thomas mayo brewer - kouroo contexture

THOMAS MAYO BREWER

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Thomas Mayo Brewer

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

mailto:[email protected] subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

THOMAS MAYO BREWER THOMAS MAYO BREWER

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November 21, Monday: Thomas Mayo Brewer was born in Boston to James Brewer (1742-1818) and Abigail Stone Brewer (1777-1860) (a grandfather, Colonel James Brewer, had participated in the Boston Tea Party).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

2nd day 21 of 11th M / Heard this morng a report which gives us great uneasiness Vizt that the Ship Fingal had sunk at sea & some of the Passengers had arrived at NYork. Our minds must be in great suspence untill we hear —whether Uncle S is among the Number 3rd day 22 of 11 M 1814 / Yesterdays report of the Feingal proves groundless to the great releaf of my mind & many others as she had on board 120 passengers when she left NYork -Uncle Stanton commanded her which brought the report close to my feelings.

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT

1814

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

Thomas Mayo Brewer “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf





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At Harvard College, four of the undergraduates were from Concord families: in addition to David Henry Thoreau there were George Moore, son of Captain Abel Moore the sheriff who would become a minister, Hiram Barrett Dennis, son of the farmer Samuel Dennis who would become an editor, and Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, a son of Squire Samuel Hoar who would become a lawyer and politician.

Undergraduates. — George Moore [of Concord], son of Captain AbelMoore; Hiram Barrett Dennis [of Concord], son of Samuel Dennis;Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, son of the Hon. Samuel Hoar [ofConcord], members of Harvard University; Marshall Merriam [ofConcord], and Gardner Davis [of Concord], son of Josiah Davis,of Yale College, and Josiah Dudley [of Concord], of UnionCollege, New York.

Thomas Mayo Brewer graduated. He would continue into Harvard Medical School. He joined the Boston Society of Natural History.

At Harvard Divinity School, the following gentlemen completed their studies:

Cyrus Augustus Bartol (A.B. Ham. [Hamilton College?])Asarelah Morse BridgeCharles Timothy BrooksEdgar BuckinghamChristopher Pearse Cranch (A.B. Col. [Columbia College?])Barzillai FrostSamuel OsgoodJohn ParkmanHarrison Gray Otis PhippsGeorge Matthias Rice (A.B. Bowdoin College)James Thurston

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1835








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Thomas Mayo Brewer published a paper on the birds of Massachusetts in the Boston Journal of Natural History. In this paper he supplemented Hitchcock’s CATALOG OF THE BIRDS OF MASSACHUSETTS by adding 45 species.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1837








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Thomas Mayo Brewer graduated from the Harvard Medical School. He would practice medicine for only a few years, as Dispensary Physician at the North End, before choosing to concentrate on writing and politics. He would become one of the editors at a Whig gazette, the Boston Atlas. He would contribute to a number of ornithological publications, including John James Audubon’s ORNITHOLOGICAL BIOGRAPHY (1831-1839):

“My young friend Mr. T.M. Brewer says....”

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1838

NEW “HARVARD MEN”







http://surnamesite.com/harvard/harvard1838.htm


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Thomas Mayo Brewer edited a new edition of Alexander Wilson’s AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY; OR, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS OF THE UNITED STATES, adding a synopsis of all the birds then known as North American, plus a list of newly classified birds.

In its 1852 edition (New York: H.S. Samuels), this would be in the library of Henry Thoreau.

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1839

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY







http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Public/wilson/front.html#galleries


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Thomas Mayo Brewer became one of the editors at, or a correspondent for, the Boston Atlas. He would remain in that capacity until this Whig gazette would be merged into the Boston Traveller, but soon after he would become a partner in the publishing firm of Swan and Tileston. His connection with that firm, under this name and later under the name Ilickling, Swan, and Brewer, and then under the name Brewer and Tileston, would continue until 1877 when he would retire from business.

Thomas Mayo Brewer joined the printing firm of Swan & Tileston.

The printing firm of Swan & Tileston was renamed Ilickling, Swan, and Brewer in recognition of the partnership of Thomas Mayo Brewer.

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

1840








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Summer: During his final expedition, on the upper Missouri River seeking new mammals for his books on American quadrupeds, John James Audubon saw a blackbird species with which he was not familiar. His drawing of it would be included in the 1844 Octavo, or miniature, edition of THE BIRDS OF AMERICA.

