7 January 1861 – 13 January 1861

‘Trees, etc., covered with a dense hoar frost. It is not leaf-like, but composed of large spiculee — spear- like — on the northeast sides of the twigs, the side from which the mist was blown. All trees are bristling with these spicule on that side, especially firs and arbor- vitee. They taught us not only the use of corn and how to plant it, but also of whortleberries and how to dry them for winter, and made us baskets to put them in. We should have hesitated long to eat some kinds, if they had not set us the example, knowing by old experience that they were not only harmless but salutary. I have added a few to my number of edible berries by walking behind an Indian in Maine, who ate such as I never thought of tasting before. Of course they made a much greater account of wild fruits than we do. It appears from the above evidence’ that the Indians used their dried berries commonly in the form of huckle- berry cake, and also of huckleberry porridge or pudding. What we call huckleberry cake, made of Indian meal and huckleberries, was evidently the principal cake of the aborigines, and was generally known and used by them all over this part of North America, as much or more than plum-cake by us. They enjoyed it all alone ages before our ancestors heard of Indian meal or huckleberries. We have no national cake so universal and well known as this was in all parts of the country where corn and huckleberries grew. If you had travelled here a thousand years ago, it would probably have been offered you alike on the Connecticut, the Potomac, the Niagara, the Ottawa, and the Mississippi. Botanists have long been inclined to associate this family in some way with Mt. Ida, and, according to Tournefort arrange [sic] whortleberries were what the ancients meant by the vine of Mt. Ida, and the common English raspberry is called Rubus Ideus from the old Greek name. The truth of it seems to be that blueberries and raspberries flourish best in cool and airy situations on hills and mountains, and I can easily believe that something like them, at least, grows on Mt. Ida. But Mt. Monadnock is as good as Mt. Ida, and probably better for blueberries, though it does not [s7c] mean “bad rock,’? — but the worst rocks are the best for blueberries and for poets.

Horace Mann brings me the contents of a crow’s stomach in alcohol. It was killed in the village within a day or two. It is quite a mass of frozen-thawed apple, — pulp and skin, — with a good many pieces of 4 skunk-cabbage berries one fourth inch or less in diame- ter, and commonly showing the pale-brown or blackish outside, interspersed, looking like bits of acorns, — never a whole or even half a berry,—and two little bones as of frogs (?) or mice (?) or tadpoles; also a street pebble a quarter of an inch in diameter, hard to be distinguished in appearance from the cabbage seeds. I presume that every one of my audience knows what a huckleberry is, — has seen a huckleberry, gathered a huckleberry, and, finally, has tasted a huckleberry, — and, that being the case, I think that I need offer no apology if I make huckleberries my theme this evening. What more encouraging sight at the end of a long ramble than the endless successive patches of green bushes, — perhaps in some rocky pasture, — fairly blackened with the profusion of fresh and glossy berries ? There are so many of these berries in their season that most do not perceive that birds and quadrupeds make any use of them, since they are not felt to rob us; yet they are more important to them than to us. We do not notice the robin when it plucks a berry, as when it visits our favorite cherry tree, and the fox pays his visits to the field when we are not there.