the
succession of forest trees*
by Henry D. Thoreau
[*Footnote: An
address read to the Middlesex Agricultural Society in Concord,
September, 1860.]
Every man is entitled to
come to Cattle-Show, even a transcendentalist; and for my part I am
more interested in the men than in the cattle. I wish to see once
more those old familiar faces, whose names I do not know, which for
me represent the Middlesex country, and come as near being
indigenous to the soil as a white man can; the men who are not above
their business, whose coats are not too black, whose shoes do not
shine very much, who never wear gloves to conceal their hands. It is
true, there are some queer specimens of humanity attracted to our
festival, but all are welcome. I am pretty sure to meet once more
that weak-minded and whimsical fellow, generally weak-bodied too,
who prefers a crooked stick for a cane; perfectly useless, you would
say, only bizarre, fit for a cabinet, like a petrified snake.
A ram's horn would be as convenient, and is yet more curiously
twisted. He brings that much indulged bit of the country with him,
from some town's end or other, and introduces it to Concord groves,
as if he had promised it so much sometime. So some, it seems to me,
elect their rulers for their crookedness. But I think that a
straight stick makes the best cane, and an upright man the best
ruler. Or why choose a man to do plain work who is distinguished for
his oddity? However, I do not know but you will think that they have
committed this mistake who invited me to speak to you to-day.
In my capacity of
surveyor, I have often talked with some of you, my employers, at
your dinner-tables, after having gone round and round and behind
your farming, and ascertained exactly what its limits were.
Moreover, taking a surveyor's and a naturalist's liberty, I have
been in the habit of going across your lots much oftener than is
usual, as many of you, perhaps to your sorrow, are aware. Yet many
of you, to my relief, have seemed not to be aware of it; and, when I
came across you in some out-of-the-way nook of your farms, have
inquired, with an air of surprise, if I were not lost, since you had
never seen me in that part of the town or county before; when, if
the truth were known, and it had not been for betraying my secret, I
might with more propriety have inquired if you were not lost,
since I had never seen you there before. I have several times
shown the proprietor the shortest way out of his wood-lot.
Therefore, it would
seem that 1 have some title to speak to you to-day; and considering
what that title is, and the occasion that has called us together, I
need offer no apology if I invite your attention, for the few
moments that are allotted me, to a purely scientific subject.
At those
dinner-tables referred to, I have often been asked, as many of you
have been, if I could tell how it happened, that when a pine wood
was cut down an oak one commonly sprang up, and vice versa.
To which I have answered, and now answer, that I can tell,–that it
is no mystery to me. As I am not aware that this has been clearly
shown by any one, I shall lay the more stress on this point. Let me
lead you back into your wood-lots again.
When, hereabouts, a
single forest tree or a forest springs up naturally where none of
its kind grew before, I do not hesitate to say, though in some
quarters still it may sound paradoxical, that it came from a seed.
Of the various ways by which trees are known to be
propagated,—by
transplanting, cuttings, and the like,—this
is the only supposable one under these circumstances. No such tree
has ever been known to spring from anything else. If any one asserts
that it sprang from something else, or from nothing, the burden of
proof lies with him.
It remains, then,
only to show how the seed is transported from where it grows to
where it is planted. This is done chiefly by the agency of the wind,
water, and animals. The lighter seeds, as those of pines and maples,
are transported chiefly by wind and water; the heavier, as acorns
and nuts, by animals.
In all the pines, a
very thin membrane, in appearance much like an insect's wing, grows
over and around the seed, and independent of it, while the latter is
being developed within its base. Indeed this is often perfectly
developed, though the seed is abortive; nature being, you would say,
more sure to provide the means of transporting the seed, than to
provide the seed to be transported. In other words, a beautiful thin
sack is woven around the seed, with a handle to it such as the wind
can take hold of, and it is then committed to the wind, expressly
that it may transport the seed and extend the range of the species;
and this it does, as effectually as when seeds are sent by mail in a
different kind of sack from the Patent Office. There is a
patent-office at the seat of government of the universe, whose
managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as
anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely
more extensive and regular.
