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Vol. LIII. GUELPH. JULY. 1921. • No. 7 



POPULAR AND PRACTICAL ENTOMOLOGY. 



Collecting About Walden Pond. 



by geo. w barber, 



Bureau of Entomology, U. S. Department of Agriculture. 



Concord, Mass., will always be holy ground to philosophers and naturalists. 

 Here lived and worked and here He buried the members of that great school of 

 thinkers and writers who will always maintain their distinctive place in 

 American letters — Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Miss Alcott, Hawthorn, Sanborn 

 and others. 



In all the town, however, the one spot that attracts naturalists most is 

 that called "Thoreau's cairn," situated on the edge of Walden Pond, where, as 

 his biographer Sanborn remarks, "Thoreau spent one of his lives." The exact 

 location of Thoreau's cairn is now marked by a pile of ordinary field stones which 

 grows larger from year to year, as it is the custom for each visitor to add one 

 stone to this monument. No memorial that man could build .would be more 

 appropriate in marking the spot where Thoreau made his innumerable obser- 

 vations of nature and v.'here "Walden" must have been conceived. It is 

 especially satisfying to each visitor to know that he has personally added his 

 mite to the monument called "Thoreau's cairn." 



Should Thoreau return to Walden today he would find it much different 

 from the beautiful, quiet New England lake that he knew. On one side of it 

 now runs a railroad that he saw in course of construction and trains roar by. 

 from time to time; on the other side automobiles. race by on a perfect State road. 

 The shouts of bathers disturb the quiet until far into the Summer night. The 

 forests have nearly all been cut over ; at times fires rage through the woods about 

 the pond, and the chestnuts that have escaped the scourge of fire are rapidly 

 dying from the attack of the chestnut bark disease. Young pines are destroyed 

 or deformed by the work of the white pine weevil and gipsy moth larvae 

 defoliate the trees generally. A few stately pines still remain, however, perhaps 

 the only living things that were once Thoreau's associates at Walden. 



For two years past, Walden Pond has been one of the chief collecting 

 grounds of the writer. Happy the day, when it has been possible to spend a few 

 hours in the open there. At all seasons interesting material is to be found ; in 

 Winter and Spring under the bark of dead trees, in logs and stumps, and under 

 stones ; during Summer and Fall by beating foliage with a net. 



In the early Spring, Elaterids are numerous in rotting stumps and logs. 

 Such interesting species as Alaus myops (Fab.), Adelocera discoidea (Web.), 

 and hrcincornis Lee, Elater Untcus Say, and nigricoUis Hbst., and Coryiiibites 

 hieroglyphicus (Say) being among the most showy, together with many others. 

 Cucujids are to be found beneath the dead bark of trees in some numbers, 

 including the showy Cucujus clavipes Fab. and the sombre colored Brontes dubius 

 Fab. Fungus beetles of considerable variety, together with other species of 



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