Thoreau: His Home, Friends and Books/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
THOREAU AS NATURALIST
THE phrase, poet-naturalist, has been generally accepted as Thoreau's most pertinent epithet. This term, used by Channing as title for the life of his friend, has been commonly accredited to his invention. In "Walden," however, one may read Thoreau's own union of the two phrases,—possibly a suggestion to his biographer. In outlining his development as naturalist, Thoreau applies these progressive steps to the average youth in his relations with nature;—"He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects as a poet or a naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind." Thus did Thoreau transform himself from the boy-hunter and angler into the student, poet, and philosopher of nature. His brother was a skilful and enthusiastic sportsman. The pupil's journal, before cited, suggests memories of many expeditions for game with "Mr. John." The two brothers often joined small parties for trapping and fishing, for Henry also was very expert in sport. To him had been given calculating skill of remarkable exactness, for distance, number, speed, etc. It was related that at any time, if asked to choose a dozen pencils from a large bunch, he would grasp at once the requisite number. With gun and bait, also, he could quickly surpass his companions.
As boy and man, however, Thoreau had, in marked degree, a poet's love for nature mingled with the delicate, vibrant fibres of a naturalist, in its true meaning of a student-lover of outdoor life, not a dissector of indoor specimens. By inheritance and environment, the influence of Nature, as companion, was basal in his life. He has been compared to Saint Francis in his affinity for flower and bird; both met sure response of animal magnetism to their sympathetic, loving comradeship. Of Thoreau's earnest love and reverence for nature's children, Mr. Bradford Torrey has well said,—"Nature was not his playground but his study, his Bible, his closet, his means of grace." So responsive was he to the moods of the woods and skies that he delighted to be called autochthonous. Not alone did he watch for the blossoming plants, the autumnal tints, and the first note of the hylodes, but there was a subtle revelation to him beyond the reach of ordinary eye or ear, however well-trained they might be. With delight at finding the first specimen of ledum latifolium, with its dark, red-purplish leaves, he confesses;—"As usual with the finding of new plants, I had a presentiment that I should find the ledum in Concord. It is a remarkable fact that in the case of the most interesting plants which I have discovered in this vicinity, I have anticipated finding them perhaps a year before the discovery." (Journal, February 4, 1858.) Such experiences may be the common result of acute intuition, combined with rare concentration of interest and observation, yet they evidence none the less this marvelous insight and responsiveness which he had for nature-secrets. To him, as high-priest, the "inner secret of the universe" seemed about to unfold. Fully conscious of this transcendental insight, he wrote,—"The seasons and all their changes are in me." In winter he found a new annual pleasure in the glaze and leaf crystals, the purple vapor and indigo shadows, the walks over frozen rivers and marshes; again, with a poet's rapture, he welcomed the first signs of spring, in the delicate coloring of earth, the clear, oozing sap from the maples and the tortoise moving in the ditches. Then could he proclaim,—"Here is my Italy, my heaven, my New England."
Essentially a scholar and an author as he was, there were moods when the classics failed to satisfy him, when nature alone could bring happiness. Every one has such occasional cravings; Thoreau was possessed by them until they became potent influences of each day, perennial sources of inspiration With this sentiment he wrote that delicate, whimsical stanza in his first volume,
"Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour,
For now I've business with this drop of dew,
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower,—
I'll meet him shortly when the sky is blue."
Thoreau's delight in the wild, in bogs and marshes, in fierce rains and drifting snows, was due, in part, to his indigenous love for all forms of outdoor life; in part, to his craving especially for those forms which ministered to his sturdiness and sense of freedom. On "imported sods" he disliked to walk, since here his thoughts became "heavy and lumpish as if fed on turnips"; when he could walk on woodland path or stubbed pasture land, he felt a tonic, as if he "nibbled ground nuts."
