Henry David Thoreau’s diary, 1861

‘Trees, etc., covered with a dense hoar frost. It is not leaf-like, but composed of large spiculee — spear- like — on the northeast sides of the twigs, the side…

Horace Mann brings me the contents of a crow’s stomach in alcohol. It was killed in the village within a day or two. It is quite a mass of frozen-thawed apple, —…

Coldest morning yet; 20° (?). Pliny says, ‘‘In minimis Natura praestat” (Nature excels in the least things). The Wellingtonia gigantea, the famous California tree,…

More snow last night, and still the first that fell remains on the ground. Rice thinks that it is two feet deep on a level now. We have had no thaw yet. Rice tells…

Horace Mann brings me a screech owl, which was caught in Hastings’s barn on the meeting-house avenue. It had killed a dove there. This is a decidedly gray owl, with…

Coldest day yet; — 22° at least (all we can read), at 8 a. M., and, [so far] as I can learn, not above — 6° all day.

A little thunder and lightning late in the afternoon. I see two flashes and hear two claps. A kitten is so flexible that she is almost double; the hind parts are…

I have just read a book called “Carolina Sports by Land and Water; includmg Incidents of Devil-Fishing, Wild-cat, Deer and Bear Hunting, Ete. By the Hon. Wm.…

2 p.m. — It is very pleasant and warm, and the ground half bare. As Iam walking down the Boston road under the hill this side Clark’s, it occurs to me that I have…

P. M. — Down Boston road under the hill. Air full of bluebirds as yesterday. The sidewalk is bare and almost dry the whole distance under the hill. Turn in at the…

Sunday. Hear that there was a flock of ! Yes, many had been blown bare, for the balls do not fall often. ? Almost entirely fallen March 7th, leaving the dangling…

I just heard peculiar faint sounds made by the air escaping from a stick which I had just put into my stove. It sounded to my ear exactly like the peeping of the…

C.says that Walden is almost entirely open to-day, so that the lines on my map would not strike any ice, but that there is ice in the deep cove. It will be open…

A severe, blocking-up snow-storm.

‘Tree sparrows have warbled faintly for a week. When I pass by a twig of willow, though of the slen- derest kind, rising above the sedge in some dry hollow early in…

A driving northeast snow-storm yesterday and last night, and to-day the drifts are high over the fences and the trains stopped. The Boston train due at 8.30 a. M.…

High water, — up to sixth slat (or gap) above Smith’s second post. It is said to have been some nine inches higher about a month ago, when the snow first went off.…

A drifting snow-storm, perhaps a foot deep on an average. Pratt thought the cowslip was out the 4th.

Am surprised to find the river fallen some nine inches notwithstanding the melted snow. But I read in Blodget that the equivalent in water is about one tenth. Say…

Sunday. Round the two-mile square. I see where the common great tufted sedge (Carex stricta) has started under the water on the meadows, now fast fallmg. The white…

Examine the pitch pines, which have been much gnawed or barked this snowy winter. The marks on them show the fine teeth of the mouse, and they are also nicked as…

Small reddish butterflies common; also, on snow banks, many of the small fuzzy gnats and cicindelee and some large black dor-bug-like beetles. The two latter are…

Purple finch.

Going to law. I hear that Judge Minott of Haverhill once told a client, by way of warning, that two millers who owned mills on the same stream went to law about a…

Horace Mann says that he killed a bullfrog in Walden Pond which had swallowed and contained a common striped snake which measured one foot and eight inches in…

H. Mann brings me the hermit thrush.

Pratt collects very handsome tufts of Hepatica triloba in flower at Melrose, and the bloodroot out also there.

It was high water again about a week ago, — Mann thinks with{in] three or four inches as high as at end of winter. He obtained to-day the buffle-headed duck, diving…

Think I hear bay-wings. Toads ring.

Horace Mann brings me apparently a pigeon hawk. ‘The two middle tail-feathers are not tipped with white and are pomted almost as a wood- pecker’s.

Water in our neighbors’ cellars quite gener- ally. May it not be partly owing to the fact that the ground was not frozen the last winter to any depth, and so the…

H. Mann brings me two small pewees, but not yellowish about eye and bill, and bill is all black. Also a white-throat sparrow, Wilson’s thrush, and myrile- bird.

Hear the seringo note.’ book.]

A boy brings me a salamander from 8S. Ma- son’s. Sent it to Mann. What kind? SET ovT FoR MINNESOTA via Worcester.?

Sunday. In Worcester. Rode to east side of Quinsigamond Pond with Blake and Brown and a dry humorist, a gentleman who has been a sportsman and was well acquainted…

Worcester to Albany. The latter part of the day rainy. The hills come near the railroad between Westfield and Chester Village. Thereafter in Massachusetts they may…

Albany to Suspension Bridge. Albany to Schenectady a level pitch pine plain with also white pine, white birch, and shad-bush in bloom, with hills at last. No…