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Wild Fruits: Last of Six Sections (pp. 199-239)
{Page 199 continued} SWEET GALE
{001} {MS}
Sweet gale, September twenty-second.
{002} September 22, 1860. Is
yet green, but perhaps it is ripe.
{003} January 25, 1855. I find
an abundance of the seeds of the sweet gale in windrows frozen into the ice of the river
meadows as I return (from Fair Haven Pond), which were washed out by the freshet. I color
my fingers with them. And thus they are planted there, somewhat perhaps in waving lines as
they wash up.
{004} {MS}
March 5, 1854. In the upper Nut Meadow the sweet gale grows rankly along the edges of the
brook, slanted over the water almost horizontally, so as frequently to meet and conceal
the water altogether.
{005} It is here a dark and
sluggish water, comparatively shallow with a muddy bottom. This sweet gale is now full of
fruit. This and the water andromeda—wild plants, as it were, driven to the
water’s edge by the white man.
{006} {Page 200} {MS}
December 14, 1850. {Note}
On one of the islands in Loring’s Pond I found a low-branching shrub frozen into
the ice near its edge with a fine spicy scent, somewhat like sweet fern, and a handsome
imbricated bud (staminate). When I rubbed the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it felt
greasy and stained them a permanent yellow which I could not wash out. It lasted several
days and my fingers smelled medicinally.
{007} August 28, 1859. Saw
sweet gale fruit begin to yellow. {Note}
{008} August 19, 1851. The
fruit of the sweet gale by Nut Meadow Brook is now a yellowish green, and has not yet its
greasy feel.
{009} November 19, 1857. Going
thro’ a partly frozen meadow (I. Hosmer’s or Wheeler’s land), scraping
thro’ the sweet gale toward the Assabet River, {Note} I am pleasantly scented with
its odoriferous fruit.
{010} Gerarde says of the
sweet gale, "Among the branches come forth many other little ones [that is, leaves]
whereupon do grow many spokie ears or tufts, full of small flowers." {Note}
CLEMATIS
{001} {MS}
Clematis, September twenty-second.
{002} September 21, 1860. Just
beginning to be feathered, but no show. Feathers out next day in house.
{003} {MS}
By the last of September {Note}
the clematis begins to be feathered. A month later, when the leaves had mostly fallen,
I have mistaken it, draping a low tree, for a tree {Page 201} full of white blossoms. It is said of the
English species, in The Journal of a Naturalist, "I have often observed the
long feathered part of the seed at the entrance of holes made by mice on the banks, and
probably in hard seasons the seed may yield these creatures part of their supply." {Note}
PANICLED ANDROMEDA
{001} {MS}
Panicled andromeda, September twenty-fourth.
{002} September 24, 1859.
Begins to brown.
{003} December 6, 1856. I am
excited at the sight of the rich brown fruit of the panicled andromeda, growing about the
swamps—hard, dry, inedible, suitable to the season. The dense panicles of the berries
are of a handsome form, made to endure. Lasting often over two seasons, only becoming
darker or gray. The enduring panicled andromeda, which belongs to the hard season.
{004} This appears to be the
plant referred to by Manasseh Cutler, L.L.D., in the American Academy’s Reports,
where he says, "White pepperbush. Blossoms white. Common in swamps. June.... It is
used for fish flakes, and as the wood is very hard and durable, is one of the best shrubs
employed for that purpose." Yet the "Andromeda. Linn. Gen. Plant. 485. Andromeda
racemis secundis nudis, corollis rotundo ovatis. Syst. Nat." to which he refers,
is really, according to a recent Systema Naturæ, Linnæus’s arborea
(oxydendron) of the South. {Note}
LESPEDEZA
{001} Lespedeza, September twenty-fifth. {Note}
HORSE CHESTNUT
{001} Horse chestnut,
September twenty-fifth.
{002} September 29, 1859.
These nuts strew the roadside. Very handsome-colored but simply formed nuts, looking like
mahogany knobs with the waved and curled grains of knots.
{Page 202} BAYBERRY
{001} Bayberry, September
twenty-fifth.
{002} September 16, 1854. My
sister saw much in Princeton. {Note}
{003} September 24, 1859. They
are apparently ripe, though not so gray as they will be; more lead-colored. They bear
sparingly here. Leaves not fallen nor changed, and I the more easily find the
bushes amid the changed huckleberries, brakes, and so on, by their greenness. {Note}
{004} October 15, 1859. All
gone; probably eaten by birds.
{005} September 21, 1860. Are
perhaps ripe, but not so light a gray nor so rough or wrinkled as they will be. {Note}
CICUTA MACULATA
{001} {MS}
Cicuta maculata, September twenty-fifth.
{002} Bigelow says, "No
botanist, even if in danger of starving in a wilderness, could indulge his hunger on a
root or fruit taken from an unknown plant of the natural order Luridæ, of the Multisiliquæ,
or the umbelliferous aquatics. {Note}
On the contrary, he would not feel a moment’s hesitation in regard to any of the Gramina,
the fruit of the Pomaceæ, and several other natural families, which are known to
be uniformly innocent in their effects." {Note}
{003} October 2, 1859. Some of
the Umbelliferæ have gone to seed, are very pretty to examine. The Cicuta
maculata, for instance. The concave umbel is so well spaced. The different umbellets
like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament. They get a sympathy with
the stars.
BASS
{001} Bass, September
twenty-ninth.
{002} September 29, 1854. Dry
and brown.
{003} {Page 203} January 27, 1856. See what
I think are bass nuts on the snow of the river at Derby’s Railroad Bridge, probably
from up stream.
{004} September 30, 1859. Some
browned.
{005} Michaux says about
October first. {Note}
BUTTON BUSH
{001} {MS}
Button bush, September thirtieth.
{002} September 27, 1860. The
balls are hardly reddened.
{003} {Page 204} September 30, 1860. They
were fairly reddened yesterday by the frosts.
{004} October 12, 1858. The
balls stand out (on the two-thirds bare bushes), have ruddy or brown look, much blacker
against the light, than a month ago.
ARBOR VITÆ
{001} Arbor vitæ, October
first.
{002} October 4, 1860. Say
first.
SUGAR MAPLE
{001} Sugar maple, October
first.
{002} 1860. Was turned brown
(at least in some measure) by the severe frosts of October first.
{003} October 8, 1860. Are now
browned—the seed end as well as wing—the severe frosts about October first about
ripened them .
{004} October 25, 1860. It
still holds on where most of the leaves on this small tree have fallen.
{005} June 19, 1860. See
apparently immature abortive ones falling.
HIBISCUS
{001} Hibiscus, October
first.
{002} October 4, 1856. Gone to
seed and pods open showing the seed.
CORN
{001} Corn, October first. {Note}
{002} {MS}
See them topping corn about September first or earlier even.
{003} Early in August {Note} we begin to have green corn.
{004} {Page 205} I remember when boiled
green corn was sold piping-hot on a muster field in this town, and my father {Note} says that he remembers when
it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of
negro women, and gentlemen used to stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street.
{005} About the first of
September they begin to top corn, and the stacks of stalks set in rows around the fields
reminds you of stacks of bayonets on a muster field.
{006} Toward the end of
September (or first of October) they begin to cut up and gather in the corn, though some
is left out even till after the middle of November some years.
{007} {MS}
Gerarde says:
The stalk of turkey wheat is like that of the reed, full of spongy pith, set with many joints, five or six foot high, big beneath, and now and then of a purple color, and by little and little small above: the leaves are broad, long, set with veins like those of the reed. The ears on the top of the stalk be a span long, {Note} like unto the feather top of the common reed, divided unto many plumes hanging downward, empty and barren without seed, yet blooming as rye doth. The flower is either white, yellow, or purple, that is to say, even as the fruit will be. The fruit is contained in very big ears, which grow out of the joints of the stalk, three or four from one stalk, orderly placed one above another, covered with coats or films like husks and leaves, as if it were a certain sheath; out of which do stand long and slender beards, soft and tender, like those laces that grow upon savory, but greater and longer, every one fastened upon his own seed. The seeds are great, {MS} of the bigness of common peason, cornered in that part whereby they are fastened to the ear, and in the outward part round: being of color sometimes white, now and then yellow, purple, or red; of taste sweet, and pleasant, very closely joined together in eight or ten orders or ranks. This grain hath many roots, strong and full of strings.…
{008} We have as yet no certain proof or experience concerning the virtues of this kind of corn; although the barbarous Indians, which know no better, are constrained to make a virtue of necessity, and think it a good food: whereas we may easily judge, that it nourisheth but little, and is of hard and evil digestion, a more convenient food for swine than for men. {Note}
{009} {MS}
Lindley quotes from Schouw in Jameson’s Philosophical Journal, 1825:
"it appears that in respect of the predominating kinds of grain, the earth may be
divided into five grand divisions, or kingdoms. The kingdom of Rice, of Maize, of Wheat,
of Rye, and lastly of Barley and Oats. The first three are the most extensive; the {Page 206} Maize has the greatest
range of temperature; but Rice may be said to support the greatest number of the human
race.... Asia is the native country of Rice, and America of Maize." {Note}
{010} {MS}
September 18, 1860. According to all accounts, very little corn is fit to grind before
October first (though I hear of one kind ripe and fit to grind September first). It
becomes hard and dry enough in the husk in the field by that time. But way before this, or
say by the first of September, it begins to glaze (or harden on the surface), when it
begins to be too hard to boil.
