PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE MAINE WOODS - Kouroo · November 10, Monday: Thomas Say wrote Dr. Thaddeus...

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE MAINE WOODS:

DR. THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS

“There is as much to be discovered and to astonishin magnifying an insect as a star.”

— Dr. Thaddeus William Harris

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

THE PEOPLE OF MAINE WOODS: DR. THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS

HDT WHAT? INDEX

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

THE MAINE WOODS: After putting on such dry clothes as we had, andhanging the others to dry on the pole which the Indian arrangedover the fire, we ate our supper, and lay down on the pebbly shorewith our feet to the fire, without pitching our tent, making athin bed of grass to cover the stones.Here first I was molested by the little midge called the No-see-em (Simulium nocivum, the latter word is not the Latin for no-see-em), especially over the sand at the water’s edge, for it isa kind of sand-fly. You would not observe them but for theirlight-colored wings. They are said to get under your clothes, andproduce a feverish heat, which I suppose was what I felt thatnight.Our insect foes in this excursion, to sum them up, were, first,mosquitoes, the chief ones, but only troublesome at night, or whenwe sat still on shore by day; second, black flies (Simuliummolestum), which molested us more or less on the carries by day,as I have before described, and sometimes in narrower parts ofthe stream. Harris mistakes when he says that they are not seenafter June. Third, moose-flies. The big ones, Polis said, werecalled Bososquasis. It is a stout brown fly, much like a horse-fly, about eleven sixteenths of an inch long, commonly rustycolored beneath, with unspotted wings. They can bite smartly,according to Polis, but are easily avoided or killed. Fourth, theNo-see-ems above mentioned. Of all these, the mosquitoes are theonly ones that troubled me seriously; but, as I was provided witha wash and a veil, they have not made any deep impression.The Indian would not use our wash to protect his face and hands,for fear that it would hurt his skin, nor had he any veil; he,therefore, suffered from insects now, and throughout thisjourney, more than either of us. I think that he suffered morethan I did, when neither of us was protected. He regularly tiedup his face in his handkerchief, and buried it in his blanket,and he now finally lay down on the sand between us and the firefor the sake of the smoke, which he tried to make enter hisblanket about his face, and for the same purpose he lit his pipeand breathed the smoke into his blanket.

DR. THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The People of Maine Woods

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

mailto:[email protected] subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf



HDT WHAT? INDEX

Professor William Dandridge Peck (1763-1834) of Harvard College published his “The Description and History of the Canker Worm” about the spring cankerworm Phalaena vernata. (Professor Peck would teach the entomologist Thaddeus William Harris, who would be David Henry Thoreau’s entomology and botany teacher in his Senior year at Harvard.)

Sylvestre François Lacroix’s ÉLÉMENTS DE GÉOMÉTRIE DESCRIPTIVE: ESSAI DE GÉOMÉTRIE SUR LES PLANS ET LES SURFACES COURBES (Paris: impr. Fuchs).

November 12, Thursday: Thaddeus William Harris was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the eldest child of the The Reverend Dr. Thaddeus Mason Harris, D.D., who had for a short time been the Librarian of Harvard College, and Mary Dix Harris. The father was a minister in a Congregationalist church and, in 1820, would be the author of THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BIBLE. The son would study medicine, and would practice as a physician at Milton Hill, Massachusetts until 183, when he would become also the Librarian at Harvard. He would be appointed a commissioner in 1837 for a zoological and botanical survey of Massachusetts, and would prepare a catalogue of the insects of that state, enumerating 2,350 species. This, with his other extensive catalogues and his collection of insects, would be purchased by the Boston Society of Natural History.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1795

NEW “HARVARD MEN”


http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1795.htm







HDT WHAT? INDEX

Thaddeus William Harris received his BA degree from Harvard College and entered the Harvard Medical School.

Convers Francis, Jr. also received his bachelor’s degree. Still on file there is his “Spherical Problems. Convers Francis (21 ¾ x 29 inches).”

The Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard, John Farrar, was sponsoring the building of a weather observatory at Harvard (the project would not accumulate the required funds).Harvard awarded its automatic degree of Master of Arts to William Elliott of South Carolina (who actually, now fancy this, hadn’t even graduated with his class).

Professor Sylvestre François Lacroix left the École Polytechnique to take up a chair at the Sorbonne, and was appointed to the chair of mathematics at the Collège de France where since 1812 he had been teaching.

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1815

NEW “HARVARD MEN”




http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1815.htm





HDT WHAT? INDEX

After having been engaged for a period as a tutor in the family of Mr. Marshall, a wealthy planter on Sullivan’s Island near Charleston, South Carolina, Nicholas Marcellus Hentz enrolled as a medical student at Harvard College (he would soon abandon these studies).

Thaddeus William Harris received his MD degree from Harvard Medical School. He would find himself unable to make a comfortable living as a physician. However, he already had begun, in connection with his medical studies, his careful study of the habits of certain insects and plants.

The father of this new Dr. Harris, the Reverend Thaddeus Mason Harris, a Congregationalist minister, in this year was preparing his THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BIBLE.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1820








HDT WHAT? INDEX

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris’s 1st economic/entomological paper, “Upon the Natural History of the Salt Marsh Caterpillar.” (At Harvard College in 1837, Harris would be teaching Entomology and Botany to David Henry Thoreau during his final year of formal schooling.)

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1823








HDT WHAT? INDEX

November 10, Monday: Thomas Say wrote Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, that “entomology, which had so long been condemned in this country as a frivolous pursuit, seems now to be almost able to command that attention which its importance demands, & the formidable depredations of the insect race upon the vitals of the agricultural interest, compel the farmer to devote much attention to their manners and habits which he would not otherwise have deigned to bestow. This may be said to be the triumph of Entomology over the prejudices of the selfish.”

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF




This oil portrait of Thomas Say in uniform is by Charles Wilson Peale and is at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris got married with Catherine Holbrook of Milton, Massachusetts, the daughter of his first medical partner.

1824





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Between this year and 1849, Dr. Thaddeus William Harris and Catherine Holbrook Harris would be having like a dozen children, one of whom would die in infancy. In Cambridge, this family resided on Dunster Street, then on Linden Street, then on Holyoke Place. Contact with William Dandridge Peck would be leading Dr. Harris toward an interest in natural history — particularly, Entomology.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1826








HDT WHAT? INDEX

Benjamin Peirce, Junior became a mathematics tutor at Harvard College.

After the death of Benjamin Peirce, Senior, Dr. Thaddeus William Harris became the next Librarian at Harvard Library. During this year he prepared a catalogue of insects for Edward Hitchcock (1793-1864)’s REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY, MINERALOGY, BOTANY, AND ZOOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS (Amherst MA: Press of J.S. and C. Adams, 1833).

1831





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris of Harvard College completed a catalog of some 2,300 American insect species. (Waldo Emerson would complain that, bereft of any grand vision, such as for instance the sophisticated Naturphilosophes had in Europe, these American entomologists such as “Peck & Harris count the cilia & spines on a beetle’s wing.” — Not for Emerson any small view!)

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1832








HDT WHAT? INDEX

The Reverend William Kirby’s ON THE POWER, WISDOM AND GOODNESS OF GOD AS MANIFESTED IN THE CREATION OF ANIMALS AND IN THEIR HISTORY, HABITS AND INSTINCTS; (Second American Edition. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard).

A copy of this was gifted to Harvard College by the Class of 1837 on 31 July, 1837.

1837

ON THE POWER, WISDOM, ...ON THE POWER, WISDOM, ...

http://www.archive.org/stream/onpowerwisdoman00kirbgoog#page/n9/mode/2up

http://www.archive.org/stream/onpowerwisdoman01kirbgoog#page/n7/mode/2up





HDT WHAT? INDEX

There had been hardly enough at Harvard during those years to set a student scheming about other worlds to interrogate. However, during this final year in college would be published John Pringle Nichol’s VIEWS OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE HEAVENS, the book that was currently inspiring Robert Chambers to begin the drafting of his phenomenal bestseller, VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION.

Soon Professor William Whewell, in his HISTORY OF THE INDUCTIVE SCIENCES, FROM THE EARLIEST TO THE PRESENT TIME, would be indicting a couple of guys who were clearly guilty of living in late Roman times, Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes, as guilty also of belief in a flat earth.

During the period of David Henry Thoreau’s residency in Harvard Yard, according to a later record made by Professor Joseph Lovering,

there having been merely one unreliable astronomical clock, one small and quite useless transit compass “far below the average of such instruments,” and three telescopes not appropriate to any “nice observation,” (61-inch reflecting telescope, 15-inch and 12-inch refracting telescopes) by which the students might gaze at

the College did not possess a single instrument whichwas adapted to making an astronomical observationwhich would have any scientific value.

HARVARD OBSERVATORY





HDT WHAT? INDEX

the face of the moon, or at the current comet, or at the satellites of Jupiter, or the rings of Saturn.

(Whewell was determined that he was going to uncover evidence for such a belief, and thus produce grounds for his easy scorn toward “the flat earthers,” and he could discover this nowhere else: Aristotle, the venerable Bede, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, John Buriden, Nicholas Oresme, and all other reputable commentators had declared the earth, flatly, to be a globe.)

(It is to be noted that David Henry Thoreau was studying “Mathematics” and “Natural Philosophy” –which is to say, using the word that was at that time a neologism, “Science”– under this physicist and astronomer, Professor Joseph Lovering, and was studying Entomology and Botany under Dr. Thaddeus William Harris.)

From this year into 1842, during the vacancy of the natural history professorship, Dr. Harris would be lecturing on natural history at Harvard. This was the sole course that Harvard had to offer on the general topic of natural history, and it was taken as Thoreau took it, at the end of the senior year. Harris also was teaching a private class on Entomology and in this year prepared A REPORT ON THE INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS, INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. He would be building up a carefully described and arranged insect collection, while compiling painstaking indexes to major works on entomology, and over the course of his life would publish something like a hundred articles on insects and insect-related diseases. He was hoping against hope that he would be appointed as the college’s professor of natural history — but that would be a recognition which he would never be granted. When Thoreau took this course, it was in the first year in which it was being offered and consisted of 17 of Harris’s lectures on Botany.

Photographic proof... (The four corners have been arbitrarily numbered clockwise.)

1 2

34





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter initiated a project for a new “Cyclopædia of Natural Science,” on which he would be working for the following three years.

William Carpenter’s SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY was republished in Latin translation in Paris (not the same person as Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter above).

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris’s A REPORT ON THE INSECTS OF MASSACHUSETTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION was printed in Cambridge. (This is the edition which Henry Thoreau would use for his “Natural History of Massachusetts.” However, a 2d edition would appear in 1852 and Thoreau would come into possession of a copy of this new edition.)

A new American edition of his SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY; CONTAINING A DESCRIPTIVE ACCOUNT OF THE QUADRUPEDS, BIRDS, FISHES, INSECTS, REPTILES, SERPENTS, PLANTS, TREES, MINERALS, GEMS, AND PRECIOUS STONES, MENTIONED IN THE BIBLE, WITH IMPROVEMENTS BY THE REV. G.D. ABBOTT (Boston: Lincoln, Edmands & Co.) was illustrated by Gorham Dummer Abbott. This would be the edition that would be in the personal library of Thoreau (Google Books has, however, provided us only with his Boston edition of 1833).