There is then no
necessity for supposing that the pines have sprung up from nothing,
and I am aware that I am not at all peculiar in asserting that they
come from seeds, though the mode of their propagation by nature
has been but little attended to. They are very extensively raised
from the seed in Europe, and are beginning to be here.
When you cut down
an oak wood, a pine wood will not at once spring up there
unless there are, or have been quite recently, seed-bearing pines
near enough for the seeds to be blown from them. But, adjacent to a
forest of pines, if you prevent other crops from growing there, you
will surely have an extension of your pine forest, provided the soil
is suitable.
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.
Every one of these
seeds, too, will be found to be winged or legged in another fashion.
Surely it is not wonderful that cherry trees of all kinds are widely
dispersed, since their fruit is well known to be the favorite food
of various birds. Many kinds are called bird cherries, and they
appropriate many more kinds, which are not so called. Eating
cherries is a bird-like employment, and unless we disperse the seeds
occasionally, as they do, I shall think that the birds have the best
right to them. See how artfully the seed of a cherry is placed in
order that a bird may be compelled to transport it,—in
the very midst of a tempting pericarp, so that the creature that
would devour this must commonly take the stone also into its mouth
or bill. If you ever ate a cherry, and did not make two bites of it,
you must have perceived it,—right
in the centre of the luscious morsel, a large earthy residuum left
on the tongue. We thus take into our mouths cherry stones as big as
peas, a dozen at once, for Nature can persuade us to do almost
anything when she would compass her ends. Some wild men and children
instinctively swallow these, as the birds do when in a hurry, it
being the shortest way to get rid of them. Thus, though these seeds
are not provided with vegetable wings, Nature has impelled the
thrush tribe to take them into their bills and fly away with them;
and they are winged in another sense, and more effectually than the
seeds of pines, for these are carried even against the wind. The
consequence is, that cherry-trees grow not only here but there. The
same is true of a great many other seeds.
But to come to the
observation which suggested these remarks. As I have said, I suspect
that I can throw some light on the fact, that when hereabouts a
dense pine wood is cut down, oaks and other hard woods may at once
take its place. I have got only to show that the acorns and nuts,
provided they are grown in the neighborhood, are regularly planted
in such woods; for I assert that if an oak-tree has not grown within
ten miles, and man has not carried acorns thither, then an oak wood
will not spring up at once, when a pine wood is cut down.
Apparently, there
were only pines there before. They are cut off, and after a year or
two you see oaks and other hard woods springing up there, with
scarcely a pine amid them, and the wonder commonly is, how the seed
could have lain in the ground so long without decaying. But the
truth is, that it has not lain in the ground so long, but is
regularly planted each year by various quadrupeds and birds.
In this
neighborhood, where oak and pines are about equally dispersed, if
you look through the thickest pine wood, even the seemingly unmixed
pitch-pine ones, you will commonly detect many little oaks, birches,
and other hard woods, sprung from seeds carried into the thicket by
squirrels and other animals, and also blown thither, but which are
overshadowed and choked by the pines. The denser the evergreen wood,
the more likely it is to be well planted with these seeds, because
the planters incline to resort with their forage to the closest
covert. They also carry it into birch and other woods. This planting
is carried on annually, and the oldest seedlings annually die; but
when the pines are cleared off, the oaks, having got just the start
they want, and now secured favorable conditions, immediately spring
up to trees.
The shade of a
dense pine wood is more unfavorable to the springing up of pines of
the same species than of oaks within it, though the former may come
up abundantly when the pines are cut, if there chance to be sound
seed in the ground.