{011} October 7, 1860. Looked
thro’ Hayden’s farm and granary. He now takes pleasure in his field of corn just
ready for harvesting and counts the ears on a stalk. Being early, the ears set low. The
rather small ears are fully filled out and rounded at the end. He loves to estimate the
number of bushels he will have, has already calculated the number of hills, some forty
thousand in this field; and he exhibits some of the corn in his granary. Also his rye in
barrels and his seed corn, the larger and fuller ears picked out with the husk on and
tucked into the mow as he was husking (to be brought to the house when he has leisure).
But all this corn will be given to his pigs and other stock; three great hogs which will
dress twelve hundredweight, lie asleep under his barn, already sold. Hears of one man who
sold his fat hog for $75.00.
{012} {MS}
November 22. Heard of a husking a week ago, though a little corn is still left in the
field.
{013} {CPB 2,
p. 173} Brand in his Popular Antiquities describes "harvest
home":
{CPB 2, p. 174} Macrobius tells us that, among the Heathens, the masters of families, when they had got in their harvest, were wont to feast with their servants, who had labored for them in tilling the ground. (Patres familiarum, et fugibus et fructibus iam coætis, passim cum servis escerentur, cum quibus patrintuam laboris in colendo rure toleraverant. Macrob. Sauturnal. Diepium, Cap. 10.) In exact conformity to this, it is common among Christians, when the fruits of the earth are gathered in and laid in their proper repositories, to provide a plentiful supper for the harvestmen and the servants of the family. At {CPB 2, p. 175} the entertainment all are, in the modern revolutionary idea of the word, perfectly equal.… Bourne thinks the original of both these customs is Jewish. … For the Jews rejoiced and feasted at the getting in of the harvest.
{014} Vacina (or Vacuna, so called as it is said à vocando, the titular deity, as is were, of rest and ease,) among the ancients, was the name of the goddess to whom rustics sacrificed at the conclusion of harvest.…
{015} {Page 207} In England anciently they used to dress up a figure of corn, when they brought home their last load, which they called a Harvest Doll or a Kern (that is, corn) Baby, "by which," says one, "perhaps they would signify Ceres…" “’round which,” says another, "men and women were singing promiscuously, preceded by a drum or a pipe."
{016} At Werington, in Devonshire, the clergyman of the parish informed me that when a farmer finishes his reaping, a small quantity of the ears of the last corn are twisted or tied together in a curious kind of figure, which is brought home with great acclamations, hung up over the table, and kept till the next year. The owner would think it extremely unlucky to part with this, which is called "a knack."
{017} {CPB 2, p. 176} Another says, "When they have cut the corn, the reapers assemble together: a knack is made which one placed in the middle of the company holds up, crying thrice, ‘A Knack!’ which all the rest repeat: the person in the middle then says:Well cut! Well bound!
Well shocked! Well saved from the ground!He afterwards cries "Whoof!" and his companions hollow as loud as they can.…"
{018} So according to Eugene Aram, what is called the "Mell-supper, Churn-supper, Harvest Supper, Harvest-Home, Feast of In-gathering, and so on" is "as old as a sense of joy for the benefit of a plentiful harvest, and human gratitude to the Creator for his munificence to men.…"
{019} This "Harvest-Home Call" is the one generally made use of in the county of Devon:We have ploughed, we have sowed,
We have reaped, we have mowed,
We have brought home every load.… {Note}
CORNUS FLORIDA
{001} {MS}
Cornus florida, October first.
{002} October 27, 1856. At
Perth Amboy, conspicuous with its scarlet berries, fed on by robins, amid its scarlet
leaves. {Note}
{Page 208} QUINCE
{001} Quince, October
first.
{002} Ours not so early in
1860; gathered about October twentieth.
{003} October 12, 1859. See
them commonly left out yet, though apples are gathered. Probably their downy coats defend
them.
{004} {MS}
Their fragrance is the best part of them, and for this they may be worth raising: to scent
your chamber.
{005} Pliny says, "They
drag down the bent branches, and prevent the parent from increasing." Also that they
were shut up in the ante-chambers of the great and hung upon the statues of the gods in
their chambers (probably for their fragrance). {Note} This was better than putting
them directly into a preserve pot.
BIDENS
{001} Bidens ticks, October
second.
{002} November 10, 1856. {Note} At Perth Amboy {Note} I used to get my clothes
covered with beggar ticks in the fields {Note}—and
with burrs, small and large.
HEMLOCK
{001} Hemlock, October
fifth.
{002} March 6, 1853. The
hemlock cones have shed their seeds, but there are some closed yet on the ground.
{003} October 31, 1853. The
seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones. The cones are mostly open.
{004} October 15, 1856. Great
part of the seeds fallen.
{005} September 6, 1860. See
no new cones, but many old. Apparently there were so many last year that there are
none this. The cone has five rays like white pine, but little twisted.
{Page 209} BLACK SPRUCE
{001} Black spruce, October
fifth.
{002} May 31, 1857. Spruce
cones, though now erect, at length will turn down.
{003} November 20, 1857. See
where squirrels, apparently, have eaten and stripped the spruce cones.
{004} October 28, 1860. See no
cones as yet.
LARCH
{001} {MS}
Larch, October fifth.
{002} This, like the hemlock,
had so many cones last year that I have not seen one this year (October 28, 1860).
{003} It has five rays like
the white-pine cone.
{004} Michaux says on some
"the cones are violet colored instead of green." {Note}
CELTIS
{001} Celtis,
October fifth.
{002} September 4, 1853.
Green.
{003} September 22, 1854.
Begin to yellow.
{004} September 26, 1859.
Still green.
{005} October 15, 1859. Ripe
how long?
{006} October 6, 1860. Only
copper-brown, perhaps owing to frost.
CHESTNUT
{001} {MS}
Chestnuts, October sixth.
{002} November 22, 1850. I get
nothing to eat in my walk now but wild apples, sometimes some cranberries and some
walnuts.
{003} {Page 210} October 11, 1852. Now the
chestnuts are rattling out. The burrs are gaping and showing the plump nuts. They fill the
ruts in the road and are abundant amid the fallen leaves in the midst of the wood. The
jays scream and the red squirrels scold while you are clubbing and shaking the trees.
{004} October 15. The rain of
the night and morning together with the wind has strewn the ground with chestnuts. The
burrs, generally empty, come down with a loud sound while I am picking the nuts in the
woods. I have come out {MS} before the rain is fairly
over, before there are any fresh tracks on the Lincoln road by Britton’s shanty, and
I find the nuts abundant in the road itself. It is a pleasure to detect them in the woods,
amid the firm, crispy, crackling chestnut leaves. There is somewhat singularly refreshing
in the color of this nut—the chestnut color. No wonder it gives a name to a color.
One man tells me he has bought a wood-lot in Hollis to cut and has let out the picking of
the chestnuts to women at the halves; as the trees will probably be cut for them,
they will make rapid work of it.
{005} October 23, 1852.
Chestnuts have mostly fallen.
{006} December 9, 1852. The
chestnuts are about as plenty as ever, both in the fallen burrs and out of them. There are
more this year than the squirrels can consume. I picked three pints this afternoon, and
though some bought at a store the other day were more than half mouldy, I did not find one
mouldy one among these which I picked from under the wet and mouldy leaves, where they
have been snowed on once. Probably they do not heat, though wet. These are also still
plump and tender. I love to gather them, if only for the sense of the bountifulness of
Nature they give me.
{007} December 27. Find
chestnuts quite plenty today.