Audubon thought he was the 1st to recognize this species, and named it in honor of his young friend Thomas Mayo Brewer, the Brewer’s Blackbird (although in fact the species had been known since 1829, the common name Audubon assigned has stuck with this bird). Henry Thoreau probably never saw Brewer’s Blackbird Euphagus cyanocephalus because it is not present in our eastern states — however, since they do breed in Minnesota among other places during the summer, there would be the possibility that he sighted it while he was visiting Minnesota during the summer of 1861.

1843

BIRDS OF AMERICA




http://www.audubon.org/bird/boa/BOA_index.html


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Augustus Addison Gould became a member of the Natural History Society of Lynn, Massachusetts and a corresponding member of the Kongelige Nordiske Oldskriftselskab of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Description of Hairy-tailed Mole Parascalops breweri on the island of Martha’s Vineyard by Thomas Mayo Brewer, an active member since 1837 of the Boston Society of Natural History. This mammal of New England has come to be known as Brewer’s Mole.

Dr. Brewer was elected to the Boston School Board. He would become the senior member of this board and would be rechosen for another term of three years.

1844

PROCEEDINGS, FOR 1844




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/44/1844_BSNHproceedings.pdf


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May 27, Sunday: Thomas Mayo Brewer got married with Sally R. Coffin, daughter of Mr. Stephen Coffin of Damariscotta, Maine. The couple would produce two children.

After two Boston churches attended by persons of color had declined to allow the funeral services for the hanged black seaman to be conducted on their premises, on this afternoon the body of Washington Goode was interred in a city tomb at the South Burying Ground. The Reverend Mr. Grimes, pastor of the 12th Baptist Society, presided. On the handsome coffin of black walnut, a silver plate bore the simple inscription “Washington Goode, Died, May 25, 1849, Aged 29 years.”

Margaret Fuller reported to the New-York Tribune from Rome “between the heaves of storm”:

Rome, May 27, 1849.I have suspended writing in the expectation of some decisiveevent; but none such comes yet. The French, entangled in a webof falsehood, abashed by a defeat that Oudinot has vainly triedto gloss over, the expedition disowned by all honorable men athome, disappointed at Gaëta, not daring to go the length Papalinfatuation demands, know not what to do. The Neapolitans havebeen decidedly driven back into their own borders, the last timein a most shameful rout, their king flying in front. We haveheard for several days that the Austrians were advancing, butthey come not. They also, it is probable, meet with unexpectedembarrassments. They find that the sincere movement of theItalian people is very unlike that of troops commanded byprinces and generals who never wished to conquer and were alwayswaiting to betray. Then their troubles at home are constantlyincreasing, and, should the Russian intervention quell these to-day, it is only to raise a storm far more terrible to-morrow.The struggle is now fairly, thoroughly commenced between theprinciple of democracy and the old powers, no longer legitimate.That struggle may last fifty years, and the earth be wateredwith the blood and tears of more than one generation, but theresult is sure. All Europe, including Great Britain, where themost bitter resistance of all will be made, is to be underrepublican government in the next century.“God moves in a mysterious way.”Every struggle made by the old tyrannies, all their Jesuiticaldeceptions, their rapacity, their imprisonments and executionsof the most generous men, only sow more dragon’s teeth; the cropshoots up daily more and more plenteous.When I first arrived in Italy, the vast majority of this peoplehad no wish beyond limited monarchies, constitutionalgovernments. They still respected the famous names of thenobility; they despised the priests, but were still fondlyattached to the dogmas and ritual of the Roman Catholic Church.It required King Bomba, the triple treachery of Charles Albert,Pius IX., and the “illustrious Gioberti,” the naturally kind-

