Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/194

180 I go, they are to be seen, especially in the deepest ruts and foot-tracks. Their number is almost infinite. It is a rather warm and moist afternoon, and feels like rain. I suppose that some peculiarity in the weather has called them forth from the bark of the trees.

It is good to see Minott's hens pecking and scratching the ground. What never-failing health they suggest! Even the sick hen is so naturally sick, like a green leaf turning to brown. No wonder men love to have hens about them, and hear their creaking note. They are even laying eggs from time to time still, the undespairing race!

Jan. 15, 1853. Mrs. Ripley told me this  that Russell had decided that that green (and sometimes yellow) dust on the underside of stones in walls was a decaying state of Lepraria chlorina, a lichen; the yellow another species of Lepraria. I have long known this dust, but as I did not know the name of it, i. e., what others called it, and therefore could not conveniently speak of it, it has suggested less to me, and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it.

Jan. 15, 1857. As I passed the south shed at the depot, observed what I thought at first a tree sparrow on the wood in the shed, a mere roof open at the sides, under which several men