knows but the fires or clearings of the Indians may have to do with the presence of these trees there? They regularly cleared extensive tracts for cultivation, and these were always level tracts where the soil was light — such as they could turn over with their rude hoes. Such was the land which they are known to have cultivated extensively in this town, as the Great Fields and the rear of Mr. Dennis’s, — sandy plains. It is m such places chiefly that you find their relics in any part of the county. They did not cultivate such soil as our maple swamps occupy, or such a suc- cession of hills and dales as this oak wood covers. Other trees will grow where the pitch pine does, but the former will maintain its ground there the best. I know of no tree so likely to spread rapidly over such areas when abandoned by the aborigines as the pitch pines — and next birches and white pines. While I am walking in the oak wood or counting the rings of a stump, I hear the faint note of a nuthatch like the creak of a limb, and detect [it] on the trunk of an oak much nearer than I suspected, and its mate or companion not far off. This is a constant phenomenon of the late fall or early winter; for we do not hear them in summer that I remember.’ I heard one not long since in the street. I see one of those common birch fungi on the side of a birch stake which has been used to bound a lot sold at auction, three feet or more from the ground, and its face is toward the earth as usual, though the birch is bottom up. IT saw that nuthatch to-day pick out from a crevice in the bark of an oak trunk, where it was perpendicular, something white once or twice and pretty large. May it not have been the meat of an acom? Yet commonly they are steadily hopping about the trunks in search of insect food. Possibly some of those acorn-shells I see about the base of trees may have been dropped from the crevices in the bark above by birds — nuthatch or jay — as well as left by squirrels. Mother says that Lidy Bay, an Indian woman (so considered), used to live in the house beyond Cesar’s and made baskets, which she brought to town to sell, with a ribbon about her hat. She had a husband. The value of these wild fruits is not in the mere pos- session 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, mean- ing that which is wsed 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 un- questionably a very beautiful and palatable fruit, but the gathering of them for the market is not nearly so inter- esting 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 intro- duced into a new world, experiences a new develop- ment, though it brings home only a gill of huckle- berries 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 expe- dition 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. Do not think that the fruits of New England are mean and insignificant, while those of some foreign land are noble and memorable. Our own, whatever they may be, are far more important to us than any others can be. They educate us, and fit us to live in New England. Better for us is the wild strawberry than the pineapple, the wild apple than the orange, the hazelnut or pignut than the cocoanut or almond, and not on account of their flavor merely, but the part they play in our education. In the Massachusetts Historical Collections, First Series, volume x, Rev. John Gardner of Stow furnishes a brief historical notice of that town in a letter dated 1767. He says, “'The Indian names of this place were Pompociticut and Shabbukin, from two notable hills.” I anticipated the other day that if anybody should write the history of Boxboro, once a part of Stow, he would be pretty sure to omit to notice the most in- teresting thing in it — its forest — and lay all the stress on the history of its parish; and I find that I had con- jectured rightly, for Mr. Gardner, after telling us who was his predecessor in the ministry and where he himself was settled, goes on to say: “As for any re- markables, I am of the mind there have been the fewest of any town of our standing in the Province... . I can’t call to mind above one thing worthy of publick notice, and that is the grave of Mr. John Green,” who, it appears, ‘““was made... clerk of the exchequer” by Cromwell. “Whether he was excluded the Act of Oblivion or not I cannot tell,” says Mr. Gardner. At any rate he tells us that he returned to New England, “lived and died, and lies buried in this place.” I can assure Mr. Gardner that he was not excluded from the act of oblivion. However, Boxboro was less peculiar for its woods a hundred years ago. I have been surprised when a young man who had undertaken to write the history of a country town, — his native place, — the very name of which suggested a hundred things to me, referred to it, as the crowning fact of his story, that that town was the residence of General So-and-so and the family mansion was still standing.