There has been a tendency to overestimate Thoreau's delight in the uncultivated. It has been suggested that he might have spent his life happily in the caves of the aboriginal settlers. As his retirement from Walden proved, he found in seclusion in nature the best opportunities for study and expansion, but he did not desire to relinquish his home and friends. After return from the Maine Woods he said with distinctness on this point,—"For a permanent residence it seemed to me that there could be no comparison between this (Concord) and the wilderness, necessary as the latter is for a resource and a background, the raw material of our civilization. The wilderness is simple almost to barrenness. The partially cultivated country it is which has inspired and will continue to inspire, the strains of poets such as compose the mass of any literature." As an expert gardener, he exampled his pleasure in culture of the fields no less than of the mind. A letter from his sister Helen, in 1844, refers to the practical and decorative work of Henry,—"He has set out about forty trees and has made a bank around the house so we begin to look quite cultivated." He always gave valuable aid to his sisters in caring for the garden and house flowers. He never disdained, rather he urged, simple, artistic gardening, but he feared that excess of cultivation which might supplant the natural beauty and simplicity of nature. Perhaps he had visions of some of the crudities of modern landscape gardening.
The reader is sometimes reminded of Whitman in Thoreau's rhapsodies on free, sensuous nature. There are suggestions of Whitman's "The Sun-Bath," without his expressions of crude animalism, in the poetic fancy in "A Week," depicting the delight of resting on a summer's day "up to one's chin on some retired swamp, scenting the wild honey-suckle and bilberry blows and lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and mosquitoes." To Thoreau, wildness was a stimulant and a panacea for village life and the distractions of society. Such doctrine is applied in current life with a full measure undreamed in his day. Fifty years ago a man who took walks in the country, as a part of his daily life-schedule, or a woman who took her book or sewing under the trees or by the pond, represented a minority in the community for whom their friends assumed an apologetic tone. Present-day recreations, "fresh-air" excursions, classes sauntering into woods and fields for practical study, family life and domestic pursuits transacted on the spacious piazzas of modern homes,—such healthful signs of the times indicate the stimulative, prophetic force of teachings and examples like those of Thoreau and his few disciples. The modern world has at last accepted his emphasis of the intellectual and moral sanity, no less than the bodily vigor, which can be gained only by a free, constant comradeship with nature.It is difficult to divorce the observer from the poet-philosopher in Thoreau's relations with outdoor life. In truth, the qualities are interdependent. Critics have attempted to prove that Thoreau's gifts, as naturalist, were wholly emotional and reflective, that he was "a sensitive feeler" but a deficient observer. His own confessions offer evidence of the keen, delicate response of both his senses and his soul to the open and subtle phases of nature. Sights and sounds, however, thrilled him less than the lofty visions and ideals which they symbolized. "There is a flower for every mood of the mind." The birds and insects spoke messages of purity and faith to his soul as well as to his ear. Through this same sensitiveness of emotion and feeling, in its literal meaning, he was attuned to all external signs of the weather. He was barometer as well as botanist. He called himself "The self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms."
As naturalist, he was especially accurate and exhaustive in description rather than in classification. The minute portraiture of the expansion of a pinecone, or the evolution of a moth, the gradual unfolding of a sunrise glory on a foggy morning, the careful examination of nature's healing moss to replace turf which had been torn away,—such are some of his detailed word-pictures that linger in the reader's memory. He complained because the modern botanist measured plants instead of describing them, according to the mode of Gerard and the earlier naturalists. In observations, and in descriptions alike, he was ever more poet than scientist. The plain sorrel seemed to his imagination like "blood mantling in the cheek of the beautiful year," the common stubble in winter became glorified and visualized by the amber sunset light, the glitter and joy of the river bursting through the ice symbolized the soul rejoicing in its future. All nature's movements seemed to him the song of love;—"The song of the birds is an epithalamium, a hymeneal. The marriage of the flowers spots the meadows and fringes the hedges with pearls and diamonds. In the deep water, in the high air, in woods and pastures, and the bowels of the earth, this is the employment and condition of all things."