1849





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hearted, but, from the necessity of his position, cowardly andfalse Leopold of Tuscany, the vagabond “serene” meannesses ofParma and Modena, the “fatherly” Radetzsky, and, finally, theimbecile Louis Bonaparte, “would-be Emperor of France,” toconvince this people that no transition is possible between theold and the new. The work is done; the revolution in Italy is nowradical, nor can it stop till Italy becomes independent andunited as a republic. Protestant she already is, and though thememory of saints and martyrs may continue to be revered, theideal of woman to be adored under the name of Mary, yet Christwill now begin to be a little thought of; his idea has alwaysbeen kept carefully out of sight under the old régime; all theworship being for the Madonna and saints, who were to be wellpaid for interceding for sinners; — an example which might makemen cease to be such, was no way coveted. Now the New Testamenthas been translated into Italian; copies are already dispersedfar and wide; men calling themselves Christians will no longerbe left entirely ignorant of the precepts and life of Jesus.The people of Rome have burnt the Cardinals’ carriages. Theytook the confessionals out of the churches, and made mockconfessions in the piazzas, the scope of which was, “I havesinned, father, so and so.” “Well, my son, how much will you payto the Church for absolution?” Afterward the people thought ofburning the confessionals, or using them for barricades; but atthe request of the Triumvirate they desisted, and even put themback into the churches. But it was from no reaction of feelingthat they stopped short, only from respect for the government.The “Tartuffe” of Molière has been translated into Italian, andwas last night performed with great applause at the Valle. Canall this be forgotten? Never! Should guns and bayonets replacethe Pope on the throne, he will find its foundations, once deepas modern civilization, now so undermined that it falls with theleast awkward movement.But I cannot believe he will be replaced there. France alonecould consummate that crime, — that, for her, most cruel, mostinfamous treason. The elections in France will decide. In threeor four days we shall know whether the French nation at largebe guilty or no, — whether it be the will of the nation to aidor strive to ruin a government founded on precisely the samebasis as their own.I do not dare to trust that people. The peasant is yet veryignorant. The suffering workman is frightened as he thinks ofthe punishments that ensued on the insurrections of May andJune. The man of property is full of horror at the brotherlyscope of Socialism. The aristocrat dreams of the guillotinealways when he hears men speak of the people. The influence ofthe Jesuits is still immense in France. Both in France andEngland the grossest falsehoods have been circulated withunwearied diligence about the state of things in Italy. Anamusing specimen of what is still done in this line I find justnow in a foreign journal, where it says there are red flags onall the houses of Rome; meaning to imply that the Romans are





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athirst for blood. Now, the fact is, that these flags are putup at the entrance of those streets where there is no barricade,as a signal to coachmen and horsemen that they can pass freely.There is one on the house where I am, in which is no person butmyself, who thirst for peace, and the Padrone, who thirsts formoney.Meanwhile the French troops are encamped at a little distancefrom Rome. Some attempts at fair and equal treaty when theirdesire to occupy Rome was firmly resisted, Oudinot describes inhis despatches as a readiness for submission. Having tried in vainto gain this point, he has sent to France for fresh orders. Thesewill be decided by the turn the election takes. Meanwhile theFrench troops are much exposed to the Roman force where theyare. Should the Austrians come up, what will they do? Will theyshamelessly fraternize with the French, after pretending andproclaiming that they came here as a check upon theiraggressions? Will they oppose them in defence of Rome, withwhich they are at war?Ah! the way of falsehood, the way of treachery, — how dark, howfull of pitfalls and traps! Heaven defend from it all who arenot yet engaged therein!War near at hand seems to me even more dreadful than I hadfancied it. True, it tries men’s souls, lays bare selfishnessin undeniable deformity. Here it has produced much fruit ofnoble sentiment, noble act; but still it breeds vice too,drunkenness, mental dissipation, tears asunder the tenderestties, lavishes the productions of Earth, for which her starvingpoor stretch out their hands in vain, in the most unprofitablemanner. And the ruin that ensues, how terrible! Let those whohave ever passed happy days in Rome grieve to hear that thebeautiful plantations of Villa Borghese — that chief delight andrefreshment of citizens, foreigners, and little children — arelaid low, as far as the obelisk. The fountain, singing aloneamid the fallen groves, cannot be seen and heard without tears;it seems like some innocent infant calling and crowing amid deadbodies on a field which battle has strewn with the bodies ofthose who once cherished it. The plantations of Villa Salvageon the Tiber, also, the beautiful trees on the way from St. JohnLateran to La Maria Maggiore, the trees of the Forum, are fallen.Rome is shorn of the locks which lent grace to her venerablebrow. She looks desolate, profaned. I feel what I never expectedto, — as if I might by and by be willing to leave Rome.Then I have, for the first time, seen what wounded men suffer.The night of the 30th of April I passed in the hospital, and sawthe terrible agonies of those dying or who needed amputation,felt their mental pains and longing for the loved ones who wereaway; for many of these were Lombards, who had come from thefield of Novarra to fight with a fairer chance, — many werestudents of the University, who had enlisted and thrownthemselves into the front of the engagement. The impudentfalsehoods of the French general’s despatches are incredible.The French were never decoyed on in any way. They were received