1841

MASSACHUSETTS INSECTS

SCRIPTURE NATURAL HISTORY

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/41/1841_MassachusettsInsects.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/41/1833_ScriptureNaturalHistory.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Harvard College hired Professor Asa Gray away from Princeton University to become its professor of natural history, frustrating the desire of Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, Harvard Library’s Librarian, to himself achieve that appointment.

By this point six of the seven parts of John Torrey’s and Asa Gray’s A FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA: CONTAINING ABRIDGED DESCRIPTIONS OF ALL THE KNOWN INDIGENOUS AND NATURALIZED PLANTS GROWING NORTH OF MEXICO; ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE NATURAL SYSTEM had been distributed.

This work covered the vascular plants of North America north of Mexico except Greenland and was based on all readily accessible collections. It was organized according to a natural rather than a Linnaean system. Although Torrey and Gray’s work was not completed, Gray would take it up again years later. He would issue subsequent fascicles as part of a new work, the SYNOPTICAL FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA.

Only the gamopetalous families were actually completed by Gray. Torrey and Gray’s studies were based largely on collections from the many expeditions being made at that time. Relying upon information gathered in the great western expeditions of the preceding decades, Watson and Robinson would publish additional parts of Gray’s SYNOPTICAL FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA in 1895.

1842

Dr. Harris, with frustrated look

FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA

FLORA OF NORTH AMERICA

SYNOPTICAL FLORA

SYNOPTICAL FLORABOTANIZING

http://books.google.com/books?id=qU8-AAAAcAAJ&dq=John+Torrey%E2%80%99s+and+Asa+Gray%E2%80%99s+A+Flora+of+North+America&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://books.google.com/books?id=uk8-AAAAcAAJ&dq=editions:BSBBSB10303639&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://books.google.com/books?id=Q4lYAAAAMAAJ&dq=editions:HARVARD32044102803012&source=gbs_navlinks_s

http://books.google.com/books?id=YYYCAAAAYAAJ&dq=1895+Watson+Robinson+Flora+of+North+America&source=gbs_navlinks_s





HDT WHAT? INDEX

George Barrell Emerson’s and F.W.P. Greenwood’s THE CLASSICAL READER.

Nicholas Marcellus Hentz’s “Descriptions and Figures of the Araneides of the United States,” a series, began to appear in the Boston Journal of Natural History. This material on spiders would be accessed by Henry Thoreau. Dr. and Mrs. Hentz relocated from Florence, Alabama to Tuscaloosa, where they would conduct an academy for young white ladies. In this year, Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz’s DE LARA, OR, THE MOORISH BRIDE.

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, the Boston Society of Natural History’s Curator of Entomology, reported that the society’s insect collection was being destroyed by an Anthreni infestation. To contain this infestation, the mammalian collections would be subjected to steam heat and the bird collection would be baked.

1843

PROCEEDINGS, FOR 1843

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/43/1843_BSNHproceedings.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

December 27, Friday: Henry Thoreau was written to by Dr. Samuel Cabot in Boston:

{No MS — printed copy FL, 1894}

[December 27, 1850]

“with all the honores, privilegia, etc. ad gradum tuumpertinentia, without the formality of paying any entrance fee,or annual subscription. Your duties in return are to advance theinterests of the Society by communications or otherwise, asshall seem good.

Thoreau checked out again, from Harvard Library, Samuel de Champlain’s VOYAGES DE LA NOUVELLE FRANCE OCCIDENTALE, DICTE CANADA; FAITS POUR LE SR DE CHAMPLAIN XAINCTOGEOIS, CAPITAINE POUR LE ROY ET LA MARINE DU PONANT, & TOUTES LES DESCOUUERTES QU’IL A FAITES EN CE PAIS DEPUIS L’AN 1603; JUSQUES EN L’AN 1629... (Paris: C. Collet, 1632).

“There is no Frigate like a BookTo take us Lands away”

— Emily Dickinson

Dr. Bradley P. Dean has recently recovered, from between the pages of a book in that library, the original holograph of a previously uncollected Thoreau letter addressed to the Librarian of Harvard University, Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, Harvard Library:1

Concord Dec 27th

1850Dear Sir, I return herewith Quartier’s and Champlain’s Voyages.Will you please send me, by the bearer, the other (Collet’s?)edition of Champlain’s Voyages? I shall want it but a short time.

You will find the sentence to which I referred, when I sawyou, near the bottom of the 86th page of the Quebec volume. Possibly you have not observed the note V. at the bottomof the 107th page of the same volume; which may serve to explainthe name R du gas in Champlain’s map.

YrsH.D. Thoreau.

1850

1. The person we now call “Jacques Cartier” was being referred to at that time as “Quartier.”

SAMVEL CHAMPLAIN

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17258/17258-h/v5.htm





HDT WHAT? INDEX

From WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, we know that Walden Pond froze about the 27th:

Winter 1845-1846 December 22


Winter 1847-1848

Winter 1848-1849



Winter 1851-1852

Winter 1852-1853 January 5


Winter 1854-1855

Winter 1855-1856

FLINT’S POND WALDEN: In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time onthe night of the 22nd of December, Flint’s and other shallowerponds and the river having been frozen ten days or more; in ’46,the 16th; in ’49, about the 31st; and in ’50, about the 27th ofDecember; in ’52, the 5th of January; in ’53, the 31st ofDecember. The snow had already covered the ground since the 25thof November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery ofwinter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored tokeep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast.My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood inthe forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, orsometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. Anold forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haulfor me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving thegod Terminus.

TIMELINE OF WALDEN

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/WALDEN.html





HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris wrote three articles on squashes and pumpkins for the NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 1851-1852. He also prepared an unpublished extensive manuscript on cucumbers, “the natural order Cucurbitaceae.”

1851





HDT WHAT? INDEX

February 10, Monday: Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to Specchi in Havana, complaining of the cold and of hunting restrictions that were in effect on Staten Island.

Henry Thoreau wrote to the university librarian, Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, who had taught him Entomology and Botany during his senior year at Harvard College, at Harvard Library, to check out “Alfred ‘Hawkins’ PICTURE OF QUEBEC’ and ‘Silliman’s TOUR TO QUEBEC’” (contrary to what had been thought by some Thoreau scholars, he requested neither Hawkins’s THIS PLAN OF THE CITY OF QUEBEC, of 1835, nor Hawkins’s THE ENVIRONS OF QUEBEC, of 1844).

This would have amounted to, specifically, Alfred Hawkins’s HAWKINS’S PICTURE OF QUÉBEC, WITH HISTORICAL RECOLLECTIONS (1834), and Benjamin Silliman, Sr.’s REMARKS MADE, ON A SHORT TOUR, BETWEEN HARTFORD AND QUEBEC IN THE AUTUMN OF 1819 (1824, 2d edition).

Concord Feb 10th 1851Dear Sir,

QUÉBEC





HDT WHAT? INDEX

I return by the bearer De Laet’s “Norvus Orbis” &c Will you please send me Alfred “Hawkins’ Picture of Quebec” and “Silliman’s Tour to Quebec”?If these are not in — then Wytfliet’s “Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Argumentum &c” and Lescarbot’s “Les Muses de la Nouvelle France.”Yrs respecty

Henry D. Thoreau(It may well be that on this day he also returned to Harvard Library the checked out Volume 1 of François André Michaux’s THE NORTH AMERICAN SYLVA, OR A DESCRIPTION OF THE FOREST TREES, OF THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND NOVA SCOTIA..., 1817-18-19.

April 29, Tuesday: Opposite the courthouse grounds, Henry Thoreau helped the County Commissioners plan a series of monuments and burying-ground tracts.

Thoreau wrote to Dr. Thaddeus William Harris2 at the Harvard Library:

Concord Ap. 29th 1851Dear Sir,

I return, herewith,Young’s Chronicles of thePilgrims — Hawkins’sQuebec — & Silliman’sTour of Quebec.

Will you please sendme by the bearer — the2nd & 3d vols of the ForestTrees of North America,by F. Andrew Michaux, — ofwhich I have already hadthe 1st vol — alsoBigelow’s Medical Botany.

Yrs respectfullyHenry D. Thoreau.

April 29: Every man perhaps is inclined to think his own situation singular in relation to Friendship.Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not. But I do not not know of two whomI can speak of as standing in this relation to one another– Each one makes a standing offer to mankind– On such& such terms I will give myself to you –but it is only by a miracle that his terms are ever accepted.We have to defend ourselves even against those who are nearest to friendship with us.What a difference it is! –to perform the pilgrimage of life in the society of a mate –and not to have anacquaintance among all the tribes of men!What signifies the census –this periodical numbering of men– to one who has no friend?I distinguish between my actual and my real communication with individuals. I really communicate with myfriends, and congratulate myself & them on our relation –and rejoice in their presence & society –oftenest whenthey are personally absent. I remember that not long ago as I laid my head on my pillow for the night I wasvisited by an inexpressible joy that I was permitted to know & be related to such mortals as I was then related

2. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn reported that “one of Harvard College’s natural historians” (we may presume this to have been Dr. Harris, Thoreau’s teacher in natural science in his senior year) had remarked to Bronson Alcott that “if Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would have made a good entomologist.”

BIGELOW

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/17/1817_AmericanMedicalBotany_I.pdf




Whenever and wherever you see this little pencil icon in the pages of this Kouroo Contexture, it is marking an extract from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. OK?


HDT WHAT? INDEX

to — & yet no special event{One leaf missing}that I could think of had occurred to remind me of any with whom I was connected –and by the next noonperchance those essences that had caused me joy would have receded somewhat. I experienced a remarkablegladness in the thought that they existed– Their existence was then blessed to me. Yet such has never been myactual relation to any.Every one experiences that while his relation to another actually may be one of distrust & disappointment hemay still have relations to him ideally & so really — in spite of both He is faintly conscious of a confidence &satisfaction somewhere. & all further intercourse is based on this experience of success,The very dogs & cats incline to affection in their relation to man. It often happens that a man is more humanelyrelated to a cat or dog than to any human being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep in the housebut the bond of affection. In a degree we grow to love one another.

December 2, Tuesday: Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, Harvard College’s librarian, received materials that he had purchased out of funds bequeathed to the Harvard Library by Horace A. Haven of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, an alumni of the Class of 1842. Among these materials was a copy of the 1832 edition of Luke Howard’s 1803 pamphlet ESSAY ON THE MODIFICATIONS OF CLOUDS, a pamphlet of 39 pages.3 (This copy of the pamphlet had been inscribed by the author to its original owner on 28 June 1842 in Manchester, England.)

B Sept. 1856[BOOKPLATE WITH OLD HARVARD SEAL] “Christo et Ecclesiæ” “Bought/ with the Fund bequeathed by Horace A. Haven / of Portsmouth,N.H. / (Class of 1842.) / Rec.d Dec. 2, 1851.”[ON TITLE PAGE] “From the Author — Manchester / 28 June 1842.”

3. On page 31, the author expresses a desire that we not “be accused of building a castle in the air by attempting further conjectures” in regard to the Cumulus modification.

HOWARD PUBLICATIONS

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/67/1867_LukeHoward.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

July 26, Monday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, William Gilpin’s OBSERVATIONS, RELATIVE TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY, MADE IN THE YEAR 1772 ON SEVERAL PARTS OF ENGLAND, PARTICULARLY THE MOUNTAINS AND LAKES OF CUMBERLAND AND WESTMORELAND (1788).

He also checked out OBSERVATIONS, RELATIVE CHIEFLY TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY, MADE IN THE YEAR 1776, ON SEVERAL PARTS OF GREAT BRITAIN; PARTICULARLY THE HIGH-LANDS OF SCOTLAND BY WILLIAM GILPIN (London: R. Blamire, 1792).

