Concord, Mass. Thoreau writes in his journal:
C. [William Ellery Channing] says he saw skater insects to-day. Harris [Thaddeus William Harris] tells me that those gray insects within the little log forts under the bark of the dead white pine, which I found about a week ago, are Rhagium lineatum. Bought a telescope to-day for eight dollars. Best military spyglass with six slides, which shuts up to about the same size, fifteen dollars, and very powerful . . . C. was making a glass for Amherst College.
Cambridge, Mass. Thoreau checks out Etudes sur les glaciers by Louis Agassiz, A history of New-England by Edward Johnson, and The clear sun-shine of the gospel breaking forth upon the Indians in New England by Thomas Shepard from Harvard College Library (Companion to Thoreau’s Correspondence, 290).
Boston, Mass. Thoreau checks out Travels through the Alps of Savoy and other parts of the Pennine chain, with observations on the phenomena of glaciers by James David Forbes from the Boston Society of Natural History (Emerson Society Quarterly, no. 24 (March 1952):25).