But when you cut
off a lot of hard wood, very often the little pines mixed with it
have a similar start, for the squirrels have carried off the nuts to
the pines, and not to the more open wood, and they commonly make
pretty clean work of it; and moreover, if the wood was old, the
sprouts will be feeble or entirely fail; to say nothing about the
soil being, in a measure, exhausted for this kind of crop.
If a pine wood is
surrounded by a white oak one chiefly, white oaks may be expected to
succeed when the pines are cut. If it is surrounded instead by an
edging of shrub-oaks, then you will probably have a dense shrub-oak
thicket.
I have no time to
go into details, but will say, in a word, that while the wind is
conveying the seeds of pines into hard woods and open lands, the
squirrels and other animals are conveying the seeds of oaks and
walnuts into the pine woods, and thus a rotation of crops is kept
up.
I affirmed this
confidently many years ago, and an occasional examination of dense
pine woods confirmed me in my opinion. It has long been known to
observers that squirrels bury nuts in the ground, but I am not aware
that any one has thus accounted for the regular succession of
forests.
On the 24th of
September, in 1857, as I was paddling down the Assabet, in this
town, I saw a red squirrel run along the bank under some herbage,
with something large in its mouth. It stopped near the foot of a
hemlock, within a couple of rods of me, and, hastily pawing a hole
with its forefeet, dropped its booty into it, covered it up, and
retreated part way up the trunk of the tree. As I approached the
shore to examine the deposit, the squirrel, descending part way,
betrayed no little anxiety about its treasure, and made two or three
motions to recover it before it finally retreated. Digging there, I
found two green pig-nuts joined together, with the thick husks on,
buried about an inch and a half under the reddish soil of decayed
hemlock leaves,—just
the right depth to plant it. In short, this squirrel was then
engaged in accomplishing two objects, to wit, laying up a store of
winter food for itself, and planting a hickory wood for all
creation. If the squirrel was killed, or neglected its deposit, a
hickory would spring up. The nearest hickory-tree was twenty rods
distant. These nuts were there still just fourteen days later, but
were gone when I looked again, November 21st, or six weeks later
still.
I have since
examined more carefully several dense woods, which are said to be,
and are apparently, exclusively pine, and always with the same
result. For instance, I walked the same day to a small, but very
dense and handsome white-pine grove, about fifteen rods square, in
the east part of this town. The trees are large for Concord, being
from ten to twenty inches in diameter, and as exclusively pine as
any wood that I know. Indeed, I selected this wood because I thought
it the least likely to contain anything else. It stands on an open
plain or pasture, except that it adjoins another small pine wood,
which has a few little oaks in it, on the southeast side. On every
other side, it was at least thirty rods from the nearest woods.
Standing on the edge of this grove and looking through it, for it is
quite level and free from underwood, for the most part bare,
red-carpeted ground, you would have said that there was not a
hard-wood tree in it, young or old. But on looking carefully along
over its floor I discovered, though it was not till my eye had got
used to the search, that, alternating with thin ferns, and small
blueberry bushes, there was, not merely here and there, but as often
as every five feet and with a degree of regularity, a little oak,
from three to twelve inches high, and in one place I found a green
acorn dropped by the base of a pine.
I confess I was
surprised to find my theory so perfectly proved in this case. One of
the principal agents in this planting, the red squirrels, were all
the while curiously inspecting me, while I was inspecting their
plantation. Some of the little oaks had been browsed by cows, which
resorted to this wood for shade.
After seven or
eight years, the hard woods evidently find such a locality
unfavorable to their growth, the pines being allowed to stand. As an
evidence of this, I observed a diseased red-maple twenty-five feet
long, which had been recently prostrated, though it was still
covered with green leaves, the only maple in any position in the
wood.
But although these
oaks almost invariably die if the pines are not cut down, it is
probable that they do better for a few years under their shelter
than they would anywhere else.
The very extensive
and thorough experiments of the English have at length led them to
adopt a method of raising oaks almost precisely like this, which
somewhat earlier had been adopted by nature and her squirrels here;
they have simply rediscovered the value of pines as nurses for oaks.
