Page:Autumn. From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/308

294 at length have acquired the color of the places they frequent. If the man of science can put all his knowledge into propositions, the woodman has a great deal of incommunicable knowledge.

Nov. 18, 1852. Yarrow and tansy still.

Nov. 18, 1853. Conchologists call those shells "which are fished up from the depths of the ocean" and are never seen on the shore, pelagii, but those which are cast on shore and are never so delicate and beautiful as the former, on account of exposure and abrasion, littorales. So is it with the thoughts of poets. Some are fresh from the deep sea, radiant with unimagined beauty,—pelagii; but others are comparatively worn, having been tossed by many a tide, scaled off, abraded, and eaten by worms,—littorales.

Nov. 18, 1854. Saw sixty geese go over the Great Fields in one waving line broken from time to time by their crowding on each other and vainly endeavoring to form into a harrow, honking all the while.

Nov. 18, 1855. Men foolishly prefer gold to that of which it is the symbol, simple, honest, independent labor. Can gold be said to buy food, if it does not buy an appetite for food? It is fouler and uglier to have too much than not to have enough.

Nov. 18 [?], 1857. Much cold slate-colored cloud, bare twigs seen gleaming toward the