254 Wisconsin State Horticultural Society. 



thes, detected it across the wide pool, and, on examination of the 

 flowerets, decided that it had been in flower five days. He drew 

 out of his vest pocket his diary, and read the names of all the 

 plants that should bloom on this day, whereof he kept account as 

 a banker, when bis notes fall due. The cypriepedium not due till 

 to-morrow. He thought that if he waked up from a trance, in this 

 swamp, he could tell by the plants what time of the year it was 

 within two days. Presently he heard a note which he called that 

 of the night warbler, a bird he had been in search of twelve years. 

 I told him he must beware of finding and booking it, lest life 

 should have nothing more to show him." 



He noted what repeatedly befel him, that, after receiving from a 

 distance a rare plant, he would presently find the same in his own 

 haunts. And those prizes of good luck which happen only to good 

 players happened to him. One day walking with a stranger who 

 inquired where Indian arrow-heads could be found, he replied, 

 "Everywhere," and, stooping forward, picked one, on the instant, 

 from the ground. One day, as he was leaping from one mossy rock 

 to another, he fell and badly sprained his ankle. While on the 

 ground, he discovered a plant he had been long looking for — the 

 Arnica mollis, a plant famous for its healing powers. 



One of the weapons with which he conquered all obstacles in 

 science, was patience. Says Emerson: " He knew how to sit im- 

 movable as part of the rock he rested on, until the bird, the reptile, 

 the fish, which had retired from him, should come back and resume 

 its habits; nay, moved b} r curiosity, should come to him to watcb 

 him." 



The coming in of winter, with its storms of snow and rain, was 

 carefully watched and noted by him, and a faithful record of the 

 fall of snow and rain kept. He says there was never yet such a 

 storm but it was ^rEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear. In 

 winter he made a map of Walden Pond, his small ocean, and put 

 down more than a hundred soundings, to ascertain its depth and 

 shape of its bottom. When the ice was new and very clear, he 

 would stretch himself at full length upon it, and study the habits 

 and haunts of the fish and aquatic animals, with the living plants 

 they fed upon. His papers upon the fresh water fish of the north 

 are full of interesting instruction to ichthyologists. 



Thoreau's " Walk to Wachusett Mountain " is, in my opinion, 