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with every possible mark of hostility. They were defeated inopen field, the Garibaldi legion rushing out to meet them; andthough they suffered much from the walls, they sustainedthemselves nowhere. They never put up a white flag till theywished to surrender. The vanity that strives to cover over thesefacts is unworthy of men. The only excuse for the imprudentconduct of the expedition is that they were deceived, not by theRomans here, but by the priests of Gaëta, leading them to expectaction in their favor within the walls. These priests themselveswere deluded by their hopes and old habits of mind. The troopsdid not fight well, and General Oudinot abandoned his woundedwithout proper care. All this says nothing against French valor,proved by ages of glory, beyond the doubt of their worst foes.They were demoralized because they fought in so bad a cause, andthere was no sincere ardor or clear hope in any breast.But to return to the hospitals: these were put in order, andhave been kept so, by the Princess Belgioioso. The princess wasborn of one of the noblest families of the Milanese, a descendantof the great Trivalzio, and inherited a large fortune. Veryearly she compromised it in liberal movements, and, on theirfailure, was obliged to fly to Paris, where for a time shemaintained herself by writing, and I think by painting also. Aprincess so placed naturally excited great interest, and shedrew around her a little court of celebrated men. Afterrecovering her fortune, she still lived in Paris, distinguishedfor her talents and munificence, both toward literary men andher exiled countrymen. Later, on her estate, called Locate,between Pavia and Milan, she had made experiments in theSocialist direction with fine judgment and success. Associationfor education, for labor, for transaction of household affairs,had been carried on for several years; she had spared no devotionof time and money to this object, loved, and was much belovedby, those objects of her care, and said she hoped to die there.All is now despoiled and broken up, though it may be hoped thatsome seeds of peaceful reform have been sown which will springto light when least expected. The princess returned to Italy in1847-8, full of hope in Pius IX and Charles Albert. She showedher usual energy and truly princely heart, sustaining, at herown expense, a company of soldiers and a journal up to the lastsad betrayal of Milan, August 6th. These days undeceived all thepeople, but few of the noblesse; she was one of the few withmind strong enough to understand the lesson, and is now warmlyinterested in the republican movement. From Milan she went toFrance, but, finding it impossible to effect anything seriousthere in behalf of Italy, returned, and has been in Rome abouttwo months. Since leaving Milan she receives no income, herpossessions being in the grasp of Radetzky, and cannot knowwhen, if ever, she will again. But as she worked so largely andwell with money, so can she without. She published an invitationto the Roman women to make lint and bandages, and offer theirservices to the wounded; she put the hospitals in order; in thecentral one, Trinita de Pellegrini, once the abode where the





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pilgrims were received during holy week, and where foreignerswere entertained by seeing their feet washed by the noble damesand dignitaries of Rome, she has remained day and night sincethe 30th of April, when the wounded were first there. Some moneyshe procured at first by going through Rome, accompanied by twoother ladies veiled, to beg it. Afterward the voluntarycontributions were generous; among the rest, I am proud to say,the Americans in Rome gave $250, of which a handsome portioncame from Mr. Brown, the Consul.I value this mark of sympathy more because of the irritation andsurprise occasioned here by the position of Mr. Cass, the Envoy.It is most unfortunate that we should have an envoy here for thefirst time, just to offend and disappoint the Romans. When allthe other ambassadors are at Gaëta, ours is in Rome, as if byhis presence to discountenance the republican government, whichhe does not recognize. Mr. Cass, it seems, is required by hisinstructions not to recognize the government till sure it canbe sustained. Now it seems to me that the only dignified groundfor our government, the only legitimate ground for anyrepublican government, is to recognize for any nation thegovernment chosen by itself. The suffrage had been correct here,and the proportion of votes to the whole population was muchlarger, it was said by Americans here, than it is in our owncountry at the time of contested elections. It had elected anAssembly; that Assembly had appointed, to meet the exigenciesof this time, the Triumvirate. If any misrepresentations haveinduced America to believe, as France affects to have believed,that so large a vote could have been obtained by moralintimidation, the present unanimity of the population inresisting such immense odds, and the enthusiasm of their everyexpression in favor of the present government, puts the matterbeyond a doubt. The Roman people claims once more to have anational existence. It declines further serfdom to anecclesiastical court. It claims liberty of conscience, ofaction, and of thought. Should it fall from its presentposition, it will not be from, internal dissent, but fromforeign oppression.Since this is the case, surely our country, if no other, is boundto recognize the present government so long as it can sustain itself. Thisposition is that to which we have a right: being such, it is nomatter how it is viewed by others. But I dare assert it is theonly respectable one for our country, in the eyes of the Emperorof Russia himself.The first, best occasion is past, when Mr. Cass might, had hebeen empowered to act as Mr. Rush did in France, have morallystrengthened the staggering republic, which would have foundsympathy where alone it is of permanent value, on the basis ofprinciple. Had it been in vain, what then? America would haveacted honorably; as to our being compromised thereby with thePapal government, that fear is idle. Pope and Cardinals havegreat hopes from America; the giant influence there is kept upwith the greatest care; the number of Catholic writers in the