The English experimenters seem, early and generally, to have found
out the importance of using trees of some kind as nurse-plants for
the young oaks. I quote from Loudon what he describes as "the
ultimatum on the subject of planting and sheltering oaks,"—"an
abstract of the practice adopted by the government officers in the
national forests" of England, prepared by Alexander Milne.
At first some oaks
had been planted by themselves, and others mixed with Scotch pines;
"but in all cases," says Mr. Milne, "where oaks were
planted actually among the pines and surrounded by them [though the
soil might be inferior], the oaks were found to be much the
best." " For several years past, the plan pursued has been
to plant the inclosures with Scotch pines only [a tree very similar
to our pitch-pine], and when the pines have got to the height of
five or six feet, then to put in good strong oak plants of about
four or five years' growth among the pines,—not
cutting away any pines at first, unless they happen to be so strong
and thick as to overshadow the oaks. In about two years it becomes
necessary to shred the branches of the pines, to give light and air
to the oaks, and in about two or three more years to begin gradually
to remove the pines altogether, taking out a certain number each
year, so that, at the end of twenty or twenty-five years, not a
single Scotch pine shall be left; although, for the first ten or
twelve years, the plantation may have appeared to contain nothing
else but pine. The advantage of this mode of planting has been found
to be that the pines dry and ameliorate the soil, destroying the
coarse grass and brambles which frequently choke and injure oaks;
and that no mending over is necessary, as scarcely an oak so planted
is found to fail."
Thus much the
English planters have discovered by patient experiment, and, for
aught I know, they have taken out a patent for it; but they appear
not to have discovered that it was discovered before, and that they
are merely adopting the method of Nature, which she long ago made
patent to all. She is all the while planting the oaks amid the pines
without our knowledge, and at last, instead of government officers,
we send a party of wood-choppers to cut down the pines, and so
rescue an oak forest, at which we wonder as if it had dropped from
the skies.
As I walk amid
hickories, even in August, I hear the sound of green pig-nuts
falling from time to time, cut off by the chickaree over my head. In
the fall, I notice on the ground, either within or in the
neighborhood of oak woods, on all sides of the town, stout oak twigs
three or four inches long, bearing half a dozen empty acorn-cups,
which twigs have been gnawed off by squirrels, on both sides of the
nuts, in order to make them more portable. The jays scream and the
red squirrels scold while you are clubbing and shaking the
chestnut-trees, for they are there on the same errand, and two of a
trade never agree. I frequently see a red or gray squirrel cast down
a green chestnut-bur, as I am going through the woods, and I used to
think, sometimes, that they were cast at me. In fact, they are so
busy about it, in the midst of the chestnut season, that you cannot
stand long in the woods without hearing one fall. A sportsman told
me that he had, the day before,—that
was in the middle of October,—seen
a green chestnut-bur dropped on our great river meadow, fifty rods
from the nearest wood, and much further from the nearest
chestnut-tree, and he could not tell how it came there.
Occasionally, when chestnutting in midwinter, I find thirty or forty
nuts in a pile, left in its gallery, just under the leaves, by the
common wood mouse (Mus leucopus).
But especially, in
the winter, the extent to which this transportation and planting of
nuts is carried on is made apparent by the snow. In almost every
wood, you will see where the red or gray squirrels have pawed down
through the snow in a hundred places, sometimes two feet deep, and
almost always directly to a nut or a pine cone, as directly as if
they had started from it and bored upward,—which
you and I could not have done. It would be difficult for us to find
one before the snow falls. Commonly, no doubt, they had deposited
them there in the fall. You wonder if they remember the localities,
or discover them by the scent. The red squirrel commonly has its
winter abode in the earth under a thicket of evergreens, frequently
under a small clump of evergreens in the midst of a deciduous wood.