In observation, Thoreau's methods were those of a romancer with nature, her poet-lover. He would sit quietly for hours on a tree-trunk until the birds would come and join him; he would float idly in his boat, and the fishes would nibble at his fingers or even rest on the palm of his hand. His loftiest aim was to "live as tenderly and gently as one would pluck a flower." He preserved hundreds of specimens but he was always cautious to avoid any 
FAIRHAVEN BAY
Thoreau's methods were those of a romancer with nature, her poet-lover bruise or blight to adjacent weeds or roots. His strong pantheistic faith, no less than his poetic sentiment, fostered this tenderness for grasses, birds and animals. As years passed, he became a vegetarian in general diet, though he was never wholly ascetic in this regard. Here as elsewhere, the poet incited the human impulses. His chief objection to animal food was because of its bestial, coarse suggestions; "it offended his imagination." After the months at Walden, in close companionship with bird and fish, he wrote,—"I cannot fish without failing a little in self-respect." In "The Maine Woods," his memory lingers sadly over "the murder" of the moose, and his share in this adventure affected the pleasure of his trip and called forth a confession that, for weeks after, his nature resented this lapse into coarseness. To make his life in accord with nature, he must be kind to all her offspring. One of his latest interviews, only a few days before his death, was with a party of boys who had been robbing birds' nests. He touched their deepest feelings, even to tears, as he described the "wail of sorrow and anguish" which they had caused to their "little brothers of the air," to borrow the poetic phrase of a later ornithologist.
Mr. Salt, in his biography of Thoreau, has distinguished well between his traits as naturalist and as anatomist. The thoughts of dissection were, in the main, revolting to his fine-grained, poetic nature; moreover, he lived before the modern methods of science had demonstrated the comparatively brief suffering and the vast benefits from careful vivisection. When a friend suggested that he could best study the structure of a bird after it had been killed, his answer was characteristic,—"Do you think I should shoot you if I wanted to study you?" In quite similar vein, he wrote in his journal, November 1, 1853, an excerpt included in "Autumn":—"Can he who slays the elephant for his ivory be said to have seen the elephant? No, these are petty and accidental uses. . . . Every creature is better alive than dead, both men and moose and pine-trees, as life is more beautiful than death." The spy-glass and the flute were his media for allurement and for study. He found music a strong attraction to bird and fish, as well as animal, and, as he quietly played like a modern Pan, he could best watch and study the form, movement, and subtle traits of these friends of woods and lakes. In his lecture on "Walking," he said,—"The highest that we can attain to is not knowledge, but sympathy with intelligence." In such a statement how surely he predicted the new doctrines of education for this generation which should succeed his own!
Our southern poet, Sidney Lanier, personified the clover and the clouds as "cousins"; he apostrophized the "tender, sisterly, sweetheart leaves." So this earlier nature-poet of Concord emphasized the kinship between trees, flowers, birds and men. Emerson called Thoreau "the bachelor of nature"; rather he was her lover. Recall that romantic personification of the oak;—"I love and could embrace the shrub oak. . . . What cousin of mine is the shrub oak? Rigid as iron, clean as the atmosphere, hardy as virtue, innocent and sweet as a maiden is the shrub oak." At Walden, the mice and the squirrels, the loons, the ants, the phœbe in his shed, the robin in his nearest pine-tree, became the friends from whom he learned many lessons and upon whom he bestowed all honor and love. Even the wasps, that settled on his walls, furnished him with unique study, and "did not molest seriously."
He found great pleasure in instructing children regarding the proper attitude, not fear and wantonness but sympathy, in their relations with animals and reptiles. A boy who was thus taught a valuable lesson has recalled, in his late manhood, this incident. When working at Barrett's mill, the boys were anxious to go swimming in the pond but some of them, notably the narrator, were afraid of water snakes and refused to go. Thoreau, who was often a visitor at the mill, chanced to be present and noted the common fear. He assured the boys that the snakes would not harm them, but they still demurred. Finally, he asked permission to have the water shut off, and found a snake three feet long; he picked it up, to the consternation of his audience and, holding it in his hand, showed the boys that the tail lacked any sting, that its head was so formed that it could not bite,—in fact, that this type of snake could do them no possible injury.
With characteristic reserve, he preferred to example rather than explain his theories and discoveries. He did not argue, but he interpreted. One of the resident pupils, whose admiration for John Thoreau, as mentioned, exceeded his liking for Henry, has related for my use an incident wherein Thoreau's refusal to explain seems almost culpable. He had just announced, regarding common manifestations in nature, that "everything was a miracle." The boy, who had been preparing some fish to fry and had thrown their heads into the garbage, with quizzical, but natural, interest, asked Thoreau if this recent act was a miracle. He received "Yes" for answer but was refused further explanations. The boy long remembered and resented the extreme and mysterious application. Perchance, Thoreau did not think it wise to perplex a boy of eleven years with the doctrines of decay, fermentation, and fertilization, though, as a pioneer evolutionist, he realized that these processes were, in truth, miraculous.