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United States, too, carefully counted. Had our republicangovernment acknowledged this republican government, the PapalCamarilla would have respected us more, but not loved us less;for have we not the loaves and fishes to give, as well as theprecious souls to be saved? Ah! here, indeed, America might gostraightforward with all needful impunity. Bishop Hughes himselfneed not be anxious. That first, best occasion has passed, andthe unrecognized, unrecognizing Envoy has given offence, and notcomfort, by a presence that seemed constantly to say, I do notthink you can sustain yourselves. It has wounded both the heartand the pride of Rome. Some of the lowest people have asked me,“Is it not true that your country had a war to become free?”“Yes.” “Then why do they not feel for us?”Yet even now it is not too late. If America would only hailtriumphant, though she could not sustain injured Rome, thatwould be something. “Can you suppose Rome will triumph,” yousay, “without money, and against so potent a league of foes?” Iam not sure, but I hope, for I believe something in the heartof a people when fairly awakened. I have also a lurkingconfidence in what our fathers spoke of so constantly, aprovidential order of things, by which brute force and selfishenterprise are sometimes set at naught by aid which seems todescend from a higher sphere. Even old pagans believed in that,you know; and I was born in America, Christianized by thePuritans, — America, freed by eight years’ patient suffering,poverty, and struggle, — America, so cheered in dark days by onespark of sympathy from a foreign shore, — America, first“recognized” by Lafayette. I saw him when traversing ourcountry, then great, rich, and free. Millions of men who owedin part their happiness to what, no doubt, was once sneered atas romantic sympathy, threw garlands in his path. It is naturalthat I should have some faith.Send, dear America! to thy ambassadors a talisman preciousbeyond all that boasted gold of California. Let it loose histongue to cry, “Long live the Republic, and may God bless thecause of the people, the brotherhood of nations and of men, —equality of rights for all.” Viva America!Hail to my country! May she live a free, a glorious, a lovinglife, and not perish, like the old dominions, from, the leprosyof selfishness.Evening.I am alone in the ghostly silence of a great house, not longsince full of gay faces and echoing with gay voices, now desertedby every one but me, — for almost all foreigners are gone now,driven by force either of the summer heats or the foe. I hearall the Spaniards are going now, — that twenty-one have takenpassports to-day; why that is, I do not know.I shall not go till the last moment; my only fear is of France.I cannot think in any case there would be found men willing todamn themselves to latest posterity by bombarding Rome. Othercities they may treat thus, careless of destroying the innocentand helpless, the babe and old grandsire who cannot war against





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them. But Rome, precious inheritance of mankind, — will they runthe risk of marring her shrined treasures? Would they dare do it?Two of the balls that struck St. Peter’s have been sent to PiusIX. by his children, who find themselves so much less “beloved”than were the Austrians.These two days, days of solemn festivity in the calends of theChurch, have been duly kept, and the population looks cheerfulas it swarms through the streets. The order of Rome, throngedas it is with troops, is amazing. I go from one end to the other,and amid the poorest and most barbarous of the population,(barbarously ignorant, I mean,) alone and on foot. My friendssend out their little children alone with their nurses. Theamount of crime is almost nothing to what it was. The Roman, nolonger pent in ignorance and crouching beneath espionage, nolonger stabs in the dark. His energies have true vent; his betterfeelings are roused; he has thrown aside the stiletto. The powerhere is indeed miraculous, since no doubt still lurk within thewalls many who are eager to incite brawls, if only to give anexcuse for slander.To-day I suppose twelve thousand Austrians marched intoFlorence. The Florentines have humbled and disgraced themselvesin vain. They recalled the Grand Duke to ward off the entranceof the Austrians, but in vain went the deputation to Gaëta — inan American steamer! Leopold was afraid to come till his dearcousins of Austria had put everything in perfect order; then theAustrians entered to take Leghorn, but the Florentines stillkept on imploring them not to come there; Florence was assubdued, as good as possible, already: — they have had the answerthey deserved. Now they crown their work by giving over Guerazziand Petracci to be tried by an Austrian court-martial. Truly thecup of shame brims over.I have been out on the balcony to look over the city. All sleepswith that peculiar air of serene majesty known to this city only;— this city that has grown, not out of the necessities ofcommerce nor the luxuries of wealth, but first out of heroism,then out of faith. Swelling domes, roofs softly tinted withyellow moss! what deep meaning, what deep repose, in yourfaintly seen outline!The young moon climbs among clouds, — the clouds of a departingthunderstorm. Tender, smiling moon! can it be that thy full orbmay look down on a smoking, smouldering Rome, and see her bestblood run along the stones, without one nation in the world todefend, one to aid, — scarce one to cry out a tardy “Shame”? Wewill wait, whisper the nations, and see if they can bear it.Rack them well to see if they are brave. If they can do without us, wewill help them. Is it thus ye would be served in your turn?Beware!