If there are any nut-trees, which still retain their nuts, standing
at a distance without the wood, their paths often lead directly to
and from them. We therefore need not suppose an oak standing here
and there in the wood in order to seed it, but if a few stand within
twenty or thirty rods of it, it is sufficient.
I think that I may
venture to say that every white-pine cone that falls to the earth
naturally in this town, before opening and losing its seeds, and
almost every pitch-pine one that falls at all, is cut off by a
squirrel, and they begin to pluck them long before they are ripe, so
that when the crop of white-pine cones is a small one, as it
commonly is, they cut off thus almost every one of these before it
fairly ripens. I think, moreover, that their design, if I may so
speak, in cutting them off green, is, partly, to prevent their
opening and losing their seeds, for these are the ones for which
they dig through the snow, and the only white-pine cones which
contain anything then. I have counted in one heap, within a diameter
of four feet, the cores of 239 pitch-pine cones which had been cut
off and stripped by the red squirrel the previous winter.
The nuts thus left
on the surface, or buried just beneath it, are placed in the most
favorable circumstances for germinating. I have sometimes wondered
how those which merely fell on the surface of the earth got planted;
but, by the end of December, I find the chestnut of the same year
partially mixed with the mould, as it were, under the decaying and
mouldy leaves, where there is all the moisture and manure they want,
for the nuts fall fast. In a plentiful year, a large proportion of
the nuts are thus covered loosely an inch deep, and are, of course,
somewhat concealed from squirrels. One winter, when the crop had
been abundant, I got, with the aid of a rake, many quarts of these
nuts as late as the tenth of January, and though some bought at the
store the same day were more than half of them mouldy, I did not
find a single mouldy one among these which I picked from under the
wet and mouldy leaves, where they had been snowed on once or twice.
Nature knows how to pack them best. They were still plump and
tender. Apparently, they do not heat there, though wet. In the
spring they were all sprouting.
Loudon says that
" when the nut [of the common walnut of Europe] is to be
preserved through the winter for the purpose of planting in the
following spring, it should be laid in a rot-heap, as soon as
gathered, with the husk on, and the heap should be turned over
frequently in the course of the winter."
Here, again, he is
stealing Nature's "thunder." How can a poor mortal do
otherwise? for it is she that finds fingers to steal with, and the
treasure to be stolen. In the planting of the seeds of most trees,
the best gardeners do no more than follow Nature, though they may
not know it. Generally, both large and small ones are most sure to
germinate, and succeed best, when only beaten into the earth with
the back of a spade, and then covered with leaves or straw. These
results to which planters have arrived remind us of the experience
of Kane and his companions at the North, who, when learning to live
in that climate, were surprised to find themselves steadily adopting
the customs of the natives, simply becoming Esquimaux. So, when we
experiment in planting forests, we find ourselves at last doing as
Nature does. Would it not be well to consult with Nature in the
outset? for she is the most extensive and experienced planter of us
all, not excepting the Dukes of Athol.
In short, they who
have not attended particularly to this subject are but little aware
to what an extent quadrupeds and birds are employed, especially in
the fall, in collecting, and so disseminating and planting the seeds
of trees. It is the almost constant employment of the squirrels at
that season, and you rarely meet with one that has not a nut in its
mouth, or is not just going to get one. One squirrel-hunter of this
town told me that he knew of a walnut-tree which bore particularly
good nuts, but that on going to gather them one fall, he found that
he had been anticipated by a family of a dozen red squirrels. He
took out of the tree, which was hollow, one bushel and three pecks
by measurement, without the husks, and they supplied him and his
family for the winter. It would be easy to multiply instances of
this kind. How commonly in the fall you see the cheek-pouches of the
striped squirrel distended by a quantity of nuts! This species gets
its scientific name, Tamias, or the steward, from its habit
of storing up nuts and other seeds. Look under a nut-tree a month
after the nuts have fallen, and see what proportion of sound nuts to
the abortive ones and shells you will find ordinarily. They have
been already eaten, or dispersed far and wide. The ground looks like
a platform before a grocery, where the gossips of the village sit to
crack nuts and less savory jokes. You have come, you would say,
after the feast was over, and are presented with the shells only.