In recognizing the poet-philosopher in Thoreau one must not underrate his rank and work as naturalist. While essentially the poet, girding himself to be "a hunter of the beautiful," he was, not the less, a practical, keen observer and recorder of facts. Unconsciously, he uttered his own characterization,—"Facts fall from the poetic observer as ripe seeds." Granting certain omissions, his impetus as pioneer American naturalist is now generally acknowledged. He overlooked certain botanical varieties then and now found in Concord; it must be recalled, however, that a few of the flora, whose omission in his journal has sometimes been cited, have been introduced into Concord within more recent years by Mr. Pratt and other botanists. Thoreau emphasized, as if discovered by himself, occasional local varieties long recognized by the few naturalists of the region. They had not, however, often published their researches. When he speaks of the hibiscus moscheutos and certain forms of the orchis and polygonum, in a tone of pioneer information, one must recall that his day afforded meagre facilities for classification and identification. Moreover, his pride was of the kind suggested in the first chapter,—an idealization of Concord as a centre of observation and collation. After reading the story of the Arctic discoveries by Kane, he caused a laugh among his friends by asserting that many of the same plants and formations might be found in the vicinity of his home; searching diligently, he did identify one or two of the northern flora, or their counterparts, and exulted in the discovery of red snow. His descriptions are intended to glorify Concord, not to exalt himself. Its landscape is made beautiful to him and his readers by simple pictures,—the delicate, pale purple spikes of the orchis amid the hellebore and ferns of the alder swamp, or the polygonum articulatum "with its slender dense racemes of rose-tinted flowers, apparently without leaves, rising cleanly out of the sand." Even the common shells on the shore of river and lakes near Concord are vested with unusual beauty in their freshly-colored nacre.
If he lacked the penetrative eye of some modern trained naturalists who, through his volumes and those of later students, can quickly anticipate and identify varieties, he became versed in a score of nature-forms unknown before his day, he laid the foundations for study of that exhaustive botanical and ornithological region that centres about Concord. In reading Thoreau's journals, as published, one must ever remember that he did not accomplish his own aim, in sifting and revising his notes for press. Doubtless, had he lived to thus publish the volumes, he would have greatly improved their arrangement and value, both by additions and eliminations. In these personal journal-notes, however, compact and orderly even in their incompleteness, one realizes the immense amount of Thoreau's knowledge and its practical value to the naturalists of these later decades. The volumes which narrate excursions to the ocean, or the Maine woods, contain a few facts of natural history, which are suggestive and indicative of his careful method of travel, always eager to note some new fact, to discover some significant trait in nature and in humanity, wherever he might loiter.
His service as naturalist is largely restricted to an exhaustive survey of the soil, products, and landscape about Concord, with the accompanying forms of insect, bird, and animal life. Though thus narrow in theme, his method is remarkable for its breadth and caution, an example to his disciples in whatever branch of science. He was among the first naturalists to study the commonplace; with thoroughness characteristic of all his work, the usual and the rare, the beautiful and the bastard growths receive undiscriminating record. If the water-lily and the clintonia borealis thrilled him to poetic terms, he gave no less graphic mention to the clover, bluets, lambkill and convolvulus. He watched the graceful swing of the butterfly but he called attention to the hidden grace of "the yellow-winged grasshopper with blackish eyes." The lark and the robin were his feathered friends of special honor but he never failed to note and portray with enthusiasm the crow, the cat-bird, and the marsh-hawk, venting his "winged energy" in "a split squeal." In commenting on the sonorousness of nature's sounds, he examples most often the tones usually heard with indifference,—the hum of insects, the crowing of the cocks, the booming of the ice, or the telegraph wire with a "melody like Anacreon and Meander." It is significant that in an index of his manuscript journals, and in the volumes edited by Mr. Blake, there are the greatest number of references to the dandelions, chickadees, turtles, and like common and less poetic forms of nature.