{008} December 31, 1852. I was
this afternoon gathering chestnuts at Saw Mill Brook. I have within a few weeks spent some
hours thus scraping away the leaves with my hands and feet over some square rods, and have
at least learned how chestnuts are planted and new forests raised. First fall the
chestnuts with the severe frosts, the greater part of them at least, and then at length
the rains and winds bring down the leaves which cover them with a thick coat. I have
wondered sometimes how the nuts got planted which merely fell on the surface of the earth,
but already I find the nuts of the present year partially mixed with the mould, as it were
under the decaying and mouldy leaves, where is all the moisture and manure they want. A
large proportion of this year’s nuts are now covered loosely an {Page 211} inch deep under
mouldy leaves, though they are themselves sound and are moreover concealed from squirrels
thus.
{009} {MS}
January 10, 1853. Went a-chestnutting this afternoon to Smith’s Grove with four
ladies. I raked, and we got six and a half quarts, the ground being bare and the leaves
not frozen. I found thirty-five chestnuts left by a mouse in his gallery. Many chestnuts
are still in the burrs on the ground. My aunt found a twig which had apparently fallen
prematurely with eight small burrs, all within the compass of five or six inches, and all
but one full of nuts.
{010} January 25, 1853. I
still pick chestnuts. Some larger ones prove to contain double meats, divided as it were
arbitrarily, as with a knife each part having the common division without the brown skin
transverse to them.
{011} Chestnut—evidently
because it is packed in a little chest. {Note}
{012} {J
03/07/1859} March 7, 1859. I think that many of the nuts which we find in
the crevices of bark, firmly wedged in, may have been placed there by jays, chickadees,
and so on, to be held fast while they crack them with their bills.
{013} {MS}
October 19, 1855. Afternoon to Pine Hill for chestnuts (Indian-summer day). The chestnuts
are scarce and small, apparently have just begun to open their burrs.
{014} {MS}
October 27, 1855. Afternoon a-chestnutting down the turnpike. It is high time we came
a-chestnutting, for the nuts have nearly all fallen, and you must depend on what you can
find on the ground, left by the squirrels, and cannot shake down any more to speak of. The
trees are nearly all bare of leaves as well as burrs. The wind comes cold from the
northwest, as if there were snow on the earth in that direction.
{015} October 8, 1856. A few
chestnut burrs are open and have been some days before they could have felt frost, showing
that they would open without it, but a stone will not jar them down, nor a club, thrown
into the tree yet. I get half a pocketful out of slightly gaping burrs at the expense of
many prickles in my fingers. The squirrels have cut off some burrs. I see the marks of
their teeth.
{016} October 16. Many
chestnut burrs are now open, yet a stone will not jar down many nuts. {Note} Burrs which were quite green
on the eighth are now all brown and dry, and the prickles come off in your hand when you
touch them; yet the nuts do not readily drop out. Many nuts have fallen within two or
three days, but many squirrels have been busily picking them up.
{017} {Page 212} {MS}
October 18, 1856. The chestnuts are not so ready to fall as I expected. Perhaps the burrs
require to be dried now after the rain. In a day or two they will nearly all come down.
They are a pretty fruit thus compactly stowed away in this bristly chest—three is the
regular number—and there is no room to spare. The two outside nuts having each one
convex side and a flat side within; the middle nut has two flat sides. Sometimes there are
several more nuts in a burr. But this year the burrs are small and there are not commonly
more than two good nuts—very often only one, the middle one—both sides of
which will then be convex, bulging out each way into a thin, abortive, mere reminiscence
of a nut, all shell, beyond it. It is a rich sight, that of a large chestnut tree, with a
dome-shaped top—where the yellowing leaves have became thin (for most now strew the
ground evenly as a carpet throughout the chestnut woods and so save some seed), all richly
rough, with great brown burrs which have opened into several segments so as to shew the
wholesome-colored nuts peeping forth, ready to fall on the slightest jar.
{018} The individual nuts are
very interesting and of various forms according to the season and the number in a burr.
The base of each, where it was joined to the burr, is marked with an irregular dark figure
{MS} on a light ground—oblong, crescent shaped, much
like a spider or other insect with a dozen legs—while the upper or small end tapers
into a little white woolly spire crowned with a star, and the whole upper slopes of the
nuts are covered with the same hoary wool, which reminds you of the frosts on whose advent
they peep forth. (Each nut stretches forth a little starry hand at the end of a slender
arm, and by this, when mature, you may pull it out without fear of prickles.) Within this
thick, prickly burr the nuts are about as safe, until they are quite mature, as a
porcupine behind its spines. Yet I see where the squirrels have gnawed through many closed
burrs and left the pieces on the stumps.
{019} I forgot to say that
there are sometimes two meats within one chestnut shell, divided transversely, and each
covered by its separate brown-ribbed skin. As if Nature meant to smuggle the seed of an
additional tree into this chest and multiply chances.
{020} I see where the chestnut
trees have been sadly bruised by the large stones cast against them in previous years and
which still lie around.
{021} November 28.
Unexpectedly find many chestnuts in the burrs which have fallen (at Smith’s Grove)
some time ago. Many are spoiled, but the rest {Page 213} being thus moistened are softer and
sweeter than a month ago, very agreeable to my palate—the burrs, from some cause,
having fallen without dropping their nuts.
{022} December 1. I have seen
more chestnuts in the streets of New York than anywhere else this year—large and
plump ones roasting in the street, and popping on the steps of banks and exchanges. Was
surprised to see that the citizens made as much of the nuts of the wild wood as the
squirrels. Not only the country boys—all New York goes a-nutting. Chestnuts for
cabmen and newsboys, for not only are squirrels {Note} alone to be fed.
{023} {MS}
December 12. Dug chestnut burrs out of the snow (as the squirrels have done), and though
many of these nuts are softened and discolored, they have a peculiarly sweet and agreeable
taste.
{024} Loudon quotes Pliny as
saying that "Chestnuts are better roasted than cooked in any other manner" {Note}—in which I agree with him.
{025} Evelyn says, referring
to the chestnut, "We give that fruit to our swine in England, which is amongst the
delicacies of princes in other countries; and, being of the larger nut, is a lusty and
masculine food for rustics at all times, and of better nourishment for husbandmen than
cale and rusty bacon; yea, or beans to boot." {Note}
{026} In France, according to
Loudon, "The husks of the chestnuts beaten off the trees being generally attached to
the nuts, they are trodden off by peasants furnished with heavy sabots, when the nuts are
wanted for immediate use…." {Note}
{027} {MS}
September 24. Minott tells of them finding near a bushel of chestnuts in a rock when
blasting for the mill-brook ditch near Flint’s Pond. {Note}He said it was the gray
squirrel’s work.
{028} October 5, 1857. See a
red squirrel cast down a chestnut bur.
{029} October 6. See one or
two chestnut burrs open in the woods. The squirrels, red and gray, are on all sides
throwing them down. You cannot stand long in the woods without hearing one fall.
{030} October 22. Now is just
the time for chestnuts.
{031} What a perfect chest the
chestnut is packed in. I now hold a green burr in my hand—which, round, must have
been two and a quarter inches in diameter—from which three plump nuts have been
extracted. It has a straight stout stem three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, set on
strongly and abruptly. It has gaped {Note}
{Page 214} in
four segments or quarters, revealing the thickness of its walls (from five-eighths to
three-quarters of an inch); with such wonderful care Nature has secluded and defended
these nuts, as if they were her most precious fruits, while diamonds are left to take care
of themselves. First, it bristles all over with sharp green prickles, some nearly half an
inch long, like a hedgehog rolled into a ball. The little stars on the top of the nuts are
but shorter and feebler spines which mingle with the rest. They stand up close together,
three or more, erecting their feeble weapons, as an infant in the arms {Note} of its nurse might put out
its own tiny hands to fend off the aggressor. The prickles rest on a thick (one-sixteenth
to one-eighth of an inch), stiff, bark-like rind—which again is most daintily lined
with a kind of silvery fur or velvet plush (one-sixteenth of an inch thick) {MS}
even rising in a ridge between the nuts, like the lining of a casket in which the most
precious commodities are kept. I see the brown-spotted white cavities where the bases of
the nuts have rested and sucked up nourishment from the stem. There is no waste room; the
chest is packed quite full. Half-developed nuts are the waste-paper used in the packing to
fill the vacancies.
{032} Such is the cradle, thus
daintily lined, in which they have been rocked in their infancy. With what steadiness the
nuts must be held within these stout arms—there can be no motion on their
bases—and yet how tenderly, by a firm hold that relaxes only as they grow, the walls
that confine them, superfluously strong as they seem, expanding as they grow! The chestnut
with its tough shell looks as if it were able to protect itself, but see how tenderly it
has been reared in its cradle, before its green and tender skin hardened into a shell.
