Thoreau writes in his journal:
Thermometer at 2 P.M., 71 . . .
P.M.—To Bateman’s Pond . . .
Going over the hill behind S. Brown’s, when the crossed the triangular space between the roads beyond the pump-maker’s, I saw countless little heaps of sand like the small ant-hills, but, looking more closely, the size of the holes (a little less than a quarter of an inch) and the comparative irregularity of the heaps—as if the sand had been brought forth and dropped in greater quantity at once—attracted my attention and I found they were the work of bees . . .