While still a young man Thoreau received recognition as a naturalist of authority, when he was asked to write a review for The Dial, in July, 1842. This pristine journal of nature-facts, or embryonic science and philosophy, is about to gain a new interest among readers by the republication in available form of its four volumes. In the number indicated, the article by Thoreau, which has seemed to escape the detailed attention of his biographers, has a most interesting explanatory note by Emerson. It offers proof of Thoreau's wide knowledge of geology, botany, and bird-craft, even in these early years of his studies. In the preliminary note, the editor, whose personality as Mr. Emerson is quickly revealed, explains the purpose of the review and introduces its author thus:—"We were thinking how we might best celebrate the good deed which the State of Massachusetts has done, in procuring the scientific survey of the Commonwealth, whose result is recorded in these volumes, when we found a near neighbor and friend of ours, dear also to the Muses, a native and an inhabitant of Concord, who readily undertook to give us such comments as he had made on these books, and, better still, notes of his own conversation with nature in the woods and waters of this town. With all thankfulness we have begged our friend to lay down the oar and fishing-line, which none can handle better, and assume the pen, that Isaak Walton and White of Selborne might not want a successor, nor the fair meadows to which we also have owed a home and the happiness of many years, their poet."
The essay, unique and representative of Thoreau's style, reviewed the committee's reports on fishes, birds, insects, plants, etc., with keen, discriminating judgment. The paper differed wholly from any ordinary criticism on scientific themes, as all of Thoreau's work differed from that of the ordinary author. Many reflective and metrical comments were interspersed, some of them used later in his first book, others forming the nucleus for later poems. The memory of winter hours, brightened by visions of summer fields, contains certain stanzas suggestive of his later poem on Musketaquid. Not alone are the poetic passages identified at once as Thoreau's work, but the prose as well bears his literary signet. Especially characteristic are the sentences on nature versus society; in them are the germs of later, more expulsive thoughts;—"In society you will not find health, but in nature. Society is always diseased and the best is the most so. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of the pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures. Men tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed by the flux of sparkling streams." Thoreau expressed surprise that the veery, the wood-thrush so familiar to New England, was "apparently unknown by the writer of this report." After describing the bird, he added an interesting personal note. He recalled that in his own college days, in Cambridge he had heard the college yard ring with its trill. The boys call it 'yorrick,' from the sound of its querulous and chiding note, as it flits near the traveler through the underwood." The stanzas on the vireo, appearing in a later edition of his poems, are followed by these graphic lines on the crow:—
"Thou dusky spirit of the wood,
Bird of an ancient brood,
Flitting thy lonely way,
A meteor in the summer's day
From wood to wood, from hill to hill,
Low over forest, field and rill,
What would'st thou say?"
Thoreau's journals contain a rich mine of facts, some portions yet unworked; they abound in delicate surmises, that have become established facts since his day, on a variety of themes. He was not alone botanist, nor yet ornithologist; he was conversant, as well, with many phenomena of zoology, woodcraft, piscatorial and nautical details. While essentially the poet-naturalist of Concord, he has revealed in lesser degree the flora and fauna, the landscapes and the soils in the wilds of Maine, the mountains of New Hampshire, the rivers of Canada, and the beaches of Staten Island and Cape Cod. He studied the plants and grasses of Concord, and, in comparison, he tested and described the red osier, the hobble-bush, cornel and viburnum of the Maine forests and made a careful study of the tree-rings, fungi, sedges, and the peculiar varieties of the gnats and cicindelas. As noted, his later excursions were for the purpose of botanizing. When he went to the White Mountains for the last time, he searched for forty-six varieties of plant and flower and secured forty-two rare specimens.
The detailed announcement of the arrival, songs and nesting-habits of the New England birds, the close study of the ants, tortoise, muskrats and mussels as laborers and housekeepers, the graphic scrutiny of the flying squirrel and winged cat, the minute description of the first quivers of the soil in spring and the unfolding of willows, birches, cowslips and lobelias,—such vivid memories from his pages attest his service as a wide and accurate naturalist. As sympathetic observer, not as angler, he has familiarized us with the traits of the horned pouts, pickerel, breams, "with their sculling motion," the friends that he would often stroke with his hand from the side of his boat. Familiar though they may be in part, possibly written for an imaginary naturalist before the friendship with Thoreau, yet no words are so strong, in sympathetic description of Thoreau, as Emerson's passage in "Woodnotes," beginning:—
"And such I knew a forest seer,
A minstrel of the natural year,
Foreteller of the vernal ides,
Wise harbinger of spheres and tides,
A true lover who knew by heart
Each joy the mountain dales impart;
It seemed that nature could not raise
A plant in any secret place,
In quaking bog, on snowy hill,
Beneath the grass that shades the rill,
Under the snow, between the rocks,
In damp fields known to bird and fox,
But he would come in the very hour
It opened in its virgin bower,
As if a sunbeam showed the place,
And tell its long descended race.