He had a conversation with the Harvard College librarian, the entomologist Dr. Thaddeus William Harris,

1852

GILPIN’S OBSERVATIONS, IGILPIN’S OBSERVATIONS, II

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/80DECADE/88/1788_WilliamGilpin_I.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/80DECADE/88/1788_WilliamGilpin_II.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

about the emperor moth Atticus Luna.

(During this year a monograph that Thoreau had accessed, by his former science teacher Dr. Harris, during the preparation of his “Natural History of Massachusetts” essay, was receiving a 2d edition via White & Potter in Boston, as A TREATISE ON SOME OF THE INSECTS OF NEW ENGLAND WHICH ARE INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. This 2d edition has been found in Thoreau’s personal library.)

He responded to a 15-year-old Charlestown autograph-seeker, William H. Sweetser, who had written to him:

Concord July 26 ‘52Wm. H. Sweeter

This is the way I write when I have a poor penand still poorer ink.

Yrs.Henry D. Thoreau

July 26, Monday: By my intimacy with nature I find myself withdrawn from man. My interest in thesun & the moon –in the morning & the evening compels me to solitude.

The grandest picture in the world is the sunset sky. In your higher moods what man is there to meet? You are ofnecessity isolated. The mind that perceives clearly any natural beauty is in that instant withdrawn from humansociety. My desire for society is infinitely increased –my fitness for any actual society is diminished.Went to Cambridge & Boston today. Dr Harris says that my great moth is the Atticus Luna –may be regardedas one of several emperor moths They are rarely seen being very liable to be snapped up by birds. Once, as hewas crossing the college yard, he saw the wings of one coming down which reached the ground just at his feet.What a tragedy! –the wings came down as the only evidence that such a creature had soared –wings large &splendid which were designed to bear a precious burthen through the upper air. So most poems even epics arelike the wings come down to earth while the poet whose adventurous flight they evidence has been snapped upthe ravenous vulture of this world. If this moth ventures abroad by day some bird will pick out the precious

INJURIOUS INSECTS

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/52/1852_InjuriousInsects.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

cargo & let the sails and rigging drift –as when the sailor meets with a floating spar & sail and reports a wreckseen in a certain lat. & long. For what were such tender & defenceless organizations made. The one I had beingput into a large box beat itself its wings &c all to pieces in the night in its efforts to get out –depositing its eggsnevertheless on the sides of its prison. Perchance the entomologist never saw an entire specimen –but as hewalked one day the wings of a larger species than he had ever seen came fluttering down. The wreck of anargosy in the air.

He tells me the glow worms are 1st seen he thinks in the last part of August. Also that there is a large & brilliantglow worm found here more than an inch long as he measured it to me on his finger. –but rare

Perhaps the sunset glows are sudden in proportion as the edges of the clouds are abrupt –when the sun finallyreaches such a point that his rays Can be reflected from them.

A 10 Pm I see high columns of fog formed in the lowlands lit by the moon –preparing to charge this higherground– It is as if the sky reached the solid ground there –for they shut out the woods.

Flowers observed between June 23d & July 27th

x Those observed in very good seasonxx " " " rather earlyS Those which have been in blossom for a day or twoX " " " some days0 " " " some time V " " " not quite open

Rubus hispidus seen July 6th oPotamogeton hybridus seen June 26th– o " narrow leaved (leaves seen July 10) oLinnaea borealis June 24th going out of blossom

June24th Vaccinium macrocarpum xCalopogon pulchellus V

Asclepias quadrifolia sx Spiraea salicifoliax Archangelica atropurpurea

25th xx Maruta cotulax Prinos verticillatusx Convolvulus sepium

-seen by another 19th ultLinaria vulgaris Specularia perfoliata S

26th x Nymphaea odorata Sagittaria variabilis small form o

27th Epilobium angustifolium prob about 16thHedyotis longifolia O

28th x Oenothera biennis

29th Leonurus Cardiaca ap in good season Sparganium ramosum pretty good season

29th xx Pontederia cordataAnemone Virginiana X

30th Nepeta cataria ap. in good season

July 1st xx Trifolium arvenseLysimachia stricta V





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Ligustrum vulgare X Hypericum ellipticum S

x Polygonum sagittatumx Lobelia spicata

Krigia Virginica ap in pretty good season Comarum palustre O

2nd x Mollugo verticellatax Polygonum convolvulus

Cornus stolonifera S

3d x Lilium Canadense Chimaphila umbellata O

x Polygonum persicariax Ceanothus Americanusx Asclepias purpurascensx Daucus carota

4th Lysimachia lanceolata var hybrida SGratiola aurea "

5th Typha latifolia XCampanula aparinoides ap in good season

x Cicuta maculatax Asclepias Cornuti x " incarnata

6th x Cirsium arvense Vicia cracca O

x Pastinaca sativa x Agrimonia Eupatoria

Tanacetum vulgare V

6th Castanea vesca Sx Lilium Philadelphicum

Lycopodium dendroideum SGalium trifidum X " triflorum XScutellaria lateriflora SCircaea alpina S

7th x Spiraea tomentosaPyrola rotundifolia

(?) Elliptica (?)Chlorantha(?) some earlier some later O

x Plantago majorx Lepidium Virginicumx 17–18–or l9th aster (?) of Gray

8th Small globose white flower with grasslike leaves in mud XSium latifolium S

9th x Tilia Americana Asclepias obtusifolia ap in good seasonx Lactuca elongata





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Ludwigia palustris OUtricularia cornuta SIlysanthes gratioloides SSisymbrium amphibium ? X

x Galium asprellum

10th x Portulaca oleraceaMelilotus leucantha ap in pretty good season

x Scutellaria galericulataDrosera longifolia X

x Seriocarpus conyzoides (?)

11th x Polygonum hydropiperoides ?Large orange lily strayed from cult. S

x Impatiens fulva13x Solidago stricta ?July 13th Polygala sanguinea S" cruciata S

x verbena urticifoliacichorium intybus S

Urtica gracilisSPolygonum aviculareO

16thx chenopodium album

Common form of sagittaria S x Xyris x cephalanthus occidentalis

x Rhexia Virginica x Stachys aspera x Platanthera lacera

Desmodium acuminatum Sxx Lechea major

17th x Antennaria margaritacea Rosa Carolina ? XLobelia inflata S

x Lappa major x Amaranthus hybridus x Verbena hastata x Gnaphalium uliginosum

Hypericum Canadense S18thx Mentha Canadensis

Peltandra Virginica about end of 1st week of JulyA Neottia well out

x A narrow leaved polygonum front rank in riverSpergula arvensis O

Raphanus raphanistrumXx Lycopus sinuatus

Brasenia peltata O since July 1st

19





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Phytolacca decandra S

20th Elodea Virginica X

x Penthorum sedoidesBoehmeria cylindrica ? SAlisma plantago O

21st x Mimulus ringensSium Lineare (?) with round smooth stem

22ndAster macrophyllus SLysimachia ciliata ODrosera rotundifolia XMonotropa uniflora S

xx Solidago Canadensis ? x Either Polygonum hydropiperoides or amphibium x Cnicus lanceolatum

Galium circaezans O unknown flower. Quite small aster like flower just out

23d x Pycnanthemum muticumx cnicus pumilum x chenopodium hybridum unknown plant out of flower

24thx Lobelia Cardinalis x Erigeron Canadense?

25x Polygonum hydropiper.

Miscellaneous observations within same dates–June 24th White ash keys

excrescences on grape leaves & vinesuncommonly cool weatherMany grasshoppers for first timemost June grass dead in dry fields Pine tops inclinePanicled Andromeda has froth on it.

25th Season of wild rosesWhite pine cones 1/2 inch long A fine wiry grass in sproutlands

26th Silvery undersides of maples & other leaves in breeze V. Pennsylvanicum ripe for a day or two on hills

27 Meadow fragrance still perceived Freshness of the year nearly passed

Fields generally incline to a reddish or brownish green Partridge with her brood.

Strawberries in their prime29th Blue berries brought to sell

Yel. water ranunculus scarce





HDT WHAT? INDEX

30th Lower shoots of dwarf Andromeda 6 inches long Shrub oak acorns as big as peas Bobolinks rarely heard for a week.

July 1st Roses in their primeRubus triflorus (?) ripe

2nd Clover heads drying up3d Have seen no violets for some time

Rubus strigosus ripe prob. a day or two Hardly a geranium now

4th Young pouts 1 inch long moss rose ap. out of bloom

5th Thimble berry ripeVaccinium fuscatum (?) ripe by RRSeason progresses to berrying time & locust weather Buttercups have generally disappeared.

6th Caterpillar nests on shrub oaks7th First really foggy morning7th Do not see the arethusa now8th Drooping heads of rattlesnake grass

Great Moth–Atticus Luna on river.Pontederia begins to show

9th First hear a tanager this yearBathing a great luxuryWarm weatherVaccinium vacillans here & there ripeRubus CanadenseWhite spruce shoots a strawberry fragrance? fir.

10th Hottest weather thus far 11th Fishes nests left dry–

Elder–pogonias, & calopogons Abundant Shade important & significant.

13th Cerasus Pennsylvanica ripeGaylussacia blue for a day or two ripe" resinosa ripe Vaccinium corymbosum ripe

15 Fleets of yel. butterflies in road16 Link link fall note of bobolink

a Goldfinch twitters overSarsaparilla berries black

17th Gentle summer rain (misty–) dew like filling the air & on leaves Roses early kind not numerous swamp pinks still numerous

Green coats of hazel nutsYellow flowered bunches of Indigo weedEntire leaved erigeron aboundsMeadows white with meadow rue

18 Pontederias in primeWhite lilies in greatest profusionCooler–breezier–(muggy–shady) weather after heatsA columbine stillStrawberries still found under high mead. grassGreen grapes ready for stewing

19th Cerasus pumila may be a day or twoChestnut blossoms have made a great show sometime

20th Aromatic leaves of blue curls appear21st A broken strain from a bobolink

A golden robin 2 or 3 times





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Early straight thorned roses out of bloom Alder locust

22nd Flock of female bobolinksGreen berries of arum–axil flowerd Sol. seal & reddish fruit of Trillium Farmers fairly begin meadow haying More furnace like heat after all Huckle berrying & blackberrying commence

23d Cerasus Virginiana ripePyrus arbutifolia"

24th Some smooth sumac berries redFresh green on shorn fields Goldfinch plainly about on willows

25th Morning fog filling lowlands like a sea & evening battalions.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

January 1, Saturday: Henry Thoreau recorded in his journal that Professor Louis Agassiz considered Dr. Thaddeus William Harris to be the greatest entomologist:

