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28 May 1857. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Rain again in the night, and this afternoon, more or less. In some places the ground is strewn with apple blossoms, quite concealing it, as white and thick as if a snow-storm had occurred.
(Journal, 9:383)
28 May 1858. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—By boat to Great Meadows to look for the bittern’s nest . . .

  E. Hoar [Edward Hoar] finds the Eriophorum vaginatum at Ledum Swamp, with lead-colored scales; how long? . . . (Journal, 10:445-447).

28 May 1859. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Cliffs . . .

  At the extreme cast side of Trillium Wood, come upon a black snake, which at first keeps still prudently, thinking I may not see him,—in the grass in open land,—then glides to the edge of the wood and darts swiftly up into the top of some slender shrubs there . . .

  Cinnamon fern pollen [sic]. Lady’s-slipper pollen. These grow under pines even in swamps, as at Ledum Swamp.

  The lint from leaves sticks to your clothes now. Hear a rose-breasted grosbeak . . .

(Journal, 12:193-194)
28 May 1860. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau surveys land near Walden Pond for Rufus Warren (A Catalog of Thoreau’s Surveys in the Concord Free Public Library, 12).

Thoreau also writes in his journal:

  P.M.—To Deep Cut.

  Carex debilis, not long.

  Along the edge of Warren’s wood east of the Cut, see not only the chestnut-sided warbler but the splendid Sylvia pardalina. It is a bright yellow beneath, with a broad black stripe along each side of the throat . . .

(Journal, 13:315-316)
28 May 1861.

Minneapolis, Minn. Thoreau writes in his journal:

  To Minneapolis. [Increase A.] Lapham’s Fauna & Flora of Wisconsin in their state’s Agricultural Reports for 1852 says bison last seen east of Mississippi in 1832 & last beaver killed in south part of Wisconsin in 1819. Thaspium, variety apterum on prairie. (The doctor [Charles L. Anderson] has this & also the Z. aurea.) Osmorrhiza brevistylis. Dine with Dr. [Charles L.] Anderson, P.M., ride to Lake Calhoun 4 miles south . . .

  Spermophile tridecemlineatus erect, making a queer note like a plover, over his hole. Earth heap of gopher (according to Anderson), bursarius or pouched. Ribbon snake in swamp. Indian or deer path on prairie. Thresh grain with a machine. Poplars & willows the ornamental trees. Bass & bream in lake (1300 acres). Great no. of golden rods on prairie . . .

  Tuesday, put in wash, 3 shirts, 1 flannel, 1 pair drawers, 4 bosoms, 5 handkerchiefs (2 small cotton), 1 pair socks.

(Thoreau’s Minnesota Journey, 6, 31)

St. Anthony, Minn. Horace Mann Jr. writes to his mother Mary on 1 June:

  On Tuesday Mr. Thoreau thought he would go over to Minneapolis, which is on the other side of the river, and call upon a Dr. [Charles L.] Anderson, to whom he had a letter of introduction from Mr. [Samuel] Thatcher, and so I went over with him. We found him at last and Mr. Thoreau gave the letter to him and he said he was very glad to see us, and invited us to go to his house to dinner, so we went there, and after dinner he took us out to ride in his buggy, and went to Lake Calhoun about 4 miles s.w. of Minneapolis (look at the map). It is a very pretty little lake of about 640 acres as he told us. We wandered around there for a while and I got some shells and then we came home.
(Thoreau’s Minnesota Journey, 50)
In the letter of introduction, Thatcher “explained that Thoreau had ‘come to Minnesota to Clear up his Bronchitis and to Botanize,’ and that he had ‘in company with him Mr. Mann son of late Horace Mann.’ Thatcher noted that ‘Any attention Shown to my friend Thoreau’ would be personally gratifying to him, as he himself was incapacitated.”
(Westward I Go Free, 212)
28 November 1836. Cambridge, Mass.

Thoreau checks out Inklings of adventure, volume 1 by Nathaniel Parker Willis and Letters auxiliary to the history of modern polite literature in Germany by Heinrich Heine from the library of the Institute of 1770 (The Transcendentalists and Minerva, 1:84).

28 November 1837. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes in his journal:

  Every tree, fence, and spire of grass that could raise its head above the snow was this morning covered with a dense hoar frost. The trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping. On this side they were huddled together, their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not yet penetrated, and on that they went hurrying off in Indian file by hedgerows and watercourses, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.

  The branches and taller greasses were covered with a wonderful ice-foliage, answering leaf for leaf to their summer dress. The centre, diverging, and even more minute fibres were perfectly distinct and the edges regularly indented.

  These leaves were on the side of the twig or stubble opposite to the sun (when it was not bent toward the east), meeting it for the most part at right angles, and there were others standing out at all possible angles upon these, and upon one another.
  It struck me that these ghost leaves and the green ones whose forms they assume were the creatures of the same law. It could not be in obedience to two several laws that the vegetable juices swelled gradually into the perfect leaf on the one hand, and the crystalline particles trooped to their standard in the same admirable order on the other.

  The river, viewed from the bank above, appeared of a yellowish-green color, but on a nearer approach this phenomenon vanished; and yet the landscape was covered with snow.

(Journal, 1:13-14)
28 November 1838. Concord, Mass.

Thoreau writes to Charles Stearns Wheeler (The Correspondence (2013, Princeton), 1:51).

28 November 1841. Concord, Mass.

Ralph Waldo Emerson records in his account book:

[$15.00 . . . ] Cash to H. D. Thoreau for expenses at Cambridge. in account of his book, advanced. (Studies in the American Renaissance 1980, 242; MS, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s account books. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.).
28 November 1847. Concord, Mass.

Bronson Alcott writes to his daughter Anna in Walpole, N.H.:

  Sunday, you know, is my freest day of the seven; and but for Ellery Channing’s call a fortnight since, and, Henry Thoreau’s last Sunday, you would have had a word from me (The Letters of A. Bronson Alcott, 130-131).

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