It seemed as if the breezes brought him
It seemed as if the sparrows taught him
As if by secret sight he knew
Where, in far fields the orchis grew.
Many haps fall in the field
Seldom seen by wishful eyes;
But all her shows did nature yield,
To please and win this pilgrim wise.
He saw the partridge drum in the woods;
He heard the woodcock's evening hymn;
He found the tawny thrushes broods;
And the shy hawk did wait for him;
What others did at distance hear,
And guessed within the thicket's gloom,
Was shown to this philosopher,
And at his bidding seemed to come."
It is interesting to note how fully his townsmen appreciate his calendar of the seasons and his "police patrol" over Concord woods and meadows. In some local newspapers, dated years after Thoreau's death, I found several references to his data for that particular week or month, the appearance of flower or changing tint of sky. The brief notice,—"Thoreau says, 'About this time expect,'" etc., recalls the mysterious predictions of the old-time almanacs. This latter-day almanac-compiler, however, was definite and unfailing. Mr. Moncure Conway has exampled the surety of nature-prophecy from Thoreau's words. When the latter told Mr. Conway that the hibiscus "would open about Monday and not stay long," the visitor to Concord scarcely accepted the information as literal so he delayed until Tuesday afternoon before making his search; he found that he was "a day too late,—the petals lay on the ground."
The correspondence between Thoreau at Walden and Mr. Cabot, the secretary of Agassiz, is included in the "Familiar Letters" and shows the grateful and respectful attitude of these Boston scientists towards Thoreau. The latter, with the responsiveness of a true scholar, exchanged his specimens of fishes,—pouts, minnow, dace,—for certain detailed questions which he calls with apology,—"impertinent and unscientific," regarding the color, shape, etc., of other fish. He showed wide familiarity with authorities on piscatorial matters. Mr. Cabot emphasized the delight which Agassiz took in the fresh, varied specimens sent by Thoreau. Agassiz visited Concord later and enjoyed long talks with Thoreau, for whom he always had deep regard. The residence of this great scientist in Boston had a marked effect upon education in America. The awakening of interest in sciences at Harvard was fully appreciated by Thoreau who wrote to Emerson in 1847, of the new prospecti of study and rejoiced that the college was at last ready to arouse itself and "overtake the age."
Despite his interest in sciences and his services to prominent analysts, Thoreau was never fully in accord with their methods. In his journal for March 5, 1853, he acknowledges a circular from the Society for the Advancement of Science, inquiring as to his special branch. With over-sensitiveness he says that he is unwilling to "be made their laughing-stock," nor will he consent to any restricted classification. He adds,—"The fact is I am a mystic, a Transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot." To complete his self-index, he should have affixed poet, for his focus of criticism upon science is ever that of a poet. He disputes the exclusive attitude of scientists, who restrict their studies to the actual object, and so neglect its subjective effects. He cares not whether the vision of a rainbow is "a waking thought or a dream remembered, whether it is seen in the light or the dark."
As poet, he has great respect for the results of science, while he objects to their anatomic methods. He has compared the poet to an artist with color, the scientist to a sketcher with pencil. Again he urges that the naturalist, in describing an animal, should study its anima, its spirit, the living creature. His advocacy and example in this regard have found a worthy exponent in the popular naturalist of to day, Ernest Seton-Thompson. Declaring that no person can see, at the same time, as poet and scientist, Thoreau avers,—"The poet's second love may be science (not his first) when use has worn off the bloom." His nomenclature of science was general and broad for that time; his reading included nearly all the best authorities, but he was especially familiar with the earlier nature-students,—Aristotle, Pliny, Linnæus, Gerard, Tusser and Walton. His specimens, which included almost all kinds of scientific norms, were carefully preserved and arranged in boxes and bins of his own manufacture. The most valuable of his treasures, including rare lichens, plants, stones and Indian relics, were given at his request, after his death, to the Massachusetts Natural History Society, of which he was an honored member.