January 1, Saturday, 1853: This morning we have something between ice & frost on the trees, &c.The whole earth as last night but much more is encased in ice, which on the plowed fields makes a singular icycoat a quarter of an inch or more in thickness. About 9 o’clock Am I go to Lees via Hubbards wood & HoldensSwamp & the river side – for the middle is open. The stones & cow dung & the walls too are all cased in ice onthe north side– The latter look like alum rocks. This – not frozen mist or frost but frozen drizzle collectedaround the slightest cores gives prominence to the least withered herbs & grasses– Where yesterday was a plainsmooth field appears now a teeming crop of fat icy herbage. The stems of the herbs on their north sides areenlarge from 10 to 100 times. The addition is so universally on the north side that a traveller could not lose thepoints of compass today though it should never so dark – for every blade of grass would serve to guide him –telling from which side the storm came yesterday. Mere straight stems of grasses stand up like white batons orscepters and make conspicuous foreground to the landscape, – from 6 inches to 3 feet high. C. thought that thesefat icy branches on the withered grass & herbs had no nucleus but looking closer I showed him the fine blackwiry threads on which they impinged – which made him laugh with surprise.– The very cowdung is incrusted& the clover & sorrel send up a dull green gleam through their icy coat like strange plants– The pebbles in theploughed land are seen as through a transparent coating of gum. Some weeds bear the ice in masses – some likethe trumpet weed & tansy in balls for each dried flower. What a crash of jewells as you walk. The most carelesswalker who never deigned to look at these humble weeds before cannot help observing them now. This is whythe the herbage is left to stand dry in the fields all winter. Upon a solid foundation of ice stand out pointing inall directions between NW & NE or within the limits of 90 degrees little spicula or crystalized points half aninch or more in length.Upon the dark glazed plowed ground where a mere wiry stem rises its north side is thickly clad with these snowwhite spears like some Indian’s head dress as if it had attracted all the frost. I saw a Prinos bush full of largeberries by the wall in Hubbards field– Standing on the west side the contrast of the red berries with their whiteincrustation or prolongation on the north – was admirable. I thought I had never seen the berries so dazzlinglybright. The whole north side of the bush berries & stock was beautifully incrusted. And when I went round tothe N side the redness of the berries came softend through & tinging the allied snow white bush – like an eveningsky beyond. These adjoined snow or ice berries being beset within the limits of 90 degrees on the N with thoseicy prickles or spicula between which the red glow & some times the clear red itself appeared gave it theappearance of a raspberry bush full of over ripe fruit.Standing on the north side of a bush – or tree looking against the sky – you see only a white ghost of a treewithout a mote of earthiness, but as you go round it the dark core comes into view. It makes all the oddsimaginable whether you are travelling N or S.– The drooping birches along the edges of woods are the mostfeathery fairy-like ostrich plumes of the trees, and the color of their trunks increases the delusion. The weightof the ice gives to the pines the forms which northern trees like the firs constantly wear. Bending & twisting thebranches – for the twigs & plumes of the pines being frozen remain as the wind held them–& new portions ofthe trunk are exposed. Seen from the N. there is no greenness in the pines–& the character of the tree is changed.The willows along the edge of the river look like sedge in meadows.The sky is overcast and a fine snowy hail & rain is falling–& these ghostlike trees make a scenery which remindsyou of Spitzbergen. I see now the beauty of the causeway by the bridge – alders below swelling into the roadovertopped by willows & maples. The fine grasses & shrubs in the meadow rise to meet & mingle with thedrooping willows & the whole make an indistinct impression like a mist & between this the road runs towardthose white ice-clad ghostly or fairy trees in the distance – toward spirit-land. The pines are as white as acounterpane with raised embroidery & white tassels & fringes. Each fascicle of leaves or needles is held apartby an icy club surrounded by a little snowy or icy ball. Finer than the saxon arch is this path running under thepines roofed not with crossing boughs but drooping ice-covered twigs in irregular confusion. See in the midstof this stately pine towering like the solemn ghost of a tree – the white ice-clad boughs of other trees appearing,of a dif. character Sometimes oaks with leaves –incrusted– or fine sprayed maples or walnuts. But finer thanall this red oak – its leaves incrusted like shields 1/4 of an inch thick–& a thousand fine spicula like longserrations at right angles with their planes upon their edges. It has an indescribably rich effect – with color ofthe leaf coming softened through the ice a delicate fawn color.–of many shades. Where the plumes of the pitchpines are short & spreading close upon the trunk – sometimes perfect cups or rays are formed. Pitch pinespresent rough massy grenadier plumes – with each a darker spot or cavity in the end where you look in to the

1853





HDT WHAT? INDEX

buds. I listen to the booming of the pond as if it were a reasonable creature. I return at last in a rain and amcoated with a glaze like the fields.Being at Cambridge day before yesterday – Sibley told me that Agassiz told him that Harris was the greatestentomologist in the world, and gave him permission to repeat his remark. As I stood on the top of a ladder hecame along with his hand full of papers–& inquired do you value autographs? – No, I do not, I answered slowly& gravely.– Oh – I didn’t know but you did– I had some of Governor Dunlap.–said he retreatingAfter talking with uncle Charles the other night about the worthies of this country Webster & the rest as usualconsidering who were geniuses & who not – I showed him up to bed & when I had got into bed myself I heardhis chamber door opened – after 11 ’oclock – and he called out in an earnest stenterian voice loud enough towake the whole house– “Henry! Was John Quincy Adams a genius”? – No, I think not” was my reply– WellI did n’t think he was answered he.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

February 9, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Captain John Smith’s THE GENERALL HISTORIE OF VIRGINIA, NEW-ENGLAND & THE SUMMER ISLES, TOGETHER WITH THE TRUE TRAVELS, ADVENTURES AND OBSERVATIONS, AND A SEA GRAMMAR (London: Michael Sparkes, 1624).





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Thoreau also checked out three volumes of Johann-Theodor de Bry’s DESCRIPTIONES AMERICAE, otherwise known as the COLLECTIONES PEREGRINATIONUM IN INDIAM ORIENTALEM ET INDIAM OCCIDENTALEM, XXV PARTIBUS COMPREHENSAE, A THEODORO, JOAN: THEODORO DE BRY, ET A MATHEO MERIAM PULICATAE (Francofurti ad moenum: typis Ioanis Wecheli, sumtibus vero Theodoro de Bry, 1590-1634).

Thoreau also checked out the JESUIT RELATION for 1640. He had already considered the volumes for the years 1633-1638 — Harvard Library would not obtain, from Québec, a copy of that volume until late in the following year.4

4. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU

R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. PAUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637

DESCRIPTIONES AMERICAE

http://www2.kb.dk/elib/mss/treasures/verden/15_445.htm





HDT WHAT? INDEX

http://www.canadiana.org

Thoreau copied from George Heriot’s THE HISTORY OF CANADA FROM ITS FIRST DISCOVERY; COMPREHENDING AN ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COLONY OF LOUISIANA. BY GEORGE HERIOT, ESQ. DEPUTY POSTMASTER-GENERAL OF BRITISH AMERICA (Printed for T.N. Longman and O. Rees, Paternoster Row) into his Indian Notebook #8 and into his Canadian Notebook.

February 9: At Cambridge to-day.Dr Harris thinks the Indians had no real hemp but their apocynum — and he thinks a kind of nettle — & anasclepias. &c. He doubts if the dog was indigenous among them — Finds nothing to convince him in the historyof N. England.5 Thinks that the potato which is said to have been carried from Virginia by Raleigh was theground-nut (which is described, I perceived, in Debry (Heriot?) among the fruits of Virginia), the potato notbeing indigenous in North America, and the ground-nut having been called wild potato in New England, thenorth part of Virginia, and not being found in England. Yet he allows that Raleigh cultivated the potato inIreland.

5. Agassiz asked him what authority there was for it.

DOG





This would be a major resource for Thoreau.



HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Saw the grizzly bear near the Haymarket to-day, said (?) to weigh nineteen hundred, — apparently too much.He looked four feet and a few inches in height, by as much in length, not including his great head, and his tail,which was invisible. He looked gentle, and continually sucked his claws and cleaned between them with histongue. Small eyes and funny little ears; perfectly bearish, with a strong wild-beast scent; fed on Indian mealand water. Hind paws a foot long. Lying down, with his feet up against the bars; often sitting up in the corneron his hind quarters.Two sables also, that would not be waked up by day, with their faces in each other’s fur. An American chinchilla,and a silver lioness said to be from California.

April 11, Monday: Henry Thoreau went to Haverhill to do extended surveying for James H. Duncan.

Thoreau began to access materials relating to spiders prepared by Nicholas Marcellus Hentz for the Boston Journal of Natural History:

April 11: I hear the clear, loud whistle — of a purple finch — somewhat like & nearly as loud as therobin from the elm by Whitings. The maple, which I think is a red one, just this side of Wheildons is just outthis morning.9 Am to Haverhill via Cambridge & Boston.Dr Harris says that that early blackwinged-buffedged butterfly is the Vanessa Antiopa — & is introduced fromEurope — & is sometimes found in this state alive in winter. The orange brown one with scolloped wings & smaller somewhat is vanessa-progne.The early pestle shaped bug or beetle is a cicindela — of which there are 3 species one of them named from asemicolon-like mark on it. V. Hassley on spiders in Bost Journal of Nat Hist.At Nat Hist Rooms — saw the Female Red-wing striped white & ash Female Cow-bird ashy brown.1st The Swamp-sparrow is ferruginous brown (spotted with black) & ash above about neck; brownish-whitebeneath; undivided chestnut crown.2nd The Grass-bird [Vesper Sparrow Pooecetes gramineus] — grayish brown-mingled with ashy whitishabove; light pencilled with dark brown beneath — no marked crown outer tail-feathers whitish, — perhaps afaint bar on wing.3rd Field sparrow, smaller than either — marked like first, with less black, & less distinct ash on neck, & lessferruginous & no distinct crown.4th Savannah Sparrow much like second; with more black, but not noticeable white in tail, and a little morebrown — no crown marked.Emberiza Rniliaria (What is it in Nuttal?) Gmel. appears to be my young of purple Finch.One Maryland Yellow Throat — probably female. has no black on side head, & is like a summer yellow bird— except that the last has ends of the wings & tail black.The yellow swmp warbler (what is it in Nuttal?) is bluish gray with 2 white bars on wings — a bright yellowcrown — side breasts & rump— Female less distinct.






HDT WHAT? INDEX

Black burnian — is orange-throated.American red-start, male, is black — forward — coppery orange beneath & stripe on wings & near base of tail.Female dark ashy fainter marks.J.E. Cabot thought my small hawk might be Cooper’s “ Says that Gould an Englishman is the best authority onbirds.

October 31, Monday: Henry Thoreau made reference to William Kirby’s and William Spence’s AN INTRODUCTION TO ENTOMOLOGY: OR ELEMENTS OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF INSECTS: WITH PLATES.

Oct 31st 7 Am by river to NawshawtuctOwing to the rain of the 28th added to that of the 23d the river has risen now prob more than 3 feet above whereit was a week ago — yet wider over the meadows. Just at the edge, where it is mixed with grass and leaves, itis stiffened slightly this morning. On the trill, I see flocks of robins, flitting from tree to tree and peeping. It isa clear, cool, Novemberish morning, reminding me of those peculiarly pleasant mornings in winter when thereis a slight vapor in the atmosphere. The same without snow or ice. There is a fine vapor, twice as high as a house,over the flooded meadows, through which I see the whiter dense smoke columns or streaks from the chimneysof the village, a cheerful scene. Methinks I see, far away toward the woods, a frozen mist suspended against

their sides. What was that very heavy or thick, though not very large, hawk that sailed away from a hickory?The Hemlock seeds are apparently ready to drop from their cones. The cones are mostly open. Now appears tobe the very time for walnuts. I knock down showers with a stick, but all do not come out of the shells. I believe I have not bathed since Cattle Show– It has been rather too cold– & I have had a cold withal.