Occasionally, when
threading the woods in the fall, you will hear a sound as if some
one had broken a twig, and, looking up, see a jay pecking at an
acorn, or you will see a flock of them at once about it, in the top
of an oak, and hear them break them off. They then fly to a suitable
limb, and placing the acorn under one foot, hammer away at it
busily, making a sound like a woodpecker's tapping, looking round
from time to time to see if any foe is approaching, and soon reach
the meat, and nibble at it, holding up their heads to swallow, while
they hold the remainder very firmly with their claws. Nevertheless
it often drops to the ground before the bird has done with it. I can
confirm what William Bartram wrote to Wilson, the ornithologist,
that "The jay is one of the most useful agents in the economy
of nature, for disseminating forest trees and other nuciferous and
hard-seeded vegetables on which they feed. Their chief employment
during the autumnal season is foraging to supply their winter
stores. In performing this necessary duty they drop abundance of
seed in their flight over fields, hedges, and by fences, where they
alight to deposit them in the post-holes, etc. It is remarkable what
numbers of young trees rise up in fields and pastures after a wet
winter and spring. These birds alone are capable, in a few years'
time, to replant all the cleared lands."
I have noticed that
squirrels also frequently drop their nuts in open land, which will
still further account for the oaks and walnuts which spring up in
pastures, for, depend on it, every new tree comes from a seed. When
I examine the little oaks, one or two years old, in such places, I
invariably find the empty acorn from which they sprung.
So far from the
seed having lain dormant in the soil since oaks grew there before,
as many believe, it is well known that it is difficult to preserve
the vitality of acorns long enough to transport them to Europe; and
it is recommended in Loudon's "Arboretum," as the safest
course, to sprout them in pots on the voyage. The same authority
states that "very few acorns of any species will germinate
after having been kept a year," that beech mast "only
retains its vital properties one year," and the black-walnut
"seldom more than six months after it has ripened." I have
frequently found that in November, almost every acorn left on the
ground had sprouted or decayed. What with frost, drouth, moisture,
and worms, the greater part are soon destroyed. Yet it is stated by
one botanical writer that "acorns that have lain for centuries,
on being ploughed up, have soon vegetated."
Mr. George B.
Emerson, in his valuable Report on the Trees and Shrubs of this
State, says of tile pines: "The tenacity of life of the seeds
is remarkable. They will remain for many years unchanged in the
ground, protected by the coolness and deep shade of the forest above
them. But when the forest is removed, and the warmth of the sun
admitted, they immediately vegetate." Since he does not tell us
on what observation his remark is founded, I must doubt its truth.
Besides, the experience of nursery-men makes it the more
questionable.
The stories of
wheat raised from seed buried with an ancient Egyptian, and of
raspberries raised from seed found in the stomach of a man in
England, who is supposed to have died sixteen or seventeen hundred
years ago, are generally discredited, simply because the evidence is
not conclusive.
Several men of
science, Dr. Carpenter among them, have used the statement that
beach-plums sprang up in sand which was dug up forty miles inland in
Maine, to prove that the seed had lain there a very long time, and
some have inferred that the coast has receded so far. But it seems
to me necessary to their argument to show, first, that beach-plums
grow only on a beach. They are not uncommon here,which is about half
that distance from the shore; and I remember a dense patch a few
miles north of us, twenty-five miles inland, from which the fruit
was annually carried to market. How much further inland they grow, I
know not. Dr. Charles T. Jackson speaks of finding
"beach-plums" (perhaps they were this kind) more than one
hundred miles inland in Maine.
It chances that
similar objections lie against all the more notorious instances of
the kind on record.