Thoreau's special work as a scientist was in functional rather than in biological details. The habitudes and moods, the changes of growth, were carefully noted, and in their records also appeared any subjective effects which might impress him. The ideality of the poet-mystic was added to the sympathetic vision of the naturalist. In rereading an old volume of the Atlantic Monthly, in search of Thoreau's essays, one finds, in close proximity to the lectures on "Walking" and "Wild Apples," a long series of papers by Professor Agassiz on "Methods of Studying Natural History." Perhaps no better distinction in the modes and minds of the two classes could be noted. One represented that rare type, the poet and philosopher of nature; the other was the prince of exact, tabulating scientists.
Thoreau is more closely linked with Jefferies than with any other naturalist who preceded or was coeval with him. Among current writers on nature he is variously regarded and interpreted; yet all acknowledge debts of inspiration, if not of education, gained from this pioneer teacher. Two American naturalists who have recently died, possessed, in marked measure, the poetic observation and the patient habit-study which characterized Thoreau. These were Rowland Robinson and Maurice Thompson. The former rustic writer, student of simple humanity as well as botanist, in his quiet, primeval life and his lofty, tenacious ideals, suggested kinship to Thoreau in temperament, though he lacked the earnest, studious impulses of the Concord naturalist. Maurice Thompson, cut off in his years of promise, as was Thoreau, was a rhapsodic yet a practical nature-student. His poetry surpasses that of Thoreau in structure and cadence but such a poem as "The Blue Heron" is singularly suggestive of Thoreau in spirit and habit of mind. Both men had practical occupations amid the wild and rank of nature's growths, for Mr. Thompson served many years as surveyor and geologist; both became sympathetic comrades with all forms and moods of life which environed them.
Mr. Burroughs and some of his school of nature-authors have emphasized the literary mission and occasionally lack the unconscious, spontaneous impulse of the pure naturalist. Mr. Burroughs, however, has the sharp eyes and ears of a modern trained observer; his nature is cheery and gregarious, and, with birds and animals, no less than with men, he is an intuitive, kindly comrade. With the literary ease and poetic memory which are his, his volumes form the most popular, perhaps the most suggestive, nature-pictures for reading under the summer trees or by the winter fireplace. All these later writers on nature, and their number is many, including Mr. Gibson, Mr. Torrey, Dr. Abbott, Mr. Mabie, Mrs. Miller, Mrs. Parsons, and many others, are familiar with the general facts and classifications in natural history, many of which have been formulated since Thoreau's day. He lived at the inception of the dawn for scientific nature-study in America. To this, indeed, he gave the most potent influence. The later authors have gained in concentration and penetration; they lack the original surmises and the unique reflections of Thoreau's style. They seldom emphasize, as he did, the subjective effect and the symbolic message. In short, they are more truly naturalists and essayists, less poets and mystics. All however, from Thoreau to Chapman, teach the primal lesson from nature,—the need of simplification and clarification of life before one may enter with full blessing into her sanctuary.
In Thoreau's writings are a few suggestions regarding the relation of nature to art, as well as to science. This vast, unfailing fount must be the true source of all inspiration for artists, poets, musicians, orators, and moralists. With scorn he mentions the restricted scope of art in his own day and country, an art which "cares little about trees and much about Corinthian columns." As often happened, while he deplored narrowness, he was himself guilty of this trait in his judgment on many of the subjects of past history and current study. In the main, however, he prophesied some of the later tendencies in art, and the "return to nature" for theme and color. The true artist will describe the most familiar objects with a zest and vividness of imagery "as if he saw it for the first time." In illustration of this text, he wrote the glowing vision of changing tints:—"Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely, but has created evergreens."