PMBy boat with Sophia to my grapes laid down in front of Fair Haven. It is a beautiful, warm and calm Indian-summer afternoon. The river is so high over the meadows, and the pads and other low weeds so deeply buried,and the water is so smooth and glassy withal, that I am reminded of a calm April day during the freshets. Thecoarse withered grass, and the willows, and button- bushes with their myriad balls, and whatever else stands onthe brink, are reflected with wonderful distinctness. This shore, thus seen from the boat, is like the ornamentedframe of a mirror. The buttonballs, etc., are more distinct in the reflection, if I remember, because they havethere for background the reflected sky, but the actual ones are seen against the russet meadow. I even see housesa mile off, distinctly reflected in the meadow flood. The cocks crow in barn-yards as if with new lustiness. Theyseem to appreciate the day. The river is three feet and more above the summer level. I see many pickerel dartaway, as I push my boat over the meadows. They lie up there now, and fishing is over, except spearing. You canno longer stand oil the true banks to fish, and the fish are too widely dispersed over the grassybottomed andshallow meadow. The flood and wind have washed up great quantities of cranberries loosened by the rake,






HDT WHAT? INDEX

which now line the shore, mixed with the wrecked grass and weeds. We gathered five quarts, partly frost-bitten.There are already myriads of snow-fleas on the water next the shore, and on the cranberries we pick in thewreck, as if they were peppered. When we ripple the surface, the undulating light is reflected from the wavesupon the bank and bushes and withered grass. Is not this already November, when the yellow and scarlet tintsare gone from the forest? It is very pleasant to float along over the smooth meadow, where every weed and eachstem of coarse grass that rises above the surface has another, answering to it and even more distinct, in the waterbeneath, making a rhyme to it, so that the most irregular form appears regular. A few scattered dry and clean(very light straw-colored) grasses are so cheap and simple a beauty thus reflected. I see this especially onPotter’s meadow. The bright hips of the meadow rose, which we brush against with our boat, — for with sallows& button-bushes it forms islands, — are handsomer thus seen than a closer inspection proves. Tansy lingers stillby Hubbard’s Bridge. But methinks I he flowers are disappearing earlier this season than last.I slowly discover that this is a gossamer day. I first see the fine lines stretching from one weed or grass stem orrush to another, sometimes seven or eight feet distant, Horizontally and only four or five inches above the water.When I look further, I find that they are everywhere and on everything, sometimes forming conspicuous finewhite gossamer webs on the heads of grasses, or suggesting an Indian bat. They are so abundant that they seem

to have been suddenly produced in the atmosphere by some chemistry, — spun out of air, — I know not forwhat purpose. I remember that in Kirby and Spence it is not allowed that the spider can walk on the water tocarry his web across from rush to rush, but here I see myriads of spiders on the water, making some kind ofprogress, and one at least with a line attached to him. True they do not appear to walk well, but they stand uphigh and dry on the tips of their toes, and are blown along quite fast. They are of various sizes and colors, thoughmostly a greenish-brown or else black; some very small. These gossamer lines are not visible unless betweenyou and the sun. We pass some black willows, now of course quite leafless, and when they are between us andthe sun they are so completely covered with these fine cobweb’s or lines, mainly parallel to one another, thatthey make one solid woof, a misty woof, against the sun. They are not drawn taut, but curved downward in themiddle, like the rigging of vessels, —the ropes which stretch from mast to mast, — as if the fleets of a thousandLilliputian nations were collected one behind another under bare poles. But when we have floated a few feetfurther, and thrown the willow out of the sun’s range, not a tin-can can be seen on it.I landed and walked up and down the causeway and found it the same there, the gossamer reaching across thecauseway, though not necessarily supported on the other side. They streamed southward with the slight zephyr.As if the year were weaving her shroud out of light. It seemed only necessary that the insect have a pointd’appui; and then, wherever you stood and brought the leeward side of its resting-place between you and thesun, this magic appeared. They were streaming in like manner southward from the railing of the bridge, parallelwaving threads of light, producing a sort of flashing in the air. You saw five or six feet in length from oneposition, but when I moved one side I saw as much more, and found that a great many, at least, reached quiteacross the bridge from side to side, though it was mere accident whether they caught there, —though they werecontinually broken by unconscious travellers. Most, indeed, were slanted slightly upward, rising about one footin going four, end, in like manner, they were streaming from the south rail over the water, I know not how far.And there were the spiders on the rail that produced them, similar to those on the water. Fifteen rods off, up theroad, beyond the bridge, they looked like a shimmering in the air in the bare tree-tops, the finest, thinnestgossamer veil to the sun, a dim wall.I ann at a loss to say what purpose they serve, and am inclined to think that they are to some extent attached toobjects as they float through the atmosphere; for I noticed, before I had gone far, that my grape-vines in a basketin the boat had got similar lines stretching from one twig to another, a foot or two, having undoubtedly caughtthem as we paddled along. It might well be an electric phenomenon. The air appeared crowded with them. Itwas a wonder they did not get into the mouth and nostrils, or that we did not feel them on our faces, orcontinually going and coming amid them did not whiten our clothes more. And yet one with his back to the sun,walking the other way, would observe nothing of all this. Only stand so as to bring the south side of any tree,bush, fence, or other object between you and the sun. Methinks it is only on these very finest days late in autumnthat this phenomenon is seen, as if that fine vapor of the morning were spun into these webs.According to Kirby and Spence, “in Germany these flights of gossamer appear so constantly in autumn that theyare there metaphorically called ‘Der fliegender Sommer’ (the flying or departing summer).” What can possessthese spiders thus to run all at once to every the least elevation, and let off this wonderful stream? Harris tellsme he does not know what it means. Sophia thought that thus at last they emptied themselves and wound up,or, I suggested, unwound, themselves, — cast off their mortal coil. It looks like a mere frolic spending andwasting of themselves, of their vigor, now that there is no further use for it, their prey, perchance, being killedor banished by the frost.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

November 28, Monday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, the Reverend William Gilpin’s OBSERVATIONS ON THE COASTS OF HAMPSHIRE, SUSSEX, AND KENT, RELATIVE CHIEFLY TO PICTURESQUE BEAUTY: MADE IN THE SUMMER OF THE YEAR 1774 (London, Printed by A. Strahan for T. Cadell and W. Davies).6 He also checked out the Reverend’s THREE ESSAYS: ON PICTURESQUE BEAUTY; ON PICTURESQUE TRAVEL; AND ON SKETCHING LANDSCAPE: WITH A POEM ON LANDSCAPE PAINTING. TO THESE ARE NOW ADDED, TWO ESSAYS GIVING AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRINCIPLES AND MODE IN WHICH THE AUTHOR EXECUTED HIS OWN DRAWINGS (London: T. Cadell and W. Davies), in its 3d edition issued in 1808.

Having already perused the volumes for the years 1633-1638 and 1640, Thoreau checked out the JESUIT RELATION volumes for the years 1640-1641 and 1642.7


At the Boston Society of Natural History, Thoreau checked out the 3d volume of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s and Captain Seth Eastman’s HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES.

Monday Nov. 28Saw boys skating in Cambridge-Port the first ice to bear– Settled with J. Munroe & Co — and on a new Actplaced 12 of my books with him on sale. I have paid him directly out of pocket since the book was published290 dollars and taken his receipt for it— This does not include postage on proofsheets &c &c— I have received from other quarters about 15 dollars. This has been the pecuniary value of the book– Saw atthe Nat Hist– Rooms the skeleton of a moose — with horns– The length of the spinal processes (?) over the

6. He would copy from this into his Fact Book, and use some of the material in CAPE COD.7. Thoreau presumably read each and every volume of the JESUIT RELATIONS that was available in the stacks at the Harvard Library. We know due to extensive extracts in his Indian Notebooks #7 and #8 that between 1852 and 1857 he did withdraw or consult all the volumes for the years between 1633 and 1672. Thoreau took notes in particular in regard to the reports by Father Jean de Brébeuf, Father Jacques Buteux, Father Claude Dablon, Father Jérôme Lallemant, Father Paul Le Jeune, Father François Le Mercier, Father Julien Perrault, Father Jean de Quens, Father Paul Ragueneau, and Father Barthélemy Vimont. Cramoisy, Sebastian (ed.). RELATION DE CE QUI S’EST PASSÉ EN LA NOUVELLE FRANCE IN L’ANNÉE 1636: ENVOYÉE AU

R. PERE PROVINCIAL DE LA COMPAGNIE DE JESUS EN LA PROVINCE DE FRANCE, PAR LE P. PAUL LE JEUNE DE LA MESME COMPAGNIE, SUPERIEUR DE LA RESIDENCE DE KÉBEC. A Paris: Chez Sebastian Cramoisy..., 1637

THREE ESSAYS, 3D EDITION

THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433070986900;page=root;seq=5;view=image;size=100;orient=0

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_III_1854.pdf







HDT WHAT? INDEX

shoulder was very great– The hind legs were longer than the front — & the horns rose about 2 feet above theshoulders & spread between 4 & 5 I judged–Dr Harris described to me his finding a species of Cicindela at the White mts this fall — (the same he had foundthere one specimen of som time ago–) supposed to be very rare — found at st Peter’s River & at Lake Superior— but he proves it to be common near the Wht. mts.

CAPE COD: To-day it was the Purple Sea, an epithet which I should notbefore have accepted. There were distinct patches of the color of apurple grape with the bloom rubbed off. But first and last the seais of all colors. Well writes Gilpin concerning “the brilliant hueswhich are continually playing on the surface of a quiet ocean,” andthis was not too turbulent at a distance from the shore. “Beautiful,”says he, “no doubt in a high degree are those glimmering tints whichoften invest the tops of mountains; but they are mere coruscationscompared with these marine colors, which are continually varying andshifting into each other in all the vivid splendor of the rainbow,through the space often of several leagues.” Commonly, in calmweather, for half a mile from the shore, where the bottom tinges it,the sea is green, or greenish, as are some ponds; then blue for manymiles, often with purple tinges, bounded in the distance by a lightalmost silvery stripe; beyond which there is generally a dark-bluerim, like a mountain ridge in the horizon, as if, like that, it owedits color to the intervening atmosphere. On another day it will bemarked with long streaks, alternately smooth and rippled, light-colored and dark, even like our inland meadows in a freshet, andshowing which way the wind sets.Thus we sat on the foaming shore, looking on the wine-colored ocean,—

Here and there was a darker spot on its surface, the shadow of acloud, though the sky was so clear that no cloud would have beennoticed otherwise, and no shadow would have been seen on the land,where a much smaller surface is visible at once. So, distant cloudsand showers may be seen on all sides by a sailor in the course of aday, which do not necessarily portend rain where he is. In July wesaw similar dark-blue patches where schools of Menhaden rippled thesurface, scarcely to be distinguished from the shadows of clouds.Sometimes the sea was spotted with them far and wide, such is itsinexhaustible fertility. Close at hand you see their back fin, whichis very long and sharp, projecting two or three inches above water.From time to time also we saw the white bellies of the Bass playingalong the shore.

PEOPLE OFCAPE COD

WILLIAM GILPIN

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/CAPE/PeopleMentionedInCAPE.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

January 19, Thursday: While visiting the metropolis to testify in a court case, Henry Thoreau stopped by Harvard Library to turn in the 3d volume of HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION RESPECTING … THE INDIAN TRIBES OF THE UNITED STATES,

that he had checked out on the 28th of November, and check out the first of the three volumes of Sir Uvedale Tomkyns Price (1747-1829)’s ESSAYS ON THE PICTURESQUE, AS COMPARED WITH THE SUBLIME AND THE BEAUTIFUL, AND ON THE USE OF STUDYING PICTURES, FOR THE PURPOSE OF IMPROVING REAL ESTATE (London: Mawman, 1810) (1st edition, London: J. Robson, 1794).

