Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/414

400 lead the circle of the seasons.—The mechanic works no longer than his labor will pay for lights, fuel, and shop rent. Would it not be well for us to consider if our deed will warrant the expense of nature? Will it maintain the sun's light?—Our actions do not use time independently, as the bud does. They should constitute its lapse. It is their room. But they shuffle after and serve the hour.

Feb. 17, 1852. Perhaps the peculiar attractiveness of those western vistas was partly owing to the shortness of the days, when we naturally look to the heavens and make the most of the little light, when we live an arctic life, when the woodchopper's axe reminds us of twilight at three o'clock in the afternoon, when the morning and the evening literally make the whole day, when we travel as it were through the portals of the night, and the way is narrow as well as blocked with snow, when, too, the sun has the least opportunity to fill the air with vapor.

If you would read books on botany, go to the fathers of the science. Read Linnæus at once, and come down from him as far as you please. I lost much time reading the florists. It is remarkable how little the mass of those interested in botany are acquainted with Linnæus. I doubt if his &quot;Philosophia Botanica,&quot; which Rousseau, Sprengel, and others praised so highly, has