P. M. — To Annursnack. Looking from the hilltop, I should say that there was more oak woodland than pine to be seen, especially in the north and northeast, but it is somewhat difficult to distinguish all in the gleaming sunlight of mid- afternoon. Most of the oak, however, is quite young. As for pines, I cannot say surely which kind is most prevalent, not being certain about the most distant woods. The white pine is much the most dispersed, and grows oftener in low ground than the pitch pine does. It oftenest forms mixed woods with oak, etc., growing in straight or meandering lines, occasionally swelling into a dense grove. The pitch pines commonly occupy a dry soil —a plain or brow of a hill, often the site of an old grain-field or pasture — and are much the most seclusive, for, being a new wood, oaks, etc., have had no opportunity to grow up there, if they could. I look down now on the top of a pitch pine wood southwest of Brooks’s Pigeon-place, and its top, so nearly level, has a peculiarly rich and crispy look in the sun. Its limbs are short and its plumes stout as com- pared with the white pine and are of a yellowish green. There are many handsome young walnuts ten or twelve feet high scattered over the southeast side of Annursnack, or above the orchard. How came they there? Were they planted before a wood was cut? It is remarkable how this tree loves a hillside. Behind G. M. Barrett’s barn a scarlet oak stump 184 inches [in] diameter and about 94 rings, which has sent up a sprout two or three years since. On the plain just north of the east end of G. M. B.’s oaks, ~ many oaks were sawed off about a year ago. Those I look at are seedlings and very sound and rings very dis- tinct and handsome. Generally no sprouts from them, though one white oak sprout had been killed by frost. One white oak, 17 inches [in] diameter, has 100 rings. A second, 16k tha “ also 100 “ The last has two centres which coalesced at the thirtieth ring, which went round them both including old bark between them. ‘This was an instance of nat- ural grafting. Many seem to be so constituted that they can respect only somebody who is dead or something which is distant. The less you get, the happier and the richer you are. The rich man’s son gets cocoanuts, and the poor man’s, pignuts; but the worst of it is that the former never goes a-cocoanutting, and so he never gets the cream of the cocoanut as the latter does the cream of the pignut. That on which commerce seizes is always the very coarsest part of a fruit, — the mere husk and rind, in fact, — for her hands are very clumsy. This is what fills the holds of ships, is exported and imported, pays duties, and is finally sold at the shops. It is a grand fact that you cannot make the finer fruits or parts of fruits matter of commerce. You may buy a servant or slave, in short, but you cannot buy a friend. You can’t buy the finer part of any fruit — 72. e. the highest use and enjoyment of it. You cannot buy the pleasure which it yields to him who truly plucks it; you can’t buy a good appetite even. What are all the oranges imported into England to the hips and haws in her hedges? She could easily spare the one, but not the others. Ask Wordsworth, or any of her poets, which is the most to him. The mass of men are very easily imposed on. They have their runways in which they always travel, and are sure to fall into any pit or box trap set therein. What- ever a great many grown-up boys are seriously engaged in is considered great and good, and, as such, is sure of the recognition of the churchman and statesman. What, for instance, are the blue juniper berries in the pasture, which the cowboy remembers so far as they are beauti- ful merely, to church or state? Mere trifles which de- serve and get no protection. As an object of beauty, though significant to all who really live in the country, they do not receive the protection of any community. Anybody may grub up all that exist. But as an article of commerce they command the attention of the civilized world. I read that “several hundred tons of them are imported annually from the continent” into England to flavor gin with; “but even this quantity,” says my author, “‘ is quite insufficient to meet the enormous con- sumption of the fiery liquid, and the deficiency is made up by spirits of turpentine.” Go to the English Govern- ment, which, of course, is representative of the people, and ask, What is the use of juniper berries? The an- swer is, To flavor gin with. This is the gross abuse of juniper berries, with which an enlightened Government — if ever there shall be one — will have nothing to do. Let us make distinctions, call things by the right names.