ARTHUR FULLER’S BOOK




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/49/MAY/27may1849_MargaretFullerREPORT.pdf


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In a study in the contents of the drawers of prepared bird specimens at the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences, John Cassin discovered the sparrow Spizella breweri as a species separate from the similar Clay-colored Sparrow. He named it for Thomas Mayo Brewer. Henry Thoreau definitely never saw this bird as it inhabits only the Western states:

Class: AvesOrder: Passeriformes

Family: EmberizidaeGenus: Spizella

Species: S. breweriSubspecies: S. b. breweri of sagebrush and shrubsteppe zones

S. b. taverneri of subalpine and alpine zones

1850





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Alexander Wilson’s AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY, BY WILSON; WITH NOTES, BY JARDINE: TO WHICH IS ADDED, A SYNOPSIS OF AMERICAN BIRDS; INCLUDING THOSE DESCRIBED BY BONAPARTE, AUDUBON, NUTTALL, AND RICHARDSON, BY T.M. [Thomas Mayo] BREWER. WITH 29 PAGES OF STEEL PLATES OF NEARLY 400 BIRDS. 8vo. New York: H.S. Samuels, 1852. A copy of this would wind up in Henry Thoreau’s personal library. When he went to copy from it into the essay “SUCCESSION OF FOREST TREES” which he would present at the Middlesex County Cattle-Show on September 20, 1860, he would silently correct this edition’s typo “ruciferous”: “The jay is one of the most useful agents in the economy of nature, for disseminating forest trees and other nuciferous and hard-seeded vegetables on which they feed.”

ZOOLOGICAL NOTES AND ANECDOTES (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street).1

A copy of this also would wind up in the personal library of Thoreau.

1852

1. Written, as “Sestericus Holt,” by Mr William White Cooper.

ZOOLOGICAL NOTES, ETC.




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/52/1852_SestericusHolt.pdf


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December 29, Thursday: In London, James Wilson set up the Chartered Bank of India, Australia, and China under a Royal Charter from Queen Victoria. This entity would set up agencies in Hong Kong and Singapore in 1859. In 1862 it would begin to issue a Hong Kong Dollar banknote, and after a merger with Standard Bank would eventuate as Hong Kong’s present-day Standard Chartered Bank.

Henry Thoreau recorded in his journal the rebuffing of an intervention he had attempted in regard to Alek Therien:

