24 December 1860 – 30 December 1860

Melvin sent to me yesterday a perfect Strix asio, or red owl of Wilson, —not at all gray. This isnow generally made the same with the nevia, but, while some consider the red the old, others consider the red the young. This is, as Wilson says, a bright “nut brown” like a hazelnut or dried hazel bur (not hazel). It is twenty-three inches [in] alar extent by about eleven long. Feet extend one inch beyond tail. Cabot makes the old bird red; Audubon, the young. How well fitted these and other owls to withstand the winter! a mere core in the midst of such a muff of feathers! Then the feet of this are feathered finely to the claws, looking like the feet of a furry quadruped. Accordingly owls are common here in winter; hawks, scarce. It is no worse, I allow, than almost every other prac- tice which custom has sanctioned, but that is the worst of it, for 1t shows how bad the rest are. To such a pass our civilization and division of labor has come that A, a professional huckleberry-picker, has hired B’s field and, we will suppose, is now gathering the crop, per- haps with the aid of a patented machine; C, a professed cook, is superintending the cooking of a pudding made of some of the berries; while Professor D, for whom the pudding is intended, sits in his library writing a book, —a work on the Vacciniez, of course. And now the result of this downward course will be seen in that book, which should be the ultimate fruit of the huckleberry- field and account for the existence of the two professors who come between D and A. It will be worthless. There will be none of the spirit of the huckleberry in it. The reading of it will be a weariness to the flesh. To use a homely illustration, this is to save at the spile but waste at the bung. I believe in a different kind of division of labor, and that Professor D should divide himself be- tween the library and the huckleberry-field.

Sunday. I saw the crows a week ago perched on the swamp white oaks over the road just beyond Wood’s Bridge, and many acorns and bits of bark and moss, evidently dropped or knocked off by them, lay on the snow beneath. One sat within twenty feet over my head with what looked like a piece of acorn in his bill.