Thoreau writes in his journal:
To-day the weather is severely and remarkably cold. It is not easy to keep warm in my chamber. I have not taken a more blustering walk the past winter than this afternoon. C. [William Ellery Channing] says he has heard a striped squirrel and seen a water-bug (Gyrinus),—it must have been on Saturday (12th) [Channing actually notes, “1st Water-bug” on 14 March.] . . . In the woods beyond Peters we heard our dog, a large Newfoundland dog, barking at something, and, going forward, were amused to see him barking while he retreated with fear at that black oak with remarkable excrescence, which had been cut off just above it, leaving it like some misshapen idol about the height of a man. Tough we set him on to it, he did not venture within three or four rods. I would not have believed hat he would notice any such strange thing.
Concord, Mass. William Ellery Channing writes in his journal:
Cold, blowy (William Ellery Channing notebooks and journals. Houghton Library, Harvard University).