1854

THE INDIAN TRIBES, III, 1854

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/51/IndianTribes_III_1854.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Thoreau also checked out Dr. James H. McCulloh, Jr. (1793-1870)’s RESEARCHES ON AMERICA: BEING AN ATTEMPT TO SETTLE SOME POINTS RELATIVE TO THE ABORIGINES OF AMERICA, &C. (Baltimore: Joseph Robinson, 1st edition 1816, 2d edition 1817).

Thoreau also checked out John Josselyn’s ACCOUNT OF TWO VOYAGES TO NEW-ENGLAND (1674).8

8. Refer to Philip F. Gura’s “Thoreau and John Josselyn” in NEQ 48 (December 1975), pages 505-18:

It is my contention that people tracing the sources ofThoreau’s singular literary development haveoverlooked influences very close to home.... Could itnot be that Thoreau’s true affinity is not to peoplelike Emerson, but to those seventeenth-century men whowere, in Urian Oakes’s words, “the Lord’sRemembrancers or Recorders”?... Is it accidental thatthe excursion was Thoreau’s chosen form, or that hewould compose a botanical index for his trips to theMaine woods?





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Jan 19th 54Went to Cambridge to Court.Dr Harris says that my coccoons found in Lincoln in Dec. are of the Atticus Cecropia. the largest of our emperormoths. He made this drawing of the 4 kinds of Emperor moths which he says we have– The Cecropia is thelargest The coccoon must be right end uppermost when they are ready to come out. The A. Promethia is the onlymoth whose coccoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf & round the shoot — the leaf partlyfolded round it.That spider whose hole I found — & which I carried him, he is pretty sure is the Lycosa fatifera.In a large & splendid work on the insects of Georgia by Edwards & smith (?) near end of last century upstairs,I found plates of the above moths — called not atticus but phalaena — and other species of phalaena.He thinks that small beetle slightly metallic which I saw with grubs &c on the Yellow lily roots last fall — wasa Donax or one of the Donasia?In Josselyn’s account of his voyage from London to Boston in 1638 he says “June the first day in the afternoon,very thick foggie weather, we sailed by an inchanted island,” &c This kind of remark to be found in so manyaccounts of voyages — appears to be a fragment of tradition come down from the earliest account of Atlantis& its disappearance–

Varro having enumerated certain writers on Agriculture says accidentally that they wrote soluta ratione [shouldbe soluta oratione] i.e. in prose. This suggests the difference between the looseness of prose & the precision ofpoetry. A perfect expression requires a particular rhythm or measure for which no other can be substituted– Theprosaic is always a loose expression

Varro makes Fundanius say “I could not live [in Italy?] in a summer day of non diffinderem meo insititio [should

THE MAINE WOODS: There may be some truth in what he said about themoose growing larger formerly; for the quaint John Josselyn, aphysician who spent many years in this very district of Maine inthe seventeenth century, says, that the tips of their horns “aresometimes found to be two fathoms asunder,” —and he is particularto tell us that a fathom is six feet,— “and [they are] in height,from the toe of the fore foot to the pitch of the shoulder, twelvefoot, both which hath been taken by some of my sceptique readersto be monstrous lies”; and he adds, “There are certaintranscendentia in every creature, which are the indeliblecharacter of God, and which discover God.” This is a greaterdilemma to be caught in than is presented by the cranium of theyoung Bechuana ox, apparently another of the transcendentia, inthe collection of Thomas Steel, Upper Brook Street, London, whose“entire length of horn, from tip to tip, along the curve, is 13ft. 5 in.; distance (straight) between the tips of the horns, 8ft. 8 1/2 in.” However, the size both of the moose and the cougar,as I have found, is generally rather underrated than overrated,and I should be inclined to add to the popular estimate a part ofwhat I subtracted from Josselyn’s.

JOHN JOSSELYN

COLL.MASS.HIST.SOC. 1833

LIBRIS GRAMMATICIS

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/33/1833_CollMassHistSoc.pdf

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16400/16400-h/varrolat.htm





HDT WHAT? INDEX

be insiticio] somno meridie — if I did not split it with my inserted sleep at noon” — i.e. on account of the heat–

Cato makes much account of the leaves of elms & poplars for sheep & oxen & Varro particularly recommendsto plant elms along the confines of a farm because this not merely preserve the boundary & the fence but bearsome baskets of grapes & afford the most palatable leaves for sheep & oxen.Varro divides fences into four kinds — unum naturale, alterum agreste, tertium militare, quartum fabrile. (manykinds of each)– The first is the living hedge– One kind of sepes agrestis is our rail fence — & our other deadwooden farm fences would come under this head– The military sepes consists of a ditch & rampart — iscommon along highways — sometimes a rampart alone. The 4th is the mason’s fence of stone — or brick (burntor unburnt) or stone & earth together.

Seges dicitur quod aratum satum est; arvum, quod aratum necdum satum est: novalis, ubi satum fuit ante, quamsecunda aratione renovetur.

January 22, Sunday: Birth of the Reverend John Stetson Barry and Louisa Young Barry’s 4th child, Esther Stetson Barry, who would become a teacher and a clerk.

Jan. 22nd 54 Saw Jan 20th some tree sparrows in the yard Ones or twice of late I have seen themother-o’-pearl tints & rain-bow flocks in the western sky– The usual time is when the air is clear & pretty cool,about an hour before sundown Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen like a long knife-handle of motherof pearl very pale with an interior blue. & rosaceous tinges. Methinks the summer sky never exhibits this sofinely.When I was at Cs the other evening, he punched his cat with the poker because she purred too loud for him.R. Rice says he saw a white owl 2 or 3 weeks since. Harris told me on the 19th ult that he had never found thesnow flea–No 2d snowstorm in the winter can be so fair & interesting as the 1st. Last night was very windy — & today Isee the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds in the little hollows of the snow-crust — these later falls of theleaf–A fine freezing rain on the night of the 19th ult produced a hard crust on the snow — which was but three inchesdeep & would not bear.

DE AGRI CULTURA LIBER

DE AGRI CULTURA, I

CAT

ELLERY CHANNING

http://books.google.com/books?id=xaBJAAAAYAAJ&q=insititio#v=snippet&q=insiticio&f=false

http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/varro.rr1.html






HDT WHAT? INDEX

March 1, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Harvard Library Librarian Thaddeus William Harris. He was able to offer this “Politeness of Mr. Gerrish,” the deliverer of the books being Charles Pickering Gerrish of Harvard’s Class of 1854.

Dear Sir, I return here-with — three volumes viz. Price on the Picturesque 1st vol. M’Culloh’s Re-searches, and Josselyn’s Voyages.

YrsHenry D. Thoreau





HDT WHAT? INDEX

In the afternoon Thoreau walked over to visit the Waldo Emersons and then went on to Walden Pond. In reading the following entry in his journal, we need to bear in mind that “phlegm,” like “poison,” was during that period a pronouncedly ambivalent term. Just as “poison” might refer to a strong antidote or corrective, rather than to a murder device, as in Waldo Emerson’s phrase “the Thoreau poison, working for good or for ill,” so also “phlegm” might refer as it does now to bronchial mucus, an irritant to be coughed up and spit out and gotten rid of, or it might merely be a deployment of the archaic term for the distilled water which is used in chemical experiments in order to avoid prejudicing the outcome with distracting side reactions. By introducing such a term, Thoreau is suggesting that the description he is creating of his authorial process can be read in two distinct manners, that it can be read not only in a sense in which he is ruthlessly excising his writing mistakes, with sufficient affect, but also in a sense in which he is objectively re-evaluating and sifting previous materials, with dispassionate judgment:

March 1: In correcting my manuscripts, which I do with sufficient phlegm, I find that I invariably turn

JOHN JOSSELYN





HDT WHAT? INDEX

out much that is good along with the bad, which is then impossible for me to distinguish — so much for keepingbad company; but after the lapse of time, having purified the main body and thus created a distinct standard forcomparison, I can review the rejected sentences and easily detect those which deserve to be readmitted.

In the journal he spoke of this day as the beginning of spring, although that had not been the case per the previous year 1853’s almanac:

March 1. Here is our first spring morning according to the almanac. It is remarkable that the spring ofthe almanac and of nature should correspond so closely. The morning of the 26th was good winter, but therecame a plentiful rain in the afternoon, and yesterday and today are quite spring like. This morning the air is still,and, though clear enough, a yellowish light is widely diffused throughout the east, now just after sunrise. Thesunlight looks and feels warm, and a one vapor fills the lower atmosphere. I hear the phoebe or spring note ofthe chickadee, and the scream of the jay is perfectly repeated by the echo from a neighboring wood. For somedays past the surface of the earth, covered with water, or with ice where the snow is washed off, has shone inthe sun as it does only at the approach of spring, me thinks. And are not the frosts in the morning more like theearly frosts in the fall, — common white frosts? As for the birds of the past winter: I have seen but three hawks,— one early in the winter and two lately; have heard the hooting owl pretty often late in the afternoon. Crowshave not been numerous, but their cawing was heard chiefly in pleasanter mornings. Blue jays have blown thetrumpet of winter as usual, but they, as all birds, are most lively in spring like days. The chickadees have beenthe prevailing bird. The partridge common enough. one ditcher tells me that he saw two robins in Moore’sSwamp a month ago. I have not seen a quail, though a few have been killed in the thaws. Four or five downywoodpeckers. The white-breasted nuthatch four or five times. Tree sparrows one or more at a time, oftener thanany bird that comes to us from the north. Two pigeon woodpeckers, I think, lately. one dead shrike, and perhapsone or two live ones. Have heard of two white owls, — one about Thanksgiving time and one in midwinter. oneshort-eared owl in December. Several flocks of snow buntings for a week in the severest storm, and inDecember, last part. one grebe in Walden just before it froze completely. And two brown creepers once inmiddle of February. Channing says he saw a little olivaceous-green bird lately. I have not seen an F. Linaria, nora pine grosbeak, nor an F. hyemalis this winter, though the first was the prevailing bird last winter. In correctingmy manuscripts, which I do with sufficient phlegm, I find that I invariably turn out much that is good along withthe bad, which it is then impossible for me to distinguish — so much for keeping bad company; but after thelapse of time, having purified the main body and thus created a distinct standard of comparison, I can reviewthe rejected sentences and easily detect those which deserve to be readmitted.P. M. — To Walden via R.W.E.’s. I am surprised to see how bare Minott’s hillside is already. It is already springthere, and Minott is puttering outside in the sun. How wise in his grandfather to select such a site for a house,the summers he has lived have been so much longer! How pleasant the calm season and the warmth — the sunis even like a burning-glass on my back — and the sight and sound of melting snow running down the hill! Ilook in among the withered grass blades for some starting greenness. I listen to hear the first bluebird in the softair. I hear the dry clucking of hens which have come abroad. The ice at Walden is softened, — the skating isgone; with a stick you can loosen it to the depth of an inch, or the first freezing, and turn it up in cakes. Yesterdayyou could skate here; now only close to the south shore. I notice the redness of the andromeda leaves, but notso much as once. The sand foliage is now in its prime.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

March 13, Monday: Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Message from the President ... communicating ... the correspondence between Mr. Schenck, United States Minister to Brazil, and the Secretary of State, in relation to the African slave trade.” –SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 33 Cong. 1 sess. VIII. No. 47.