Get up my boat, 7 a.m. Thin ice of the night is floating down the river. I hear that some boys went on to Goose Pond on the 26th and skated. It must have been thin. P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. The pitch pine twigs have been so generally cut off by the squirrels for the sake of the cones that I easily detect the fertile trees, when going through a pitch pine wood, by seeing the green twigs strewn on the ground beneath. But few of the trees bear, and these are the ones. The Bear Garden pitch pines are so generally open that young pitch pines of all sizes are intermixed with the others. There are many small white pines beside, but few if any seed-bearing ones. I proceed through Potter’s young wood south of this grove (toward Fair Haven Hill-side) and here I find by the stumps what I remember, — that a pitch pine wood was cut, some ten or twelve years ago, judging from the state of the stumps. It was for density, ap- parently, such a grove as now stands northward of this. It is a very poor soil. Shrub oaks chiefly appear to have succeeded to the pines, and now the growth consists of oaks, shrub and others (the latter four to six feet high), pitch pines two to ten feet high, and white birches. The soil is but poorly clad, owing to its barrenness and the prevalence of shrub oak at first. Probably the largest of these young pitch pines were such as stood in the open wood when it was cut —as they now do north- ward; but apparently the majority have been sown since, as others are still being sown by the large pitch pines there are left here and there quite numerously, the ground is still so open and bare on account of the feeble growth of the oaks. The white birches have as yet done the best, the pines next. It will ere long be a mixed oak and pitch pine wood, the pines not standing so dense as in new woods, though pretty thick in spots. This shows how a mixed wood of this character may arise, owing first to the existence of young pitch pines under the old when cut, — the latter being so open as to admit of their growth, — and secondly to the barren soil and shrub oaks, which fail to cover it for a long time, so that even after six or eight years pitch pines may catch there from seed-bearing trees which are left. I am pleased to find an evidence that the pitch pine wood cut down here a dozen years ago was just such a new wood as that now standing on [the] north. It is this. Along the southwest edge of this portion of the lot, where the almost abrupt descent begins, I see many stones which were cast over the edge of the bank in great heaps when it was cultivated. ‘The small pitch pine grove above the western Fair Haven spring fully proves my theory of white pines in pitch pine, though there is hardly a seed-bearing white pine there. Young white pines are rapidly spread- ing up Fair Haven Hill-side, though the nearest seed- bearing white pines are across the river, thirty to sixty rods off. I remember when this hillside above the spring was clear of wood. In fact, I was here when this field was cleared and the brush burned, some thirty-five years ago. Yet I now see a good many hickories both within and without the pines, five feet high, more or less. I feel about sure that these are not from stumps or old roots which have existed in the ground so long. How then did they come here? The[y] even keep in advance of the pines on some sides a rod or two further into the open land. I am constrained to believe that they were planted there by quadrupeds or birds. If so, the wal- nut differs from the oak in the mode of its spreading; for I do not see oaks anywhere thus springing up in groves In grass ground, in advance of pines. It will be worth the while to ascertain the age of these exactly. It is remarkable that the walnut loves a hillside so. I saw such a grove yesterday on Annursnack. Here is another of still larger trees a little lower down the hill; and there is a much more extensive one on the similar slope of Smith’s Hill. Are animals more likely to plant walnuts in open land than acorns? or is it that walnuts are more likely to live there when planted? What a lover of the hills is this tree! I may be mistaken about those on Smith’s Hill, after all. Fair Haven Pond is skimmed over, all but the channel. Can that be the skeleton of a raccoon which I find (killed not long since) on the Cliff Hill? Measured by my book it — the body from shoulder to tail — is 154 inches long; tail, 133; hind leg, 143. Vide skull and foot. If a man has spent all his days about some business, by which he has merely got to be rich, as it is called, 7. e., has got much money, many houses and barns and wood- lots, then his life has been a failure, I think; but if he has been trying to better his condition in a higher sense than this, has been trying to invent something, to be somebody, — 12. e., to invent and get a patent for him- self, —so that all may see his originality, though he should never get above board, — and great inventors, you know, commonly die poor, —I shall think him comparatively successful. From the Cliff I see more oak than pine. Every interest, as the codfish and the mackerel, gets represented but the huckleberry interest. The first discoverers and explorers of the land make report of this fruit, but the last make comparatively little account of them. You would say that some men had been tempted to live in this world at all only by the offer of a bounty by the general government — a bounty on living — to any one who will consent to be out at this era of the world, the object of the governors being to create a nursery for their navy. I told such a man the other day that I had got a Canada lynx here in Concord, and his instant question was, ‘‘ Have you got the reward for him?” What reward? Why, the ten dollars which the State offers. As long as I saw him he neither said nor thought anything about the lynx, but only about this reward. “Yes,”’ said he, ‘‘ this State offers ten dollars reward.” You might have inferred that ten dollars was some- thing rarer in his neighborhood than a lynx even, and he was anxious to see it on that account. I have thought that a lynx was a bright-eyed, four-legged, furry beast of the cat kind, very current, indeed, though its natural gait is by leaps. But he knew it to be a draught drawn by the cashier of the wildcat bank on the State treasury, payable at sight. Then I reflected that the first money was of leather, or a whole creature (whence pecunia, from pecus, a herd), and, since leather was at first furry, I easily understood the connection between a lynx and ten dollars, and found that all money was traceable right back to the original wildcat bank. But the fact was that, instead of receiving ten dollars for the lynx which I had got, I had paid away some dollars in order to get him. So, you see, I was away back in a gray antiquity behind the institution of money, — further than history goes. This reminded me that I once saw a cougar recently killed at the Adirondacks which had had its ears clipped. This was a ten-dollar cougar. Yet, though money can buy no ‘fine fruit whatever, and we are never made truly rich by the possession of it, the value of things generally is commonly estimated by the amount of money they will fetch. A thing is not valuable — e. g. a fine situation for a house — until it is convertible into so much money, that is, can cease to be what it is and become something else which you prefer. So you will see that all prosaic people who possess only the commonest sense, who believe strictly in this kind of wealth, are speculators in fancy stocks and continually cheat themselves, but poets and all discerning people, who have an object in life and know what they want, speculate in real values. The mean and low values of anything depend on it[s] converti- bility into something else —7. e. have nothing to do with its intrinsic value. This world and our life have practically a similar value only to most. The value of life is what anybody will give you for living. A man has his price at the South, is worth so many dollars, and so he has at the North. Many a man here sets out by saying, I will make so many dollars by such a time, or before I die, and that is his price, as much as if he were knocked off for it by a Southern auctioneer. We hear a good deal said about moonshine by so- called practical people, and the next day, perchance, we hear of their failure, they having been dealing in fancy stocks; but there really never is any moonshine of this kind in the practice of poets and philosophers; there never are any hard times or failures with them, for they deal with permanent values.

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. What is most remarkable is that they should be planted so often in open land, on a bare hillside, where oaks rarely are. I do not know of a grove of oaks springing up in this manner, — with broad intervals of bare sward between them, and away from pines. How is this to be accounted for? Yet I did notice oak seedlings coming up in this manner in Potter’s open field beyond Bear Garden. It is wonderful how much these hickories have endured and prevailed over. ‘Though I searched the whole hillside, not only for the smallest, but the most perpendicular and soundest, each of the three that I sawed off had died down once at least, years ago. Though it might not betray any scar above ground, on digging I found it an inch below the surface. Most of these small ones consist of several stems from one root, and they are often of such fantastic forms and so diseased that they seem to be wholly dead at a little distance, and yet evidently many of them make erect, smooth, and sound trees at last, all defects smoothed over or obliterated. Some which have thus died down and sprung up again are in the form of rude harps and the like. These had great tap-roots con- siderably larger just beneath the surface than the stock above, and they were so firmly set in the ground that, though the tree was scarcely an inch in diameter and you had dug around it to the depth of three or four inches, it was impossible to pull one up; yet I did not notice any side roots, so high. They are iron trees, so rigid and so firm set are they. It may be that they are more persistent at the root than oaks, and so at last succeed in becoming trees in these localities where oaks fail. They may be more persevering. Perhaps, also, cattle do not browse them, but do oaks. It will be very suggestive to a novice just to go and dig up a dozen seedling oaks and hickories and see what they have had to contend with. Theirs is like the early career of genius. Measured a great red maple near the south end of E. Hubbard’s swamp, dividing in two at the ground, the largest trunk 7 feet and 10 inches at three feet and draped for three or four feet up with the pulmonaria (? ) lichen. This the largest I know. Another is 54 feet, a third 5}, a fourth in open land just south of turnpike 6}.