{033} At last frost comes to
unlock this chest. It alone holds the true key. Its lids straightway gape open, and the
October air rushes in, dries the ripe nuts, and then, with a sudden gust, shakes them all
out in a rattling shower down upon the withered leaves. {MS}
The October air comes in, as I have said, and the light too, and proceeds to paint the
nuts that clear, handsome reddish brown which we call chestnut. Nowadays the brush that
paints chestnuts is very active. It is entering into every open burr over the stretching
forests’ tops for hundreds of miles, without horse or ladder, and rapidly putting on
coats of this wholesome color. Otherwise the boys would not think they had got perfect
nuts. And that this may be further protected, perchance, both within the burr and
afterward, the nuts themselves are partly covered toward the top, where they are first
exposed, with that {Page 215}
same soft velvety down. And then Nature drops it on the rustling leaves—a done
nut, prepared to begin a chestnut’s course again.
{034} Within itself each
individual nut is lined with a reddish velvet, as if to preserve the seed from jar and
injury in falling, and perchance from sudden damp and cold, and within that a thin white
skin enwraps the meat. {Note}
Thus, it is lining within lining and unwearied care—not to count closely, six
coverings at least—before you reach the contents!
{035} Is it not a barbarous
way, to jar the tree? I trust I do repent of it. Gently shake it only, or, better,
let the wind shake it for you. You are gratified to find a nut that has in it no
bitterness—altogether palatable.
{036} {MS}
October 24, 1857. I get a couple of quarts of chestnuts at Smith’s grove by patiently
brushing the thick bed of leaves aside with my hand in successive concentric circles {Note} till I reach the trunk. More
than half were under one tree. I believe that I get more by resolving, where they are
reasonably thick, to pick all under one tree first. Begin at the tree and brush the
leaves with your right hand in toward the stump while your left holds the basket, and so
go round and round it in concentric circles, each time laying bare about two feet in
width, till you get as far as the boughs extend. You may presume that you have got about
all there are then. It is best to reduce it to a system. Of course, you will shake the
tree first, if there are any on it. The nuts lie commonly two or three together as they
fell.
{037} I find my account in
this long-continued monotonous labor of picking chestnuts all the afternoon, brushing the
leaves aside without looking up, absorbed in that, and forgetting better things
awhile. I rebound afterward and between whiles with fresher sense. It is as good as a
journey; I seem to have been somewhere and done something. It is a slight adventure. I
have been so much in the habit of looking for Indian relics that my eye is educated to
discover anything on the ground—as chestnuts and so on. It is probably wholesomer to
look at the ground much than at the heavens. As I go stooping and brushing the leaves
aside by the hour, I am not thinking of {MS} chestnuts
merely, but I find myself humming a thought of more significance. This occupation affords
a certain broad pause and opportunity to start again afterward—turn over a new
leaf.
{038} {Page 216} I hear the dull
thump of heavy stones {Note}
against the trees from far thro’ the rustling wood, where boys are ranging for
nuts.
{039} November 9, 1857. One of
the company today told of George Melvin once, for a joke, directing Jonas Melvin to go to
the widow Hildreth’s woodlot and gather the chestnuts. They were probably both
working there (at Hildreth’s). He accordingly took the oxen and cart and some ladders
and another hired man, and they worked all day and got half a bushel. {Note}
{040} July 4, 1858. Saw a
chestnut tree in Loudon, New Hampshire. First and frequently. {Note}
{041} {MS}
October 14, 1859. The chestnuts generally have not yet fallen, though many
have. I find under one tree a great many burrs apparently not cast down by
squirrels, for I see no marks of their teeth, and not yet so open that any of the nuts
fall out. They do not all wait till frosts open the burrs before they fall, then.
{042} Josselyn says that the
Indians hereabouts used to sell chestnuts to the English for twelve pence a bushel. {Note}
{043} March 7, 1853. Gathered
a few chestnuts. {Note}
A good many if not most are now turned black and soured, or spoiled and softened by
the wet. Where they are less exposed to moisture—close to the base of the (or on)
stumps, where the ground is more elevated, or where they are protected under a very thick
heap of light lying leaves—they are perfectly sound and sweet and fresh yet, neither
shrivelled nor soured. This peculiar condition is probably requisite to preserve their
life for sprouting. I planted some in Sophia’s {Note} pot. No doubt the mice and
squirrels put many in secure, sufficiently dry, and sufficiently moist places for this
purpose—and so do a service.
{044} March 20, 1853. {Note} At Flint’s Pond gathered
a handful or two of chestnuts on a sloping bank under the leaves, every one sound
and sweet, but mostly sprouting. There were none black as at C. Smith’s, proving that
in such places as this, somewhat warm and dry, they are all preserved the winter through.
Now their new groves of chestnuts and oaks are being born.
WALNUTS
{001} {MS}
Walnuts, October thirteenth. {Note}
{002} May 7, 1852. The ground
under the walnuts (on the hill) {Note}
is richly strewn with {Page 217}
nut shells broken and gnawed by squirrels, like an unswept dining hall in early times.
{003} August 18, 1852.
Perceived today, and some weeks since (August third) the strong invigorating aroma of
green walnuts, astringent and bracing to the spirits, the fancy and imagination,
suggesting a tree that has its roots well in amid the bowels of Nature. Their shells are
invigorating to smell—suggesting a strong, nutty native vigor. A fruit which I am
glad that our zone produces, looking like the nutmeg of the East. I acquire some of the
hardness and elasticity of the hickory when I smell them. They are among our spices;
high-scented, aromatic, as you bruise one against another in your hand, almost like
nutmegs, only more bracing and northern—fragrant stones which the trees bear.
{004} October 23, 1852. See
where larger boys have gathered the mockernut, though it has not fallen out of its husks.
{005} October 24, 1852. See
boys far off on the hillside gathering walnuts, and on the twenty-eighth. October is the
month for barberries and walnuts.
{006} {MS}
September 23, 1852. Some acorns and hickory nuts (mockernuts) on the ground, but they have
not begun to shell. The walnuts {Note}
rubbed together smell like varnish.
{007} October 27, 1853. Now is
the time to look for walnuts, last and hardest nut of the year.
{008} October 31, 1853. Now
appears to be the very time for walnuts. I knock down showers with a stick, but all do not
come out of the shells.
{009} November 1, 1853.
Gathered five or six quarts of pignuts, partly by clubbing the trees, thinking they might
furnish entertainment some evening the coming winter. Not more than half are out of the
shells, but it is pleasant shelling them to have one’s fingers scented with their
fine aroma (the red squirrel reproving the while). {Note}
{010} November 2, 1853. I
gather some fine large pignuts by the wall near the beeches on Asher’s land. It is
just the time to get these, and this seems to be quite early enough for most pignuts.
(Wall-nutting last of October and first of November.)
{011} November 6, 1853.
Gathered some of those fine large mockernuts which are now in their prime: Carya
tomentosa. I am struck by the variety in the form and size of the walnuts (in shells).
Some with a slight neck and slightly club shaped, perhaps the most common. Some much
longer, nearly twice as long as wide. {Page
218} Some (like the mockernut) slightly deformed or rather
fattened above. Some pignuts very large and regularly obovate, one and a quarter inches in
diameter.
{012} November 7, 1853. I
shook two mockernut trees, one just ready to drop its fruit, and most came out of the
shells; but the other tree was not ready—only a part fell, and those mostly in the
shells. This is the time {MS} for our best walnuts, the
smallest or pignuts, say the last of October. Got a peck and a half shelled. I did not
wish to slight any of Nature’s gifts. I am partial to the peculiar and wholesome
sweetness of a nut, and I think that some time is profitably spent every autumn in
gathering even such as our pignuts. Some of them are a very sizeable, rich-looking, and
palateable fruit. How can we expect to understand Nature unless we accept like children
these her smallest gifts, valuing them more as her gifts than for their intrinsic value. I
love to get my basket full, however small and comparatively worthless the nut. It takes
very severe frosts, and sun and wind thereafter, to kill and open the shells so that the
nuts will drop out. Many hold on all winter. I climbed to the tops of the trees and then
found that shaking would not do, only jarring the limbs with my feet. It is remarkable how
these nuts are protected, some with an outer shell about quarter of an inch thick and an
inner nearly as thick as the other, and when cracked open the meat is still hard to
extract. I noticed, however, that the nuts on one tree (the second) notwithstanding these
thick shells, were now full of fine cracks, as if now that they were ripe they had made
themselves ready to be cracked by man or squirrels or the frost. They really crack much
easier. It is a hard, tough {MS} tree, whose fruit is
stones, fit to have been the food of man in the Iron Age. I should like to see a man whose
diet was berries and nuts alone. Yet I would not rob the squirrels who, before any man,
are the true owners.
