Let an oak be hewed and put into the frame of a house, where it is sheltered, and it will last several centuries. Even as a sill it may last one hundred and fifty years. But simply cut it down and let it lie, though in an open pasture, and it will probably be thoroughly rotten in twenty-five years . . .

  2 P.M.—To Flint’s Pond . . .

  I follow a distinct fox-path amid the grass and bushes for some thirty rods beyond Britton’s Hollow . . .