Yet I am prepared
to believe that some seeds, especially small ones, may retain their
vitality for centuries under favorable circumstances. In the spring
of 1859, the old Hunt House, so called, in this town, whose chimney
bore the date 1703, was taken down. This stood on land which
belonged to John Winthrop, the first Governor of Massachusetts, and
a part of the house was evidently much older than the above date,
and belonged to the Winthrop family. For many years I have ransacked
this neighborhood for plants, and I consider myself familiar with
its productions. Thinking of the seeds which are said to be
sometimes dug up at an unusual depth in the earth, and thus to
reproduce long extinct plants, it occurred to me last fall that some
new or rare plants might have sprung up in the cellar of this house,
which had been covered from the light so long. Searching there on
the 22d of September, I found, among other rank weeds, a species of
nettle (Urtica urens) which I had not found before; dill,
which I had not seen growing spontaneously; the Jerusalem oak (Chenopodium
botrys), which I had seen wild in but one place; black
nightshade (Solanum nigrum), which is quite rare hereabouts,
and common tobacco, which, though it was often cultivated here in
the last century, has for fifty years been an unknown plant in this
town, and a few months before this not even I had heard that one
man, in the north part of the town, was cultivating a few plants for
his own use. I have no doubt that some or all of these plants sprang
from seeds which had long been buried under or about that house, and
that that tobacco is an additional evidence that the plant was
formerly cultivated here. The cellar has been filled up this year,
and four of those plants, including the tobacco, are now again
extinct in that locality.
It is true, I have
shown that the animals consume a great part of the seeds of trees,
and so, at least, effectually prevent their becoming trees; but in
all these cases, as I have said, the consumer is compelled to be at
the same time the disperser and planter, and this is the tax which
he pays to nature. I think it is Linnæus who says that while the
swine is rooting for acorns he is planting acorns.
Though I do not
believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have
great faith in a seed–a, to me, equally mysterious origin for it.
Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect
wonders. I shall even believe that the millennium is at hand, and
that the reign of justice is about to commence, when the Patent
Office, or Government, begins to distribute, and the people to
plant, the seeds of these things.
In the spring of
1857 I planted six seeds sent to me from the Patent Office, and
labeled, I think, Poitrine jaune grosse, large yellow squash.
Two came up, and one bore a squash which weighed 123 1/2 pounds, the
other bore four, weighing together 186 1/4 pounds. Who would have
believed that there was 310 pounds of poitrine jaune grosse
in that corner of my garden? These seeds were the bait I used to
catch it, my ferrets which I sent into its burrow, my brace of
terriers which unearthed it. A little mysterious hoeing and manuring
was all the abracadabra presto-change that I used, and lo!
true to the label, they found for me 310 pounds of poitrine jaune
grosse there, where it never was known to be, nor was before.
These talismen had perchance sprung from America at first, and
returned to it with unabated force. The big squash took a premium at
your fair that fall, and I understood that the man who bought it,
intended to sell the seeds for ten cents a piece. (Were they not
cheap at that?) But I have more hounds of the same breed. I learn
that one which I despatched to a distant town, true to its
instincts, points to the large yellow squash there, too, where no
hound ever found it before, as its ancestors did here and in France.
Other seeds I have
which will find other things in that corner of my garden, in like
fashion, almost any fruit you wish, every year for ages, until the
crop more than fills the whole garden. You have but little more to
do than throw up your cap for entertainment these American days.
Perfect alchemists I keep who can transmute substances without end,
and thus the corner of my garden is an inexhaustible treasure-chest.
Here you can dig, not gold, but the value which gold merely
represents; and there is no Signor Blitz about it. Yet farmers' sons
will stare by the hour to see a juggler draw ribbons from his
throat, though he tells them it is all deception. Surely, men love
darkness rather than light.
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A
Note on the Text:
-
1st
published in the New-York Weekly Tribune (6 October
1860).
-
Source:
Excursions and Poems [The Writings of Henry David Thoreau
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906) p. [184]-204]
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