Thoreau writes in his journal:
I measured the thickness of the frozen ground at the deep cut on the New Bedford road, about half-way up the hill . . . Saw in Sleepy Hollow a small hickory stump, about six inches in diameter and six inches high, so completely, regularly, and beautifully covered by that winkle-like fungus in concentric circles and successive layers that the core was concealed and you would have taken it for some cabbage-like plant . . .