{013} September 26, 1855. The
squirrels have already begun on the mockernuts, though the trees are still covered with
yellow and brown leaves, and the nuts do not fall.
{014} December 5, 1856. There
are a great many walnuts on the trees, seen black against the sky, and the wind has
scattered many over the snow-crust. It would be easier gathering them now than ever.
{015} December 10, 1856.
Gathered this afternoon quite a parcel of walnuts on the hill. It has not been better
picking there this season. They lie on the snow, or rather sunk an inch or two into it,
and sometimes the trees hang quite full. I see squirrel tracks leading straight from tree
to tree.
{016} {Page 219} December 16, 1856.
Mrs. Moody {Note} very
properly calls eating nuts "a mouse-like employment." It is quite too absorbing.
You cannot read at the same time, as when you are eating an apple. It is a social
employment.
{017} June 12, 1857. Michaux
says that mockernuts are of various sizes and forms {MS}—some
round, some oblong—{Note}
and so I have found them.
{018} September 24, 1857.
Squirrel buries pignuts.
{019} October 20, 1857. I meet
the hunter with his game-bag full of nuts and barberries.
{020} {MS}
August 20, 1854. I hear a sound (on hill) as of green pignuts falling from time to time,
and see and hear the chickaree thereabouts!!
{021} March 6, 1853. Gather a
pocketful of pignuts from a tree on Lee’s hill, half of them still sound.
{022} I can about excuse a
man’s intemperance if it was a walnut tree he fell from and so broke his back—he
was so well employed.
{023} Michaux says the
mockernut is "odorous" and of remarkably various forms. "The shell is very
thick and extremely hard"; that is, the cover. "The kernel is sweet but minute,
and difficult to extract, on account of the strong partitions which divide it; hence,
probably, is derived the name of Mockernut, and hence, also, this fruit is rarely seen in
the markets."
{024} Shellbark Hickory is
"ripe about the beginning of October.… The entire separation of the husk, and
its thickness disproportioned to the size of the nut, form a character peculiar to the
shell-bark hickories.… Contains a fuller and sweeter kernel than any American walnut
except the Pacanenut."
{025} Pignut hickory nuts vary
in form more than the other kinds. "Some are oval and when covered with their husks,
resemble young figs, others are wider than they are long, and others are perfectly
round." {Note} And
they are of as various sizes.
{026} {MS}
October 2. I observed that many pignuts has fallen yesterday though quite green.
{027} October 14. At
Baker’s wall two of the walnut trees are bare but full of green nuts (in their green
cases) which make a very pretty sight as they wave in the wind. So distinct you could
count every one against the sky, for there is not a leaf on these trees, but other walnuts
nearby are yet full of leaves. You have the green nut contrasted with the clean gray
trunks and limbs. These are pignuts.
{028} {MS}
November 18. Now is the time to gather mockernuts
{029} November 19.
A-mockernutting. Those long mockernuts appear not to have {Page 220} got well ripe this
year. They do not shed their husks, and the meat is mostly skinny, soft, and flabby. May
have been too cold. I shook the trees. It is just the time to gather them. How hard
they rattle down, like stones! There is a harmony between this stony fruit and these hard,
tough limbs which beat it.
{030} November 20. When walnut
husks are fairly opened, showing the white shells within (the trees being either quite
bare or with a few withereed leaves at present), a slight jar with the foot on the limbs
causes them to rattle down, and on bare pasture ground it is very easy picking them up.
{031} September 14. Even the
tough-twigged mockernut, yet green, is blown off in some places by this strong wind. I
bring home a twig with three of its great nuts together, as big as small apples, and
children follow and eye them, not knowing what kind of fruit it is.
CEDAR
{001} {MS}
Cedar berries, October fourteenth.
{002} October 19. How long?
Fourteenth at least.
{003} November 16, 1853.
Admire the fine blue color of the cedar berries.
{004} November 30, 1853. What
a heavenly blue have the cedar berries (in Mason’s pasture) a peculiar light blue
whose bloom rubs off, contrasting with the green or purplish-brown leaves.
{Page 221} CHECKERBERRY
{001} Checkerberry, October
fifteenth.
{002} June 3, 1851. An
abundance of very large checkerberries on Asnebumskit Hill in Paxton, said to be the
highest land in Worcester County except Wachusett . {Note} Such I thought must be the
bluets. Whence are brought those which we see in the markets.
{003} November 16, 1851.
Plenty of ripe checkerberries now.
{004} September 11, 1853. Full
grown but green.
{005} October 26, 1853. Have
now a fine, clean, fresh tint—a peculiar pink.
{006} March 4, 1854. Are
revealed, many of them somewhat shrivelled.
{007} March 6. {Note} See children checkerberrying.
{008} September 6, 1854. Just
beginning to redden.
{009} May 15, 1856. Very
abundant on the south side of Pine Hill by the pitch-pine wood. Now is probably the last
time to gather them.
{010} August 19, 1856. Green;
about grown.
{011} October 8, 1856. Find
many checkerberries on Smith’s Hill (near chestnuts) which appear to be just ripe, a
lighter pink color with two little checks on the stem side, the marks of what I suppose
are the two outer calyx leaves.
{012} October 15, 1856. An
abundance of checkerberries by the hemlock at Viola Muhlenbergii Brook. A remarkable year
for berries—even this, too, is abundant like the rest. They are tender and more
palatable then ever now. I find a little pile of them, {MS}
maybe fifteen or twenty, on the moss with each a little indentation or two on it, made by
some bird or quadruped.
{013} April 1, 1857.
Checkerberries very fine and abundant, now near Viola Muhlenbergii Brook, {Note} contrasting with the
red-brown leaves. They are not commonly touched by the frost.
{014} May 21, 1857. I find
checkerberries still fresh and abundant. Last year was a remarkable one for them. They
lurk under the low leaves (often), scarcely to be detected when you are standing up almost
below the level of the ground, dark scarlet berries, some of them half an inch in
diameter, broad, pear-shaped, of a pale or hoary pink color beneath. The peduncle curves
downward between two leaves. There they lurk under the glossy dark-green brown-spotted
leaves, close to the {Page 222}
ground. They make a very handsome nose-gay. (Thus, meeting strawberries soon, they
fetch the berry year about.)
{015} September 18, 1859. See
them not yet fully grown nor ripe, somewhat pear shaped, and whitish at the blossom end.
{016} Loudon says Gaultherii
procumbens, "Partridge Berry, Mountain Tea, Spring Winter Green.… A little
shrubby plant somewhat resembling seedling plants of Kalmia latifolia." {Note}
{017} August 19, 1852. They
never bloom, {Note} looking
almost like snow-white berries.
{018} August 19, 1852. What
are the checkerberry-scented plants? Checkerberry, black and yellow birch, Polygala (caducous
and cross-leaved and whorled at root), Chiogenes hispidula.
{019} {MS}
March 17, 1858. How indulgent is Nature, to give to a few common plants like checkerberry
this aromatic flavor (we have all the scent of orange and lemon and cinnamon here) to
relieve the general insipidity. Perhaps I am most sensible of the presence of these plants
when the ground is first drying up this season, and they are fairly out.
{020} October 14, 1858. The
roots of the red-pine sapling have not only a sweet-earthy but a decidedly checkerberry
scent. Digging under a tuft in the fall you find this thick white shoot in the earth ready
to rise up in the spring (as October 19, 1860).
{021} {Page 223} September 23, 1860.
The root of the freshest red-pine sapling has a decided checkerberry scent and for
a long time, a week after in my chamber the bruised plant has a very pleasant earthy
sweetness. It then passes into an earthy sweetness. This shows how innate this fragrance
is in the soil.
{022} According to Bigelow the
aromatic flavor of the checkerberry is also perceived in the Gaultheria hispidula,
in Spiræa ulmaria, in the root of Spiræa lobata, and in birches. {Note}
{023} Manasseh Cutler, LL.D.,
1785, says that the fruit is not ripe till the following spring. "Common in pine and
shrub oak land." The berries "are sometimes eaten by children in milk." {Note}
THE FALL
{001} {MS}
As long ago as September fourteenth, {Note}
all things suggested fruit and the harvest, and flowers looked late, and for some time
the sound of the flail had been heard in the barns. Like the fruits, when cooler weather
and frosts arrived, and we shifted from the shady to the sunny side of the house and sat
there in an extra coat for warmth—we too were braced and ripened. Our green, leafy,
and pulpy thoughts acquired color and flavor, and perchance {Note} a sweet nuttiness at
last, worth your cracking. {MS} It is somewhat cooler and
more autumnal, and a great many leaves have fallen, and the trees begin to look thin. You
incline to sit in a sunny and sheltered place.
