Thoreau writes in his journal:
8 A.M.—Via Walden, Goose, Flint’s, and Beaver Ponds and the valley of Stony Brook to the south end of Lincoln. A rather cool and breezy morning, which was followed by milder day. We go listening for early birds, with bread and cheese for our dinners . . . Saw a bluish-winged beetle or two. In a stubble-field east of Mt. Tabor, started up a pack (though for number, about twenty, it may have been a bevy) of quail, which went off to some young pitch pines, with a whir like a shot, the plump, round birds. The redpolls are still numerous. On the warm, dry cliff, looking south over Beaver Pond, I was surprised to see a large butterfly, black with buff-edged wings, so tender a creature to be out so early, and, when alighted, opening and shutting its wings . . . Cutting a maple for a bridge over Lily Brook, I was rejoiced to see a sap falling in large, clear drops from the wound.
William Ellery Channing writes in his journal:
Walked with H.D.T. Butterfly dark purple yellow borders to the wings. Black beetle. Four months yest. since I began this book. Good summer walk the other side of [Loring H.?] Austin’s. Bevey [?] quails.
(William Ellery Channing notebooks and journals. Houghton Library, Harvard University)