P. M. — To Smith’s Hickory Hill-side. I come via Britton’s to see if I can find a seedling hickory under half a dozen years old. After searching long amid the very numerous young hickories at Brit- ton’s shanty and Smith’s Hill I fail to find one so recently planted. I find many at the last place only one or two feet, but they invariably have great roots, and old stubs which have died down are visible at or beneath the surface of the ground. It is very common — almost the rule — to find from one to three from one root each one inch in diameter and two or three feet high, while the common stock beneath the ground is two inches in diameter. Pulling at one at Britton’s, which was two feet and a quarter in height, it came up easily, to my surprise, and I found that it had broken off at just one foot below the surface, being quite decayed there. It was three quarters of an inch in diameter at the surface, and increased regularly for five or six inches downward till it was one inch in diameter. There was the stub of an old shoot, and the root was suddenly enlarged to about one and a half inches in diameter and held about the same to where it broke off, at a foot below the sur- face. There was another stub about three inches above the ground, and the more recent growth above this was the work of about four years. This last had died, and this year two shoots had put out at six and eight inches above the ground and had grown two and four inches respectively. Here were evident, then, at the very least, four efforts to rise to a tree. The first stub was about the diameter of the whole tree at present (above ground). Call it, then, 4 years The second was probably two years old when it died (at least) Q The third (forming the present tree) A The fourth (growth of this year) 1 Il This little hickory, two feet and a quarter high and three quarters of an inch in diameter, standing in open land, was then at least eleven years old. What more the root would have revealed if I had dug deeper, I do not know. The fact that the lowest observed stub was nearly six inches below the surface, showing plainly to the eye that the earth had been heaped up about, was significant and suggested that this root might have survived in the ground through clearing and burning and subsequent cultivation. 1 remember well when the field was cultivated, I should think within ten or twelve years. It must be seventeen or eighteen years since the woods were cut here; since which time a peach orchard (which I selected) has been ~ raised, a premium obtained for it, and the trees died and gone some years ago, also an apple orchard. ‘The hickories are on the site and in the midst of these; and what makes it the more likely that these hickories may be from roots of young seedlings left in the ground is the fact that there are sprouts from several large chestnut stumps in the midst of the orchard, which, by their size, have probably been cut down once or twice since the tree was cut, and yet survived. What is true of - these chestnut sprouts may be true of the hickories. On Smith’s Hill I selected a large and healthy- looking one (hickory), sawed it off, and found it nearly dead. It was four years old. It had been cut down before to a stub, which showed five years more. I did not look beneath the surface. The leading shoot was perfectly withered and dead. The same was very com- monly the case, except when the tree had got above a certain height. I do not think that a single hickory has been planted in either of these places for some years at least. Indeed, why should squirrels bring the nuts to these particular localities where other hickories already stood? which they must do, supposing them to be planted still, and not to be all of one age. They seem to be able to resist fire, cultivation, and frost. The last is apparently their great enemy at present. It is astonishing how many efforts they make, how persistent they are. ‘Thus much is certain, at least. In surrounding young wood they are common, and have got up three or four times as high. It may be that when pine and oaks and hickories, young and old, are cut off and the land cleared, the two former are ex- terminated but the hickories are tough and stubborn and do not give up the ground. I cannot as yet account for their existence in these two localities otherwise. Yet I still think that some must have been planted on Fair Haven Hill without the pines in a manner in which oaks are not, within a dozen years. Or perchance, if the oaks are so planted, they fail to come up? In Stow’s wood at Saw Mill Brook an old chestnut stump. Two sprouts from this were cut three years ago and have forty-two rings. From the stumps of the sprouts, other sprouts three years old have grown. The old stump was cut there forty-five years ago. The centre of the stumps of each of these sprouts is hollow for one and a half inches in diameter. See a chestnut stump, a seedling sawed off, with seventy-five rings and no sprout from it. Commonly the sprouts stand in a circle around the stump, — often a dozen or more of them.