{002} This season, {Note} the fall, which we have now
entered on, commenced, I may say, as long ago as when the first frost was seen and felt in
low ground in August. From that time, even, the year has been gradually winding up its
accounts. Cold, methinks, has been the great agent which has checked the growth of plants,
condensed their energies, and caused their fruits to ripen—in September especially.
Perchance man never ripens within the tropics. {Note}
{003} October 4. Now the year
duly begins to be ripe—ripened by the frost, like a persimmon.
{004} October 11. There was a
very severe frost this morning. Ground stiffened; probably a chestnut-opening frost—a
season-ripener—opener of the burrs that enclose the Indian Summer. Such is the cold
of early or mid-October.
{005} {Page 224} October 16. This
cold refines and condenses us. Our spirits are strong, like that pint of cider in the
middle of a frozen barrel. {Note}
{006} October 11, 1857. The
seventh day of glorious weather. These might be called Harvest Days. {Note} Within a week most of the
apples have been gathered, potatoes are being dug, corn is still left in the fields.
BLACK WALNUT
{001} {MS}
Black walnut, October fifteenth. {Note}
{002} {MS}
November 12, 1853.Tasted today a black walnut, a spherical and corrugated nut with a large
meat, but of a strong oily taste.
{003} October 28. Walnuts
commonly fall, and the black walnuts at Smith’s are at least half fallen. They are of
the form and size of a small lemon, {Note}
and, what is singular, have now taken moist from the ground a rich nutmeg
fragrance. They are now turning dark brown. Gray says it is rare in the eastern but very
common in the Western states. {Note}
Emerson says that though rare, it is found in Massachusetts. {Note} It is much the most
remarkable nut that we have, then.
{004} Michaux says our black
walnut most resembles the European, is more round. {Note}
{005} October 28, 1860. Say
half fallen.
YELLOW BIRCH
{001} {MS}
Yellow birch, October fifteenth.
{002} October 15, 1859. The
yellow birch are bare, revealing the fruit; the short, thick, brown catkins now ripe and
ready to scale off. How full the trees are!—almost as thick as the leaves were.
ALDER
{001} Alder, October
fifteenth.
{002} Falling all winter.
{Page 225} SHAGBARK
{001} Shagbark, October
twentieth. {Note}
{002} {MS}
November 15. In Worcester, gathered half a pocketful of shagbarks, of which many still
hung on the trees, though most had fallen.
{003} December 18, 1856. Am
told that they sometimes get a dozen bushels of shelled shagbarks from one tree. {MS}
Shagbarks hanging {Note}
on the trees on the Souhegan River, {Note}
where they have not been gathered.
{004} {MS}
September 1, 1859. You must be careful not to eat too many nuts. I one winter met a young
man whose face was all broken out into large pimples (or sores) who, when I inquired what
was the matter, announced that he and his young wife being fond of shagbarks, he had
bought a bushel of them in the fall, and they spent their winter evenings eating
them—and this was the consequence.
{005} {MS}
October 20, 1854. For the most part shagbarks do not rattle out yet (at Wachusett), {Note} but it is time to gather
them on account of squirrels.
ARTICHOKE
{001} {MS}
Artichokes, October twentieth.
{002} Gookin says that the
Indians used artichokes in their pottage. {Note}
{003} October 20, 1859. Dug
some. Now is the time to begin to dig them, the plant being considerably frost-bitten.
Tried two or three plants. The largest tuber was about one inch in diameter.
The main root ran
down straight about six inches and then terminated abruptly thus:
They have quite a nutty taste eaten raw.
{004} Hind sees them in the
northwest in the richest profusion. {Note}
GOLDENROD
{001} Goldenrods fuzzy
October twenty-first.
{002} Almost all were
fuzzy about October 10, 1860.
{Page 226} WHITE AND BLACK BIRCHES
{001} White birch, November
first.
{002} November 4, 1860. Has
but recently begun to fall. I see a quarter of an inch of many catkins bare. May have
begun a week.
{003} December 4, 1856. I see
where the pretty brown bird-like birch scales have been blown into the numerous hollows of
the thin-crusted snow. So bountiful a table is spread for the birds. For how many thousand
miles this grain is scattered over the earth under the feet of all walkers, in Boxboro and
Cambridge {Note} alike,
and rarely an eye distinguishes it.
{004} January 14, 1856. The
white-birch catkins appear to have their seeds first at the base, though they may be the
uppermost. They are {MS} blown or shaken off, leaving a
bare thread-like cone.
{005} May 12, 1858. I notice
that birches near meadows where there is an exceedingly gentle inclination (over which
water has flowed and receded) grow in more or less parallel lines, apparently the seed
having been dropt there either by a freshet or else lodged in the parallel waving hallows
of the snow.
{006} February 18, 1854. This
is a common form of the black-birch scale: {Note}
{007} February 21, 1854. The difference between the white- and
black-birch scales is that the wings of the first are curved backwards like a real
bird’s. The seeds of this also are broadly winged, like an insect with two little
antennæ. {Note}
{008} {MS}
The birch seed is also blown far over the snow like the pine seed. Walking up our river on
the second of March 1856—by Mr. Prichard’s land, {Note} where the shores and
neighboring fields were comparatively bare of trees—I was surprised to see on the
snow over the river a great many birch scales and seeds, though the snow had but recently
fallen and there had been but little wind. There was one seed or scale to a square foot;
yet the nearest {MS} birches were a row of fifteen along a
wall thirty rods off. When, leaving the river, I advanced toward these, the seeds became
thicker and thicker, till at half a dozen rods from the trees, they quite discolored the
snow; while on the other side, or eastward of the birches, there was not one. These trees
appeared not to have lost a quarter part of their seeds yet. As I returned up the river, I
saw some of their seeds forty rods off, and perhaps in a more favorable direction {Page 227} I might have found
them much further; for, as usual, it was chiefly the scales which attracted my attention,
and the fine winged seed which it is not easy to distinguish had probably been winnowed
from them. It suggested how unwearied Nature is in spreading her seeds. Even the spring
does not find her unprovided with birch—aye, and alder and pine—seed. A great
proportion of the seed that was carried to a distance lodged in the hollow above the
river, and when the river broke up, was carried far away to distant shores and meadows.
For, as I find by experiment, though the scales soon sink in water, the seeds float for
many days.
{009} {MS}
It is stated in Loudon’s Arboretum that the small white birch is "rarely
found in groups; and single trees are met with only at considerable intervals."
{010} {MS}
Loudon, speaking of the European variety of the common white birch, says, "According
to Pallas, the birch is more common than any other tree throughout the whole of the
Russian Empire; being found in every wood and grove from the Baltic Sea to the Eastern
Ocean." Loudon also learns from a French author that "in Prussia, the birch is
planted everywhere; and it is considered to afford security against a dearth of fuel, and
to insure the prosperity of the woods by the dissemination of its seeds, which fill up
every blank that occurs." {Note}
PITCH PINE
{001} {MS}
Pitch pine, November fourteenth.
{002} November 9, 1851.
Pitch-pine cones are very beautiful—not only the fresh leather-colored ones, but
especially the dead gray ones, covered with lichens, the scales so regular and close, like
an impenetrable coat of mail. These are very handsome to my eye. Also these which have
long since opened regularly and shed their seeds. I live where the Pinus rigida
grows, with its firm cones, almost as hard as iron, armed with recurved spines.
{003} August 29, 1854.
Squirrels have stripped some pitch-pine cones.
{004} December 28, 1854. Some
Cape Cod man told Gardiner that it took eighty bushels of pitch-pine cones to make one
bushel of seeds with the wings on. Yet European or French pine seed cost not quite two
hundred dollars per bushel delivered at New York. {Note}
{005} April 29, 1857. On the
pitch pines beyond John Hosmer’s I see old gray cones within two feet of the ground
on the trunk, sometimes a circle of them around it, {Page 228} which must have been formed on the
young tree some twenty-odd years ago—so persistent are they. {Note}
{006} November 14, 1857.
Squirrels have carried the cones to walls, and the scales are strewn all along beneath.
{007} {MS}
February 28, 1858. I see twenty-four cones brought together under one pitch-pine tree in
the side of an open field, gnawed off but not opened. Evidently gathered from this tree
ready to be transported, but left behind.
{008} April 2, 1859. Two
hundred thirty-nine pitch-pine cones left in one heap.
