16 January 1854 – 22 January 1854

Surveying for William O. Benjamin in east part of Lincoln. Saw a red squirrel on the wall, it being thawing weather. Human beings with whom I have no sympathy are far stranger to me than inani- mate matter, — rocks or earth. Looking on the last, I feel comparatively as if I were with my kindred. Cato, prescribing a medicamentum for oxen, says, ‘‘ When you see a snake’s slough, take it and lay it up, that you may not have to seek it when it is wanted.” This was mixed with bread, corn, etc. He tells how to make bread and different kinds of cakes, viz., a libum, a placenta, a spira (so called be- cause twisted like a rope, perhaps like doughnuts), scriblita (because ornamented with characters like writ- ing), globt (globes), ete., etc. Tells how to make a vow Riv. 271, 272.] for your oxen to Mars Sylvanus in a wood with an offering, no woman to be present nor know how it is done. When the brine will float a dry maena (a fish) or an egg, then it will preserve meat. Tells how to cram hens and geese. If you wish to remove an ill savor from wine, he recommends to heat a brick and pitch it and let it down by a string to the bottom of the cask and there remain two days, the cask being stopped. “If you wish to know if water has been added to wine, make a little vessel of ivy wood (materia edera- cea). Put into it the wine which you think has water in it. If it has water, the wine will run out (effluet), the water will remain. For a vessel of ivy wood does not hold wine.”’ “The dogs must be shut up by day that they may be more sharp (acriores, more fierce (? )) and vigilant by night.”” So I might say of a moon and star gazer. ‘“‘ Make a sacrificial feast for the oxen when the pear is in blossom. Afterward begin to plow in the spring.” “That day is to be holy ( feriae) to the oxen, and herds- men, and those who make the feast.”” They offer wine and mutton to Jupiter Dapalis, also to Vesta if they choose. When they thinned a consecrated grove (lucwm con- lucare) (as if [to] let in the light to a shaded place) they were to offer a hog by way of expiation and pray the god or goddess to whom it was sacred to be favorable to them, their house and family and children. What- ever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, I pray thee be propitious. Should not all groves be regarded as a lucus, or consecrated grove, in this sense? I wish that our farmers felt some such awe when they cut down our consecrated groves; would realize that they are sacred to some god. A lustrum, or sacrifice, of a sow, sheep, and bull (suovitaurilia) was performed every fifth year, when various things were prayed for.

-Went to Cambridge to court. Dr. Harris says that my cocoons found in Lincoln in December are of the Attacus cecropia, the largest of our emperor moths. He made this drawing! of the four kinds of emperor moths which he says we have. The cecropia is the largest. The cocoon must be right end uppermost when they are ready to come out. The A. Promethea is the only moth whose cocoon has a fastening wound round the petiole of the leaf, and round the shoot, the leaf partly folded round it. That spider whose hole I found, and which I carried him, he is pretty sure is the Lycosa fatifera. In a large and splendid work on the insects of Geor- gia, by Edwards and Smith(? ), near end of last cen- tury, up-stairs, I found plates of the above moths, called not Attacus but Phalena, and other species of Phalena. He thinks that small beetle, slightly metallic, which I saw with grubs, etc., on the yellow lily roots last fall was a Donaz or one of the Donasia (? ).? In Josselyn’s account of his voyage from London to Boston in 1638, he says, “ June the first day in the afternoon, very thick foggie weather, we sailed by an enchanted island,” ete. This kind of remark, to be found in so many accounts of voyages, appears to be a fragment of tradition come down from the earliest ac- count of Atlantis and its disappearance. Varro, having enumerated certain writers on agri- culture, says accidentally [sic] that they wrote soluta ra- tione, 2.e.in prose. This suggests the difference between the looseness of prose and the precision of poetry. A perfect expression requires a particular rhythm or mea- sure for which no other can be substituted. The prosaic is always a loose expression. Varro divides fences into four kinds, — unum natu- rale, alterum agreste, tertuum militare, quartum fabrile. (Many kinds of each.) The first is the living hedge. One kind of sepes agrestis is our rail fence, and our other dead wooden farm fences would come under this head. The military sepes consists of a ditch and ram- part; is common along highways; sometimes a rampart alone. The fourth is the mason’s fence of stone or brick (burnt or unburnt), or stone and earth together.

Saw, January 20th, some tree sparrows in the yard. Once or twice of late I have seen the mother- o’-pearl tints and rainbow flocks in the western sky. The usual time is when the air is clear and pretty cool, about an hour before sundown. Yesterday I saw a very permanent specimen, like a long knife-handle of mother-of-pearl, very pale with an interior blue and rosaceous tinges. Methinks the summer sky never ex- hibits this so finely. When I was at C.’s the other evening, he punched his cat with the poker because she purred too loud for him. R. Rice says he saw a white owl two or three weeks since. Harris told me on the 19th that he had never found the snow-flea. No second snow-storm in the winter can be so fair and interesting as the first. Last night was very windy, and to-day I see the dry oak leaves collected in thick beds in the little hollows of the snow-crust. These later falls of the leaf. A fine freezing rain on the night of the 19th pro- duced a hard crust on the snow, which was but three inches deep and would not bear.