After the manner of the earlier naturalists, Thoreau apotheosized farming as the true pursuit that was accordant with nature. He sought to elevate it from mere manual task to the plane of poetic living. His letters and journal-comments show his discouraged efforts to make the real and ideal coalesce on this theme. He met, in individual philosophy, the same contradictions and irritations that assailed the farmer-philosophers at Brook Farm and at St. George's Guild. He alludes with regret to the horny hands of the farmer and his proneness to become merely a machine for agricultural tasks, callous to his unexcelled opportunities for nature-culture. He never despairs, however, of raising the farmer into a poet of the highest type. To the Concord farmers, or to the sturdy yeomen of chance acquaintance, Thoreau was ever a friendly and practical adviser. Eager to learn from them, he, in turn, suggested improvements for their gardens, surveyed their lands, and analyzed their soils. The New England homesteads represented to him the true "Arcadian life." It was as a result of his contact with nature, and farm-life over which she presided, that he wrote those cheery, whimsical lines, "The Respectable Folks," included in the "Poems of Nature," edited by Mr. Salt and Mr. Sanborn;
"Where dwell they?
They whisper in the oaks,
And they sigh in the hay,
Slimmer and winter, night and day,
Out on the meadows there dwell they.
They never die,
Nor snivel, nor cry,
Nor ask our pity
With a wet eye.
A sound estate they ever mend,
To every asker readily lend;
To the ocean wealth,
To the meadow health,
To Time his length,
To the rocks strength,
To the stars light,
To the weary night,
To the busy day,
To the idle play;
And so their good cheer never ends,
For all are their debtors and all their friends."
Fifty years ago Thoreau studied nature and became her scribe and interpreter in the days when she was scantily known and meagrely valued. With limitations, which the last half century has emphasized because of the rapid increase of scientific knowledge, with an excess of mysticism and poetic subjectivity, echo of the true New England Transcendentalism, he was the first American naturalist to combine science and literature, nature facts and poetry, in volumes and unpublished journals that defy competition in devoted life-absorption. Mr. Paul Elmer More has well said,—"Thoreau, the greatest by far of our writers on nature and the creator of a new sentiment in literature, was the creator also of a new manner of writing about nature." However carefully students may follow his methods of research and portrayal, they fail to gain that concentrated and pervasive spirit which was his. He so closely identified himself with the seasons and all their messages that his pages teem with a glow and optimism which no rigor or fog can chill. Recall the cheery challenge to complaint about winter,—"Though winter is represented in the almanac as an old man, facing the wind and sleet, and drawing his cloak about him, we rather think of him as a merry wood-chopper, and warm-blooded youth, as blithe as summer."
If Thoreau stands as the pioneer poet-student of nature, he is also the most fearless, stimulating philosopher and seer of the interrelations between nature and society. He antithesized the complex, sham commercialism, then a mere threat, now an enormous reality, as wholly averse to the true expansion of mind and soul. In nature and a constant devotion to her manifold lessons, he found the sanative reaction from excess of business and society. She could restore health and contentment because of her strength and steadfastness. His contemporaries regarded such sentiments as eccentric and the visions of a poet. To-day, his doctrines of nature, and her part in retaining the mental and physical poise of a well-rounded life, are the accepted tenets of tired, distraught men and women. They form the basis of purpose, not alone in the plans of recreation and recuperation for wearied adults, but also in the great movement towards nature study which has become a potent factor in the modern school-curriculum.
Thoreau's persistent seclusion often prevented him from understanding the educative influences which combine with the deteriorating tendencies in modern luxurious life. Like the prophets of old, he saw only danger and uttered warnings against the social and commercial allurements which would, in time, fatten the senses, but warp the mind and shrivel the soul. The burden of his plea as naturalist and poet was the renunciation of the superfluous and time-stealing luxuries of a "hothouse existence," the substitution, for these baneful temptations, of a devotion to nature which, in brief time would satisfy all the faculties, would bring comradeship, would ensure health and peace. Finally, to the listening soul, filled with true love for nature, she would utter her messages of religious truth and contentment. "God did not make this world in jest, no, nor in indifference. Those migratory swallows all bear messages that concern my life." Thoreau experienced the disappointments of friendship, he was often confronted by vexing problems in the affairs of men and nations, wherein he failed to recognize the causes of such tortuous events; from such personal and philosophic queries of doubt and despair, he turned always to nature, to find there with King Arthur, the mingled regret and relief,—
"I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I mark'd Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not."