{009} Michaux says
"Wherever these trees grow in masses the cones are dispersed singly over the
branches, and, as I have learned by constant observation, they release the seeds the first
autumn after their maturity; but on solitary stocks, exposed to the buffetting of the
winds, the cones are collected in groups of four, five, or even a larger number, and
remain closed for several years." {Note}
{010} January 25, 1855. A pine
cone blossoms out now fully in about three days in the house. They begin to open about
halfway up. They are exceedingly regular and handsome; the scales with shallow triangular
crescent-shaped extremities, the prickles pointing downward are most open above, and are
so much recurved at the base of the cone that they lie close together and almost flat
there, or at right angles with the stem, like a shield of iron scales making a perfectly
regular figure of thirteen curved rays, thus:
—only far more regular. There are just thirteen rays in each of the three I have.
These vary {MS} in their roundness or the flatness of the cone. So the white-pine cones in
their length. End of scale on side of cone:
{011} February 22, 1855.
Pitch-pine cones must be taken from the tree at the right season else they will not open
or blossom in a chamber. I have one which was gnawed off by squirrels, apparently
of full size, but which does not open. Why should they thus open in the chamber or
elsewhere? I suppose that under the influence of heat or dryness the upper side of each
scale expands while the lower contracts, or perhaps only the one expands or the other
conracts. I notice that the upper side is a lighter, almost cinnamon color, the lower a
darker (pitchy?) red.
{012} March 3, 1855. A few
rods from the broad pitch pine beyond Hubbard’s Grove, I find a cone which was
probably dropt by a squirrel in the fall, for I see the marks of its teeth where it was
cut off; and it has probably {MS} been buried by the {Page 229} snow till now, for
it has apparently just opened, and I shake its seeds out. Not only is this cone resting
upright on the ground fully blossomed, a very beautiful object, but the winged seeds which
half fill my hand—small triangular black seeds with thin and delicate flesh-colored
wings—remind me of fishes, alewives perchance, their tails more or less curved:
(I do not show the curve of
the tail.)
{013} I see in another place
under a pitch pine many cores of cones which the squirrels have completely stripped of
their scales, excepting about three at the extremity which cover no seeds, cutting them
off regularly at the seeds {Note}
or close to the core, leaving it in this form:
—or
more regular. From some partially stript I see that they begin at the base. These you find
left on and about stumps where they have sat and under the pines. Most fallen pitch-pine
cones {MS} show the marks of squirrels’
teeth—and that they were cut off.
{014} November 14, 1855. Heard
today in my chamber about 11 a.m. a singular sharp crackling sound by the window, which
made me think of the snapping of an insect (with its wings or striking something.) It was
produced by one of three small pitch-pine cones which I gathered on the seventh of this
month {Note} and
which lay in the sun on the window-sill. I noticed a slight motion still in the scales at
the apex, when suddenly with a louder crackling it, or the scales, separated with a
snapping sound on all sides of it. It was a general and sudden bursting or expanding of
all the scales, with a sharp crackling sound and a motion of the whole cone as by a force
pent up within it. I suppose the strain only needed to be relieved in one point for the
whole to go off.
{015} November 20, 1855. Again
I hear that sharp crackling, snapping sound and hastening to the window find that another
of the pitch-pine cones gathered November seventh, lying in the sun or which the sun has
reached, has separated its scales very slightly at the apex. It is discoverable only on a
close inspection; but while I look, the whole cone opens its scales with a smart
crackling, and rocks and seems to bristle {MS} up,
scattering the dry pitch on the surface. They all thus fairly loosen and open, though they
do not at once spread wide open. It is almost like the disintegration of glass. As soon as
the tension is relaxed in one part it is relaxed in every part. {Note}
{016} {MS}
Unlike the white pine, the pitch pine is opening its cones and dispersing its seed
gradually all winter, and it is not only blown far through the air, but slides yet {Page 230} further over the
snow and ice. It has often occurred to me that it was one value of a level surface of
snow, especially a crusted snow, that by its smoothness it favored the distribution of
such seeds as fell on it. I have many times measured the direct distance on a snowy field
from the outmost pine seed to the nearest pine to windward, and found it equal to the
breadth of the widest pasture. I have seen that the seed thus crossed one of our ponds, {Note} which is half a mile wide,
and I see no reason why it should not be blown many miles in some cases. In the fall it
would be detained by the grass, weeds, and bushes, but the snow having first come to cover
up all and make a level surface, the restless pine seeds go dashing {MS}
over it like an Esquimaux sledge with an invisible team until, losing their wings or
meeting with some insuperable obstacle, they lie down once for all, perchance to rise up
pines. Nature has her annual sledding to do, as well as we. In a region of snow and ice
like ours, this tree can be gradually spread thus from one side of the continent to the
other.
{017} By the middle of July, {Note} I notice on the shore of the
above-mentioned pond, just below the high-water line, many little pitch pines which have
just sprung up amid the stones and sand and muck, whose seed has been blown or drifted
across. There are some places for a row of pines along the water’s edge, which at
length, after fifteen or twenty years, are tipped over and destroyed by the heaving of the
frozen shore.
{018} {MS}
March 22, 1856. At Walden, near my old residence, I find that since I was here on the
eleventh, apparently within a day or two, some gray or red squirrel or squirrels have been
feeding on the pitch-pine cones extensively. The snow under one young pine is covered
quite thick with the scales which they have dropped while feeding overhead. I count the
cores of thirty-four cones in the snow there, and that is not all. Under another pine
there are more than twenty and a well-worn track from this to a fence-post three rods
distant, under which are the cores of eight cones and a corresponding amount of scales.
The track is like that of a very small rabbit going up the page:
They have
gnawed off the cones, which were perfectly closed. I see where one has taken one of a pair
and left the other partly off. He had first sheared off the needles that were in the way,
and then gnawed off the sides or cheeks of the twig in order to come at the stem of the
cone, which as usual was severed by successive cuts, as with a knife, while bending it.
One or two small—perhaps dead (probably still last summer, {Page 231} when little over a
year old), certainly unripe—ones were taken off and left unopened.
{019} I find that many of these young pines are now full of unopened
cones, which apparently will be two years old next summer—and these the squirrels now
eat. There are also some of them open, perhaps on the most thrifty twigs.
{020} {MS}
February 27, 1853. A week or two ago I brought home a handsome pitch-pine cone, which had
freshly fallen and was closed perfectly tight. It was put into a table drawer. Today I am
greatly surprised to find that it has there dried and opened with perfect regularity,
filling the drawer;
and from a solid, narrow, and sharp cone has become a broad, rounded, open
one
—has
in fact expanded with all the regularity of a flower’s petals into a conical flower
of rigid scales and has shed a remarkable quantity of delicate winged seeds. Each scale,
which is very elaborately and perfectly constructed, is armed with a short spine pointing
downward, as if to protect its seed from squirrels and birds. That hard closed cone, which
defied all violent attempts to open it and could only be cut open with a knife, has thus
yielded to the gentle {MS} persuasion of warmth and
dryness. The expanding of the pine cones—that, too, is a season.
{021} March 6. Part of the
pitch-pine cones are still closed.
{022} March 27, 1853. The base
of the pitch-pine cone which, closed, was semi-circular, after it has opened becomes more
or less flat and horizontal by the
crowding of the scales backward upon the smaller
and imperfect ones next the stem; and, viewed on this flat end, they are handsomely
arranged in curving rays. {Note}
{023} {J
01/24/1855}
We can perhaps imagine how the primitive wood looked to William Wood, the author of New
England’s Prospect, who left New England August fifteenth 1633, from the sample
still left in Maine. He says, "The timber of the country grows strait, and tall, some
trees being twenty, some thirty foot high, before they spread forth their branches;
generally the trees be not very thick, tho’ there be many that will serve for
mill-posts, some being three foot and an half over." One would judge from accounts
that the woods were clearer than the primitive wood that is left on account of Indian
fires, for he says you might ride a-hunting in most places. "There is no underwood,
saving in swamps," which the Indian fires did not burn. "Here no doubt might be
good done with saw mills; {Page 232}
for I have seene of these stately high grown trees [he is speaking of pines
particularly] ten miles together close by the river [probably Charles River] side." {Note}
JUNIPER REPENS
{001} {MS}
Juniper repens, March first.
{002} April 2, 1853. Those in
shade green; in light, turning purplish.
{003} September 4, 1853. Now a
hoary green, but full grown.
{004} April 30, 1855. I now
see many Juniper repens berries of a handsome light blue above, being still green
beneath, with three hoary pouting lips.
{005} September 29, 1859.
Quite green yet. See some of last year’s dark-purple ones at the base of the
branchlets.