Besides purchasing a telescope for eight dollars (more than a week’s total wages, order of magnitude approximately $800 in today’s greenbacks), Henry Thoreau stopped by the Boston Society of Natural History

and checked out:

— James David Forbes (1809-1868)’s TRAVELS THROUGH THE ALPS OF SAVOY

AND OTHER PARTS OF THE PENNINE CHAIN, WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE PHENOMENA OF GLACIERS





HDT WHAT? INDEX

(1843)

and stopped by the Harvard Library and checked out:

— Louis Agassiz’s ÉTUDES SUR LES GLACIERS (Neuchâtel, aux frais de l’auteur, August 20, 1840, with atlas)

— Edward Johnson’s A HISTORY OF NEW-ENGLAND. FROM THE ENGLISH PLANTING IN THE YEERE 1628.UNTILL THE YEERE 1652: DECLARING THE FORM OF THEIR GOVERNMENT, CIVILL, MILITARY, AND

ECCLESIASTIQUE: THEIR WARS WITH THE INDIANS, THEIR TROUBLES WITH THE GORTONISTS, AND OTHER

HERETIQUES: THEIR MANNER OF GATHERING OF CHURCHES, THE COMMODITIES OF THE COUNTRY, AND

DESCRIPTION OF THE PRINCIPALL TOWNS AND HAVENS... (London: Printed for Nath. Brooke ..., 1654)9

— The Reverend Thomas Shepard’s THE CLEAR SUNSHINE OF THE GOSPEL BREAKING OUT ON THE INDIANS

OF NEW ENGLAND (1648)10

Mar. 13th To Boston— C. says he saw skater insects today. Harris tells me that those gray insectswithin the little log forts under the bark of the dead Wht pine — which I found about a week ago — are Rhagiumlineatum. Bought a telescope today for 8 dollars — Best military spyglass with 6 slides which shuts up to aboutsame size, 15 dols & very powerful Saw the squares of achromatic glass from Paris which Clark-(e?) uses —50-odd dols apiece the larger— It takes 2 together — one called the flint— These French glasses all one qualityof glass. My glass tried by Clark & approved — only a part of the object glass available. Bring the edge of thediaphragm against middle of the light & your nail on object glass in line with these shows what is cut off—Sometimes may enlarge the hole in diaphragm— But if you do so you may have to enlarge the hole indiaphragm near small end — which must be exactly as large as the pencil of light there. As the diameter of the

9. The popular title of this work is WONDER-WORKING PROVIDENCE OF SION’S SAVIOR IN NEW ENGLAND. Thoreau would place his notes in his Indian Notebook #8.10. The Reverend Shepard was a founder of Harvard College.

THE ALPS OF SAVOY, ETC.

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/43/1843_AlpsOfSavoy.pdf




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/16/50DECADE/54/1654_EdwardJohnson.pdf



HDT WHAT? INDEX

pencil is to the diameter of the available portion of the object glass so is the power — so many times itmagnifies— A good glass because the form of the blurred object is the same on each side of the focus i.e shovedin or drawn out. C. was making a glass for Amherst Col.

March 16, Thursday: Henry Thoreau signed an indenture for the publication of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS.

March 16, A.M. — Another fine morning.Willows & alders along watercourses all alive these mornings & ringing with the trills & jingles & warbles ofbirds even as the waters have lately broken loose & tinkle below — song-sparrows blackbirds — not to mentionrobins &c &cThe song sparrows are very abundant peopling each bush-willow or alder for ¼ of a mile & pursuing each otheras if now selecting their mates– It is their song which especially fills the air — made an incessant &undistinguishable trill & jingle by their numbers– I see ducks afar saling on the meadow leaving a long furrowin the water behind them– Watch them at leisure without scaring them with my glass; observe their free &undisturbed motions– Some dark-brown partly on water alternately dipping with their tails up partly on land–These I think may be summer ducks. [Were they not females of the others?] Others with bright white breasts&c & black heads about same size or larger which may be Golden Eyes — i e Brass-eyed Whistlers They dive& are gone some time & come up a rod off– At first I saw but one — then a minute after 3– The first phœbenear the water is heard.Saw & heard honey-bees about my boat in the yard — attracted probably by the beeswax in the grafting-waxwhich was put on it a year ago. It is warm weather. A thunder-storm in the evening.

Thaddeus William Harris of Cambridge, Massachusetts wrote in regard to the LARVÆ OF THE CRANE FLY to Simon Brown, Esq. via page 210 of the New England Farmer, as follows:

Dear Sir — Yesterday, Mr. Flint brought to me the bottleof grubs, which you sent by him. He said that they werefound in considerable numbers, on snow in Concordlately, and that they were alive when taken; but theywere dead when received.They are of a livid or pale brownish color, about halfan inch long, thickest at the hinder end of the body,and tapering towards the other end. Above the vent,there is a kind of coronet of short spines, four ofwhich are longer than the others, and the latter areblack at the points. These grubs are the larvæ or youngof some kind of crane-fly or Tipula, and resemble thefigures of the larvæ of the European Tipula corniciva

That the said Thoreau agrees to give, and by these presents give to said Ticknor& Co., the right to publish for the term of five years, a certain book, entitled“Walden, a Life in the Woods” of which, said Thoreau is the Author andProprietor.

TIMELINE OF WALDEN

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/WALDEN.html




Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson published in The New York Times for April 19, 2013.



HDT WHAT? INDEX

and Tipula oleracea, two species vulgarly called daddylong-legs, in England, and well known for their injury,in the larvæ state, to the grass-roots of meadows. Inthe volume of “Insect Transformations” belonging to the“Library of Entertaining Knowledge,” will be found ashort account of the European insects above named, pages252 to 255 inclusive, to which I beg to refer you. TheConcord grubs, like their European prototypes, probablylived in the ground upon the roots of grasses. How theycame to be dislodged from their quarters I cannot tell.

April 18, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau sent off some Harvard Library books, hand carry, with a note to Thaddeus William Harris.

Concord April 18th ’54Dear Sir,I return by Mr. Gerrish three vols. viz Agassiz sur Les Glaciers Shepard’s Clear Sunshine and New England in 1652YrsHenry D. Thoreau

In the afternoon, he went to “stone-heaps” by boat.

April 18. For three or four days the lilac buds have looked green, — the most advanced that I haveseen. The earliest gooseberry still earlier in garden (though smaller buds).

P. M. — To stone-heaps by boat.Scared up snipes on the meadow’s edge, which go off with their strange zigzag, crazy flight and a distressedsound, - craik craik or cr-r-ack cr-r-rack. One booms now at 3 P.M. They circle round and round, and zigzaghigh over the meadow, and finally alight again, descending abruptly from that height. Was surprised to see awagtail thrush, the golden-crowned, [Vide April 26. Probably hermit thrush.] at the Assabet Spring, whichinquisitively followed me along the shore over the snow, hopping quite near. I should say this was the golden-crowned thrush without doubt, though I saw none of the gold, if this and several more which I saw bad not keptclose to the water. May possibly be the aquaticus. Have a jerk of the forked tail. The male yellow redpoll's breastand under parts are of a peculiarly splendid and lively yellow, — glowing. It is remarkable that they too arefound about willows, etc., along the water. Saw another warbler [Vide April 25.] about in the same localities, —




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipulinae


HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX





HDT WHAT? INDEX

somewhat creeper-like, very restless, more like the Tennessee warbler than any, methinks. Light-slate or bluish-slate head and shoulders, yellowish backward, all white beneath, and a distinct white spot on the wing; a harshgrating note (?) Saw two wood ducks probably; saw a white spot behind eyes; they went off with a shriller craikthan the black ducks. I now feel pretty sure that they were crow blackbirds which I saw April 3d with the red-wings [Red-wingedBlackbird Agelaius phoeniceus]. They are stout fellows without any red epaulet, and go off with a hoarserchuck chuck, with rounded tail. They make that split singing, and, with the red-wing, feed along the water’sedge. Heard a red-wing sing his bobylee in new wise, as if he tossed up a fourpence and it rattled on somecounter in the air as it went up. Saw to-day a lesser blackbird, size of cowbird, slaty-black, on meadow edge.What was it?The snow is sprinkled along the street with the large scales of buds from the trees; thus revealing; what kind offall is going on at this season.

April 1, Saturday: Dr. Thaddeus William Harris’s “Larvae of the Crane Fly” was appearing in this month’s issue of the New England Farmer.

Having found prospecting for gold to involve a whole lot of hard work in what looked suspiciously like dirt, and being of the personal attitude that to do hard work was to be suspected of the dreadfully slavish and contemptible “strong back weak mind” syndrome, Hinton Rowan Helper had abandoned the gold fields of California. On this date he arrived at a port on the Caribbean coast of Central America and embarked for the final legs of his journey home to North Carolina. Did he remember the dirt of North Carolina as being less dirty, the work of North Carolina as being less hard? Well, but maybe he could make some easy clean money by writing to warn others that the streets of California were not exactly paved with gold. Note carefully how his attitude about writing correlated with his attitude about labor correlated with his attitude about persons of color. For Helper, to be pro-slavery was to be pro-Negro and to be pro-Negro was to be pro-slavery. Because these loathsome blacks were being used for manual labor, manual labor itself had acquired an irremovable taint, and even a white man, if he was so situated as to need to work for his living, was being treated “as if he was a loathsome beast, and shunned with the utmost disdain.” Writing about the loathesome black man and how he is wronging us became for Helper a way of avoiding being condemned as equally loathesome on account of his unrelenting poor-boy need to obtain money in order to live.

In the afternoon Henry Thoreau went on the Assabet River to Dodge’s Brook and thence to Jacob B. Farmer’s.

Ap. 1st The tree sparrows — hyemalis — & song sparrows are particularly lively & musical in theyard this rainy & truly April day. The air rings with them. The robin now begins to sing sweet powerfully—Pm up Assabet to Dodge’s Brook — thence to Farmer’s.April has begun like itself. It is warm & showery — while I sail away with a light SW wind toward the Rock—Sometimes the sun seems just ready to burst out — yet I know it will not— The meadow is becoming bare Itresounds with the sprayey notes of blackbirds— The birds sing this warm showery day after a fortnight’s cold(yesterday was wet too), with a universal burst & flood of melody. Great flocks of hyemalis [Dark-eyed Junco

Junco hyemalis] &c pass overhead like schools of fishes in the water many abreast. The white maplestamens are beginning to peep out from the wet & weather-beaten buds. The earliest alders are just ready tobloom — to show their yellow — on the first decidedly warm & sunny day. The water is smooth at last anddark. Ice no longer forms on the oars. It is pleasant to paddle under the dripping hemlocks this dark day. Theymake more of a wilderness impression than pines. The lines of saw dust from Barrets mill at different heightson the steep wet bank under the hemlocks — rather enhance the impression of freshness & wildness, as if itwere a new country. Saw a painted tortoise on the bottom— The bark of Poplar boughs which have been heldin the ice along the sides of the river the past winter are gnawed probably by muskrats. Saw floating a good-sized rooster without a head the red stump sticking out — probably killed by an owl. Heard a bird whose notewas very much like that of the purple finch — loud & clear. First smelled the musk-rat.Yesterday & to-day I hear the cackle of the flicker so agreeable from association. It brings the year about. Fromafar, on some blasted tree, it makes all the vale ring its swelling flicker (?). Saw at farmer his snow-grubs (the





HDT WHAT? INDEX

same I had seen v. back) Haris in this weeks NE Farmer thinks on comparing them with Eng. plates, that theyare the larvae of one of the species of Crane-fly Tipula. I saw some — still in F’s pasture. Did they not comeout from the roots of the grass prematurely in the winter & so become food for birds? The ground in Farmer’sgarden was in some places whitened with the droppings of the snowbirds after seeds of weeds — F. hyemalis& others. The hyemalis is in the largest flocks of any at this season— You see them come drifting over a risingground just like snowflakes before a north-east wind.I was surprised to see how Farmers young pears 3 or 4 feet high on quince stocks had been broken down by thesnow-drifts broken over & over apparently the snow freezing over them and then at last by its weight breakingthem down.