Dec. 29. We survive, in one sense, in our posterity and in the continuance of our race, but when a raceof men, of Indians for instance, becomes extinct, is not that the end of the world for them? Is not the worldforever beginning and coming to an end, both to men and races? Suppose we were to foresee that the Saxon raceto which we belong would become extinct the present winter, — disappear from the face of the earth, — wouldit not look to us like the end, the dissolution of the world? Such is the prospect of the Indians. All day a drivingsnow-storm, imprisoning most, stopping the cars, blocking up the roads. No school to-day. I cannot see a housefifty rods off from my window through [it];2 yet in midst of all I see a bird, probably a tree sparrow, partlyblown, partly flying, over the house to alight in a field. The snow penetrates through the smallest crevices underdoors and side of windows.P. M. —Tried my snow-shoes. They sink deeper than I expected, and I throw the snow upon my back. When Ireturned, twenty minutes after, my great tracks were not to be seen. It is the worst snow-storm to bear that Iremember. The strong wind from the north blows the snow almost horizontally, and, beside freezing you, almosttakes your breath away. The driving snow blinds you, and where you are protected, you can see but little way,it is so thick. Yet in spite, or on account, of all, I see the first flock of arctic snowbirds (Emberiza nivalis) nearthe depot, white and black, with a sharp, whistle-like note. An hour after I discovered half a pint of snow in eachpocket of my greatcoat.What a contrast between the village street now and last summer! The leafy elms then resounding with thewarbling vireo, robins, bluebirds, and the fiery hangbird, etc., to which the villagers, kept indoors by the heat,listen through open lattices. Now it is like a street in Nova Zembla, — if they were to have any there. I wade tothe post-office as solitary a traveller as ordinarily in a wood-path in winter. The snow is mid-leg deep, whiledrifts as high as one’s head are heaped against the houses and fences, and here and there range across the streetlike snowy mountains. You descend from this, relieved, into capacious valleys with a harder bottom, or morefordable. The track of one large sleigh alone is visible, nearly snowed up. There is not a track leading from anydoor to indicate that the inhabitants have been forth to-day, any more than there is track of any quadruped bythe wood-paths. It is all pure untrodden snow, banked up against the houses now at 4 p.m., and no evidence thata villager has been abroad to-day. In one place the drift covers the front-yard fence and stretches thence upwardto the top of the front door, shutting all in, and frequently the snow lies banked up three or four feet high againstthe front doors, and the windows are all snowed up, and there is a drift over each window, and the clapboardsare all hoary with it. It is as if the inhabitants were all frozen to death, and now You threaded the desolate streetsweeks after that calamity. There is not a sleigh or vehicle of any kind on the Mill-Dam, but one saddled horseon which a farmer has come into town. The cars are nowhere. Yet they are warmer, merrier than ever therewithin. At the post-office they ask each traveller news of the cars, — “Is there any train up or down?” — or howdeep the snow is on a level.Of the snow bunting, Wilson says that they appear in the northern parts of the United States “early in December,or with the first heavy snow, particularly if drifted by high winds.” This day answers to that description exactly.The wind is northerly. He adds that “they are... universally considered as the harbingers of severe cold weather.”They come down from the extreme north and are common to the two continents; quotes Pennant as saying thatthey “inhabit not only Greenland but even the dreadful climate of Spitzbergen, where vegetation is nearlyextinct, and scarcely any but cryptogamous plants are found. It therefore excites wonder, how birds, which aregraminivorous in every other than those frost-bound regions, subsist: yet are there found in great flocks both on

1853

2. In an ordinary snow-storm, when snowing fast, Jan. 1st,’54, I can see E. Wood’s house, or about a mile.




Whenever and wherever you see this little pencil icon in the pages of this Kouroo Contexture, it is marking an extract from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. OK?


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the land and ice of Spitzbergen.” P. also says that they inhabit in summer “the most naked Lapland Alps,” and“descend in rigorous seasons into Sweden, and fill the roads and fields: on which account” the Laplanders callthem “hardwarsfogel,” hard-weather birds. Also P. says “they overflow [in winter] the more southern countriesin amazing multitudes.” W. says their colors are very variable, “and the whiteness of their plumage is observedto be greatest towards the depth of winter.” Also W. says truly that they seldom sit long, “being a roving restlessbird.” Peabody says that in summer they are “pure white and black,” but are not seen of that color here. ThoseI saw to-day were of that color, behind A. Wheeler’s. He says they are white and rustybrown here.These are the true winter birds for you, these winged snowballs. I could hardly see them, the air was so full ofdriving snow. What hardy creatures! Where do they spend the night?The woodchopper goes not to the wood to-day. His axe and beetle and wedges and whetstone he will find burieddeep under a drift, perchance, and his fire all extinguished.As you go down the street, you see on either hand, where erst were front yards with their parterres, rollingpastures of snow, unspotted blankness swelling into drifts. All along the path lies a huge barrow of snow raisedby the arctic mound-builder. It is like a pass through the Wind River Mountains or the Sierra Nevada, - a spotlessexpanse of drifted snow, sloping upward over fences to the houses, deep banks all along their fronts closing thedoors. It lies in and before Holbrook’s piazza, dwarfing its columns, like the sand about Egyptian temples.The windows are all sealed up, so that the traveller sees no face of inhabitant looking out upon him. Thehousekeeper thinks with pleasure or pain of what he has in his larder. No shovel is put to the snow this day. To-morrow we shall see them digging out. The farmer considers how much pork he has in his barrel, how muchmeal in his bin, how much wood in his shed. Each family, perchance, sends forth one representative beforenight, who makes his way with difficulty to the grocery or post-office to learn the news; i.e., to hear what otherssay to it, who can give the best account of it, best can name it, has waded farthest in it, has been farthest out andcan tell the biggest and most adequate story; and hastens back with the news. I asked Therien yesterday if hewas satisfied with himself. I was trying to get a point d’appui within him, a shelf to spring an arch from, tosuggest some employment and aim for life. “Satisfied!” said he; “some men are satisfied with one thing, andsome with another, by George. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with hisback to the fire and his belly to the table; that will satisfy him, by gorry.” When I met him the other day, he askedme if I had made any improvement. Yet I could never by any manoeuvring get him to take what is called aspiritual view of things, of life. He allowed that study and education was a good thing, but for him it was toolate. He only thought of its expediency; nothing answering to what many call their aspirations.He was humble, if he can be called humble who never aspires.He cut his trees very low, close to the ground, because the sprouts that came from such stumps were better.Perhaps he distinguished between the red and scarlet oak; one had a pale inner bark, the other a darker or morereddish one. Without the least effort he could defend prevailing institutions which affected him, better than anyphilosopher, because he implicitly accepted them and knew their whole value. He gave the true reason for theirprevalence, because speculation had never suggested to him any other. Looking round among the trees, he saidhe could enjoy himself in the woods chopping alone in a winter day; he wanted no better sport.The trees were frozen, — had been sometimes, — but would frequently thaw again during the day. Split easierfor it, but did not chop better. The woodchopper to-day is the same man that Homer refers to, and his work the same. He, no doubt, had hisbeetle and wedge and whetstone then, carried his dinner in a pail or basket, and his liquor in a bottle, and caughthis woodchucks, and cut and corded, the same. The thoughts and associations of summer and autumn are nowas completely departed from our minds as the leaves are blown from the trees. Some withered deciduous onesare left to rustle, and our cold immortal evergreens. Some lichenous thoughts still adhere to us.