{006} October 19. Though the
dark-blue or ripe are chiefly on the lower part of the branches, I see fresh green ones on
old wood as big as a pipe stem, and often directly opposite to purple ones! They are
strangely mixed up. I am not sure but some of this year’s berries are already ripe.
{007} Pliny speaks of a wine
made by boiling the juniper berries (Bohn says it is the Juniper communis of
Linnæus) in must. {Note}
{008} Loudon says of the
berries of the Juniper communis, "They continue on the bush two years,"
and "The berries are, {MS} however, the most useful
product of the juniper. Many kinds of birds feed on them, and when burnt, they were
formerly {Page 233}
thought to possess the power of preventing infection. They are, however, now
principally used in making gin"; that is, to flavor it. {Note}
{009} I surveyed for a man {Note} one winter who was
continually going into the juniper bushes to see if the berries were ripe, for he used
them to flavor some liquor which he made. He got so thirsty in the meanwhile, perhaps by
anticipation, that he would exclaim with emphasis, "I wish I had a barrel of rum up
here." Yet he went by the purest springs as if they were useless.
WINTER FRUITS
{001} Berries that hold on into winter are to be enumerated and perhaps deserve a separate notice—as sumac, rose hips and so on, dogwood and so on, winterberry above all, cattail, haws, two-leaved Solomon-seal, barberry, shrivelled pyrus, cranberries, sweet gale, green briar, pitch pine and so on, witch hazel, panicled andromeda, bayberry, hemlock, spruce, larch, cedar, juniper, checkerberry, walnuts, birches, and alders.
{001} {MS}
How little we insist on truly grand and beautiful natural features. There may be the most
beautiful landscapes in the world within a dozen miles of us, for aught we know—for
their inhabitants do not value nor perceive them, and so have not made them known to
others—but if a grain of gold were picked up there or a pearl found in a fresh-water
clam, the whole state would resound with the news. Thousands annually seek the White
Mountains {Note} to
be refreshed by their wild and primitive beauty, but when the country was discovered a
similar kind of beauty prevailed all over it—and much of this might have been
preserved for our present refreshment if a little foresight and taste had been used.
{002} I do not believe that
there is a town in this country which realizes in what its true wealth consists. I visited
the town of Boxboro only eight miles west of us last fall, and far the handsomest and most
memorable thing which I saw there was its noble oak wood. {Note} I doubt if there is a finer
one in Massachusetts. Let it stand fifty years longer and men will make pilgrimages to it
from all parts of {MS}
the country, and {Page 234}
for a worthier object than to shoot squirrels in it. {Note} And yet I said to myself,
Boxboro would be very like the rest of New England if she were ashamed of that woodland.
Probably, if the history of this town is written, the historian will have omitted to say a
word about this forest—the most interesting thing in it—and lay all the stress
on the history of the parish.
{003} It turned out that I was
not far from right, for not long after I came across a very brief historical notice of
Stow, which then included Boxboro, written by the Reverend John Gardner in the Massachusetts
Historical Collections nearly a hundred years ago—in which Mr. Gardner, after
telling us who was his predecessor in the ministry and when he himself was settled, goes
on to say, "As for any remarkables, 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 public notice, and that is the grave of Mr. John Green" who it appears,
when in England, "was made clerk of the {MS}
exchequer" by Cromwell. "Whether he was excluded from the Act of Oblivion or not
I cannot tell," says Mr. Gardner. At any rate, he returned to New England and, as Mr.
Gardner tells us, "lived and died, and lies buried in this place." {Note}
{004} I can assure Mr. Gardner
that he was not excluded from the act of oblivion.
{005} It is true Boxboro was
less peculiar for its woods at that date, but they were not less interesting absolutely.
{006} I remember talking a few
years ago with a young man who had undertaken to write the history of his native town, a
wild and mountainous town far up-country, whose very name suggested a hundred things to
me, and I almost wished I had the task to do myself, so few of the original settlers had
been driven out, and not a single clerk of the exchequer buried in it. But to my chagrin I
found that the author was complaining of want of materials, and that the crowning fact of
his story was that the town had been the residence of General C—— and the family
mansion was still standing. {Note}
Around this all the materials of this history were to arrange themselves.
{007} {J 03/18/1861} You can’t read
any genuine history, as that of Herodotus or the Venerable Bede, {Note} without perceiving that our
interest depends not on the subject but on the man—on the manner in which he treats
the subject and the importance he gives it. A feeble writer and without genius must have
what he thinks a great theme, which we are already interested in through the accounts of
others, but a genius—a Shakespeare, for instance—would make the history of his
parish more interest- {Page 235}
ing than another’s history of the world. Wherever men have lived, there is a
story to be told, and it depends chiefly on the story-teller or historian whether that is
interesting or not. {Note}
{008} {MS}
I have since heard, however, that {MS}
Boxboro is content to have that forest stand, instead of the houses and farms that might
supplant it, not because of its beauty, but because the land pays a much larger tax now
than it would then. {Note}
Nevertheless it is likely to be cut off within a few years for ship-timber and the
like. It is too precious to be thus disposed of. I think that it would be wise for the
state to purchase and preserve a few such forests. If the people of Massachusetts are
ready to found a professorship of Natural History, {Note} do they not see the
importance of preserving some portions of Nature herself unimpaired?
{009} I find that the rising
generation in this town do not know what an oak or a pine is, having seen only inferior
specimens. Shall we hire a man to lecture on botany—on oaks, for instance, our
noblest plants—while we permit others to cut down the few best specimens of these
trees that are left? It is like teaching children Latin and Greek while we burn the books
printed in those languages. {MS}
It is my own way of living that I complain of as well as yours, and therefore I trust that
my remarks will come home to you. I hope that I am not so poor a shot, like most
clergymen, as to fire into a crowd of a thousand men without hitting somebody, though I do
not aim at any one.
{010} Thus, we behave like
oxen in a flower garden. The true fruit of Nature can only be plucked with a fluttering
heart and a delicate hand, not bribed by any earthly reward. No hired man can help us to
gather that crop. Among the Indians the earth and its productions generally were common
and free to all the tribe, like the air and water, but among us who have supplanted the
Indians the public retain only a small yard or common in the middle of the village, with
perhaps a graveyard beside it, and the right of way, by sufferance, by a particular narrow
route, which is annually becoming narrower, from one such yard to another. I doubt if you
can ride out five miles in any direction without coming to where some individual is
tolling in the road, and he expects the time when it will all revert to him or his heirs.
This is the way we civilized men have arranged it.
{011} I am not overflowing
with respect and gratitude to the fathers who thus {MS}
laid out our New England villages, whatever precedents they were influenced by, for I
think that a ’prentice hand liberated from Old English prejudices could have done
much better in this New World. If they were in earnest seeking thus far away {Page 236} "freedom to
worship God," as some assure us, {Note}
why did they not secure a little more of it, when it was so cheap and they were about
it? At the same time that they built meetinghouses, why did they not preserve from
desecration and destruction far grander temples not made with hands?
{012} What are the natural
features which make a township handsome and worth going far to dwell in? A river with its
waterfalls, meadows, lakes, hills, cliffs, or individual rocks, a forest and single
ancient trees. Such things are beautiful. They have a high use which dollars and cents
never represent. If the inhabitants of a town were wise, they would seek to preserve these
things, though at a considerable expense. For such things {MS}
educate far more than any hired teachers or preachers, or any at present recognized system
of school education. I do not think him fit to be the founder of a state or even of a town
who does not foresee the use of these things, but legislates, as it were, for oxen
chiefly. It would be worth the while if in each town there were a committee appointed to
see that the beauty of the town received no detriment. If here is the largest boulder in
the country, then it should not belong to an individual nor be made into door-steps. In
some countries precious metals belong to the crown; so here more precious objects of great
natural beauty should belong to the public. Let us try to keep the New World new, and
while we make a wary use of the city, preserve as far as possible the advantages of living
in the country.
{013} I think of no natural
feature which is a greater ornament and treasure to this town than the river. It is one of
the things which determine whether a man will live here or in {MS}
another place, and it is one of the first objects which we show to a stranger. In this
respect we enjoy a great advantage over those neighboring towns which have no river. Yet
the town, as a corporation, has never turned any but the most purely utilitarian eyes upon
it and has done nothing to preserve its natural beauty. They who laid out the town should
have made the river available as a common possession forever. The town collectively should
at least have done as much as an individual of taste who owns an equal area commonly does
in England. Indeed, I think that not only the channel, but one or both banks of every
river should be a public highway, for a river is not useful merely to float on. In this
case, one bank might have been reserved as a public walk and the trees that adorned it
have been protected, and frequent avenues have bee