Thoreau, Field Naturalist

THOREAU, FIELD NATURALIST WRITERS who discuss Thoreau's study of nature tend to neglect or belittle his knowledge of his subject. He was "a natural historian of the intellect," says Sherman Paul in an excellent, recent paper on Walden. He "saw and recorded nothing new," observes John Burroughs. He never looked at nature straight in the eye, implies Van Wyck Brooks. These writers concern themselves for the moot part, however, with Walden and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack R ivers; yet the Journals and the essays "Wild Apples" and "The Succession of Forest Trees" must also be considered in an estimate of Thoreau's work. The fact is that Thoreau is both philosopher and scientist- a field naturalist, one of the forerunners of an increasing number of people who today visit the woods and fields simply for the personal pleasure of quiet hours spent in learning something about the plants and animals they find there. Typical of a field naturalist's work, Thoreau's has a breadth of interest, a sketchiness, and a fusion of thought and feeling, of observation and speculationqualities that exclude him from a place among the great pioneer naturalists but not from one among the finest nature-writers. Basic to an understanding of Thoreau's work is an understanding of his development as a naturalist. Thoreau first went to nature to participate in it. He wished to realize self, which, as an idealist, he considered a function, a something that could be developed only through action. He wanted to stamp his image on his environment; nature interested him primarily as it drew him out and reflected him. To participate in nature, however, to feehhe effect of facts, as he put it, necessitated his observing them, and since he thought that those which did not immediately affect him (at once "flower in a truth") might one day, he kept a record of them. Moreover, as he believedor wanted to believe-that the actual is but the shadow of the ideal, he tried to look through rather than at fact. In his search for facts, Thoreau read Audubon, Wilson, Gray, and others. He equipped himself as time went on with more and more paraphernalia: a compass, microscope, a spy glass (in 1854), notebooks , and insect boxes. He took innumerable field-trips-in a sense his books are a record of a life-long field-trip. Clad in a "hat, pants, boots, rubbers and gloves [that] would not have brought fourpence," he spent" "four hours a day at least, and . . . commonly more than that,-sauntering through the woods," to preserve his "health and 227 Vol. XXIII, no. 3, April, 1954 228 UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY spirits." Tirelessly, year in and year out, he went out to study natureto Walden to observe ducks, to Fair Haven hill to see ·the sunset, to Goose pond to watch the ripples, to Cape Cod, to Maine, Minnesota, and Canada. Peeping and prying into every nook and cranny, he hoped to "see, smell, taste, hear, feel that everlasting Something to which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very selves." During these trips, Thoreau paid much attention to birds, and from his observations the posthumous Notes on New England Birds, which illustrates well his abilities as an ornithologist, has been compiled. To begin with, for all Thoreau's appreciation of music and his magnificent chapter, "Sounds," in W alden, he lacked the ear so essential to an expert ornithologist. The songs of the wood thrush and the hermit thrush confused him, and he mistook the yellowthroat's helterskelter night-song for the mystifying "night warbler's," although he had listened to the latter's (probably the oven bird's) many times. He heard the snipe winnowing-"the most spiritual sound in all nature ,"-but seems not to have heard the woodcock's flight-song (although he knew the bird nested at Concord ) . To what heights would he have risen if he had! Sometimes his records of what he saw reveal a lack of close observation. He never learned, for example, to distinguish a snipe from a woodcock even though he had studied them close at hand. His...