Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/25

Rh grow thus in the form of solid frames or rackets, and those of different trees are interwoven withal so that they stand on a very broad foot, and stand or fall together to some extent before the blasts as herds meet the assaults of beasts of prey with serried front. You have thus only to dig into the swamp a little way to find your fence, post, rails, and slats already solidly grown together, and of material more durable than any timber. How pleasing a thought that a field should be fenced with the roots of the trees got out in clearing the land a century before. I regret them as mementos of the primitive forest. The tops of the same trees made into fencing stuff would have decayed generations ago. These roots are singularly unobnoxious to the effects of moisture.

Think of the life of a kitten, ours, for instance. Last night her eyes set in a fit; it is doubtful if she will ever come out of it, and she is set away in a basket and submitted to the recuperative powers of nature; this morning running up the clothes' pole, and erecting her back in frisky sport to every passer.

Dec. 23, 1856. Some savage tribes must share the experience of the lower animals in their relation to man. With what thoughts must the Esquimau manufacture his knife from the rusty hoop of a cask drifted to his shores, not