I hear the jingle of the hyemalis from within the house — sounding like a trill.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

May 9, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau went to Cambridge and Boston, and visited the Boston Society of Natural History.11

He checked out, from Harvard Library, the Reverend John Gotlieb Ernestus Heckewelder’s A NARRATIVE OF THE MISSIONS OF THE UNITED BRETHREN AMONG THE DELAWARE AND MOHEGAN INDIANS FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT IN THE YEAR 1740 TO THE CLOSE OF THE YEAR 1808 (Philadelphia: M’Carry & Davis, 1820).

He would make entries from this source in his Indian Notebooks #5 and #8, and in his Fact Book. In addition, he would consult an account by the Reverend Heckewelder in Volume I of the American Philosophical Society Transactions, of 1819, and make entries from that source in his Indian Notebook #912 in about 1855:

11. These would be the proceedings, for this year, of the Society:

12. The original notebooks are held by the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, as manuscripts #596 through #606. There are photocopies, made by Robert F. Sayre in the 1930s, in four boxes at the University of Iowa Libraries, accession number MsC 795. More recently, Bradley P. Dean, PhD and Paul Maher, Jr. have attempted to work over these materials.

PROCEEDINGS, FOR 1854

REVEREND HECKEWELDER

Between the Mississippi & the ocean eastward & theHudson’s Bay Company’s possessions on the north —“There appears to be but 4 principal languages,” someof their dialects “extend even beyond theMississippi.”

• 1st The Karabit — of the Greenlanders & Esquimaux...

• 2d The Iroquois “This language in various dialects is spoken by the ... Six Nations ... Hurons ... and others.”

• 3d The Lenape “This is the most widely extended of any of those that are spoken on this side of the Mississippi.”

• [4th] The Indians further N.W. Blackfeet &c. of whose language we cannot judge “from the scanty vocabularies which have been given by Mackenzie ... and other travellers.”

REVEREND HECKEWELDER

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/20/1820_ReverendHeckewelder.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/19/1819_AmericanPhilosophicalSociety.pdf




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/54/1854_BSNHproceedings.pdf


HDT WHAT? INDEX

He also checked out Robert Chambers’s ANCIENT SEA-MARGINS, AS MEMORIALS OF CHANGES IN THE RELATIVE LEVEL OF SEA AND LAND (W. & R. Chambers, 1848).

Then, back in Concord, Thoreau planted watermelons.

Tuesday, May 9th To Boston & Cambridge.Currant in garden X, but ours may be a late kind. Purple finch still here — Looking at the birds at the Nat HistRooms — I find that I have not seen the crow blackbird at all yet — this season— Perhaps I have seen the rustyblackbird — though I am not sure what those slaty black ones are as large as the redwings — nor those pure-black fellows — unless rusty-black birds. I think that my blackbirds of the morning of the 24 may have beencow-birds.Sat on end of long wharf— Was surprised to observe that so many of the men on board the shipping were purecountrymen in dress & habits, and the sea-port is no more than a country town to which they come atrading—I found about the wharves steering the coasters & unloading the ships men in farmer’s dress. As I watched thevarious craft successively unfurling their sails & getting to sea — I felt more than for many years inclined to letthe wind blow me also to other climes.Harris showed me a list of plants in Hovey’s Magazine (I think for 42 or 3) not in Big’s Botany —17 or 18 ofthem — among the rest a pine I have not seen — &c &c q.v. That early narrow curved winged insect on ice &river which I thought an ephemera he says is a Sialis — or maybe rather a Perla— Thinks it the Donatiapalmata — I gave him— Says the shad-flies (with streamers & erect wings — are ephemerae— he spoke ofpodura nivalis — I think meaning ours.Planted melons.

June 14, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau was visited by another amateur botanist, Austin Bacon of Natick, and they walked to Concord’s limekiln.

[George Partridge] Bradford [of Plymouth, a Brook Farmer], [theReverend John Lewis] Russell [of Salem], and Austin Bacon ofNatick are acknowledged in the preface to George B. Emerson’sreport on the trees and shrubs of Massachusetts. This prefaceapproximates a directory of Massachusetts botanists in 1846.Austin Bacon (1813-88) was a surveyor-naturalist. Thoreau paida visit to him on August 24, 1857, and was shown a number ofNatick’s botanical highlights. Thoreau’s interest in Natick nodoubt arose from his reading of Oliver N. Bacon’s HISTORY OF

NATICK, which included a list of unusual plants (January 19,1856, JOURNAL).

— Ray Angelo, “Thoreau as Botanist”

ANCIENT SEA-MARGINS

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/48/1848_RobertChambers.pdf




This is six-fingered Robert.



HDT WHAT? INDEX

On page 2 of the New York Daily Times appeared an article about steamboating on the upper Mississippi River, identified only as by a “special correspondent,” “W”:

Perhaps you have beheld such sublimity in dreams, butsurely never in daylight walking elsewhere in thiswonderful world. Over one hundred and fifty miles ofunimaginable fairy-land, genii-land, and world ofvisions, have we passed during the last twenty-fourhours.... Throw away your guide books; heed not thestatements of travelers; deal not with seekers after andretailers of the picturesque; believe on man, but seefor yourself the Mississippi River above Dubuque.13

June 14. Pm to Lime kiln with Mr Bacon of NaticSisymbrium amphibium (?) of Big. some days at foot of Loring’s land. Common Mallows well out how long?What is that sisymbrium or Mustard-like plant at foot of Loring’s? Erigeron strigosum?? out earliest sayyesterday >>> Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown’s barn by road with elongated spikes & only pistillateflowers— Hedge mustard how long? Pepper grass how long — sometime— Scirpus lactustris maybe somedays. I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots. Mr Bacon thinks that cherry birdsare abundant where canker worms are — says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his observation alone)That there is one or two arbor vitae’s native in Natic— He has found the lygodium palmatum there— Pearl Ithink he called her. He thought those the exuviae of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water— Makes hisown microscopes & uses garnets— He called the huckleberry apple a parasitic plant — pterospora which growson & changes the nature of the huckleberry.— Observed a diseased andromed paniculata twig prematurely inblossom— Caught a locust properly Harvest-fly — (cicada) drumming on a birch — which Bacon & Hill (ofWaltham) think like the septemdecim except that ours has not red eyes, but black ones. Harris’s other kind theDog day Cicada (canicularis) or harvest fly — He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of Dogdays — he Harris heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. Bacon says hehas seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off is pretty sure—

June 27, Tuesday: In the afternoon Henry Thoreau walked through Hubbard meadow to the Cliffs. He was being written to from Cambridge by the entomologist Thaddeus William Harris, about the cicada.

Cambridge, Mass. June 27. 1854.Mr. Henry D. Thoreau.Dear Sir.Your letter of the 25th, the books, and the Cicada came to hand this evening, — and I am much obliged to you for all of them; — for the books, — because I am very busy with putting the Library in order for examination, & want every book to be in its place; — for the letter, because it gives me interesting facts concerning Cicadas; and for the specimen because it is new to me, as a species or as a variety.The Cicada seems to be a female, and of course when living could not make the noise peculiar to the other sex. It differs from my specimens of Cicada septem-decim (& indeed still more from all the other species in my collection).It is not so large as the C. 17; it has more orange about its thorax; the wing-veins are not so vividly stained with orange, and the dusky zigzag on the ante-rior or upper wings, which is very distinct in the C. 17, is hardly visible in this specimen. It has much the same form as the female C. 17; but I must see the male in order to determine positively whether it be merely a variety or a differ-

13. Notice, please, that this is precisely the steamboat adventure upon which Thoreau would embark during May 1861, in order to approach Minnesota.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

ent species. I should be very glad to get more specimens and of both sexes. Will you try for them?Your much obligedThaddeus William Harris.

October 23, Monday: William Wells Brown spoke with great sarcasm at West Chester, Pennsylvania: “You welcomed the fugitive from European oppression, and, after shaking hands with him and congratulating him on his escape, you turn to catch the fugitive from American oppression and return him to his chains. And when you could find no better man to welcome, you welcomed John Mitchel, who is ready to join in the chase with you.”

The brass star of the Boston police was exchanged for a silver octagon oval plate badge. The men were issued a 14-inch club in replacement of the watchhook which had been in use for 154 years.

Henry Thoreau wrote to Thaddeus William Harris.

Concord Oct 23d ’54Sir,I return herewith the “Bhagvat Geeta”. Will you please send me the “Vishnoo Purana” a single volume — translated by Wilson.Yrs respecty

Henry D. Thoreau.

November 15, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau wrote letters of introduction for Thomas Cholmondeley, to Bronson Alcott and to Thaddeus William Harris.

Concord Nov. 15th 1854Dr HarrisDear Sir,Will you allow me to introduce to you the bearer — Thomas Cholmondeley, who has been spending some months with us in Concord. He is an English country gentleman, and the author of a political work on New Zealand called “Ultima Thule”. He wishes to look round the Library.If you can give him a few moments of your time, you will confer a favor on both him & me.I have taken much pains, but in vain, to find another of those locusts for you —

I have some of the grubs from the nuphar buds in spirits.Yrs trulyHenry D. Thoreau.

Concord Nov. 15 1854Mr. Alcott,I wish to introduceto you Thomas Cholmondeley, anEnglish man, of [whom] and hiswork in new Zealand I havealready told you. He proposes





HDT WHAT? INDEX

to spend a part of the winter inBoston, pursuing his literarystudies, at the same time thathe is observing our institutions.He is an English countrygentleman of simple habits andtruly liberal mind, who mayone day take a part in thegovernment of his country.I think that you [will] findyou[r] account in comparingnotes with him.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

February 27, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau wrote to Thaddeus William Harris.

Concord Mass Feb 27th

1855Dear Sir,I return to the Library, by Mr Frost, the following books, vizWood’s N. E. Prospect,Sagard’s “Histoire du Canada,”& Bewick’s “British Birds.”Yrs respectfullyHenry D. Thoreau

February 27. Another cold, clear day, but the weather gradually moderating.

1855

BEWICK





HDT WHAT? INDEX

January 16, day: Thaddeus William Harris died. (His grave is in the Old Burial Ground of Harvard Square.)

1856





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Dr. Thaddeus William Harris. A TREATISE ON SOME OF THE INSECTS INJURIOUS TO VEGETATION. Boston, 1862.

Henry Walter Bates’s “Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon Valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidae” described mimicry.

Thomas Henry Huxley again considered the gorilla during a repeat of his 1860 lecture series “Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature.”

1862

ECOLOGY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Walter_Bates





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Thomas Wentworth Higginson. MEMOIR OF THADDEUS WILLIAM HARRIS (Boston MA: Boston Society of Natural History, 1869).

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: November 10, 2014

1869

THADDEUS WM. HARRIS


“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

mailto:[email protected]

Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.



http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/69/1869_ThaddeusWilliamHarris.pdf





HDT WHAT? INDEX

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.

mailto:[email protected]





HDT WHAT? INDEX




Date post:	19-Oct-2019
Category:	Documents
Upload:	others
View:	1 times
Download:	0 times

PEOPLE MENTIONED IN THE MAINE WOODS - Kouroo · November 10, Monday: Thomas Say wrote Dr. Thaddeus...

Documents