ht, its natural history interest slight also.
For upwards of twenty-five years Thoreau seemed to have lived for this
Journal. It swelled to many volumes. It is a drag-net that nothing
escapes. The general reader reads Thoreau's Journal as he does the
book of Nature, just to cull out the significant things here and
there. The vast mass of the matter is merely negative, like the things
that we disregard in our walk. Here and there we see a flower, or a
tree, or a prospect, or a bird, that arrests attention, but how much
we pass by or over without giving it a thought! And yet, just as the
real nature-lover will scan eagerly the fine print in Nature's book,
so will the student and enthusiast of Thoreau welcome all that is
recorded in his Journals.

Thoreau says that Channing in their walks together sometimes took out
his notebook and tried to write as he did, but all in vain. "He soon
puts it up again, or contents himself with scrawling some sketch of
the landscape. Observing me still scribbling, he will say that he
confines himself to the ideal, purely ideal remarks; he leaves the
facts to me. Sometimes, too, he will say, a little petulantly, 'I am
universal; I have nothing to do with the particular and definite.'"
The truth was Channing had no Journal calling, "More, more!" and was
not so inordinately fond of composition. "I, too," says Thoreau,
"would fain set down something beside facts. Facts should only be as
the frame to my pictures; they should be material to the mythology
which I am writing." But only rarely are his facts significant, or
capable of an ideal interpretation. Felicitous strokes like that in
which he says, "No tree has so fair a bole and so handsome an instep
as the birch," are rare.

Thoreau evidently had a certain companionship with his Journal. It was
like a home-staying body to whom he told everything on his return from
a walk. He loved to write it up. He made notes of his observations as
he went along, night or day. One time he forgot his notebook and so
substituted a piece of birch-bark. He must bring back something
gathered on the spot. He skimmed the same country over and over; the
cream he was after rose every day and all day, and in all seasons.

He evidently loved to see the pages of his Journal sprinkled with the
Latin names of the plants and animals that he saw in his walk. A
common weed with a long Latin name acquired new dignity. Occasionally
he fills whole pages with the scientific n