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April 6, Friday: Charles Eliot Norton wrote James Russell Lowell endorsing free-soil politics because this would “confine the Negro within the South.” This Harvard College professor wasn’t against slavery, rather, he was against the enslavable race, which for obvious reasons shouldn’t be allowed to exist, or at the very least, shouldn’t be allowed to exist here.

Get this: he was antislavery because of his racism.

April 6 [1855]. It clears up at 8 P.M. warm and pleasant, leaving flitting clouds and a little wind, andI go up the Assabet in my boat. The blackbirds have now begun to frequent the water's edge in the meadow, theice being sufficiently out. The April waters, smooth and commonly high, before many flowers (none yet) or anyleafing, while the landscape is still russet and frogs are just awakening, is [sic] peculiar. It began yesterday.A very few white maple stamens stand out already loosely enough to blow in the wind, and some alder catkinslook almost ready to shed pollen. On the hillsides I smell the dried leaves and hear a few flies buzzing overthem. The banks of the river are alive with song sparrows and tree sparrows. They now sing in advance ofvegetation, as the flowers will blossom, — those slight tinkling, twittering sounds called the singing of birds;they have come to enliven the bare twigs before the buds show any signs of starting. I see a large wood tortoisejust crawled out upon the bank, with three oval, low, bug-like leeches on its sternum.You can hear all day, from time to time, in any part of the village, the sound of a gun fired at ducks. YesterdayI was wishing that I could find a dead duck floating on the water, as I had found muskrats, and a hare, and nowI see something bright and reflecting the light from the edge of the alders, five or six rods off. Can it be a duck?I can hardly believe my eyes. I am near enough to see its green head and neck. I am delighted to find a perfectspecimen of the Mergus merganser, or goosander [Common Merganser Mergus merganser],undoubtedly shot yesterday by the Fast-Day sportsmen, and I take a small flattened shot from its wing, –flattened against the wing-bone apparently. The wing is broken, and it is shot through the head.3 It is a perfectlyfresh and very beautiful bird, and as I raise it, I get sight of its long, slender vermillion bill (color of red sealing-wax) and its clean, bright-orange legs and feet, and then of its perfectly smooth and spotlessly pure white breastand belly tinged with a faint salmon (or tinged with a delicate buff inclining to salmon).This, according to Wilson,4 is one of the mergansers, or fisher ducks, of which there are nine or ten species andwe have four in America. It is the largest of these four; feeds almost entirely on fin and shell fish; called waterpheasant, sheldrake, fisherman diver, dun diver, sparkling fowl, harle, etc., as well as goosander. Go in April,return in November. Jardine has found seven trout in one female. Nuttall5 says they breed in the Russian Empireand are seen in Mississippi and Missouri in winter. He found a young brood in Pennsylvania. Yarrell6 says they

1855

3. The chief wound was in a wing, which was broken. I afterward took three small shot from it, which were flattened against the bill’s base and perhaps (?) the quills’ shafts.





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are called also saw-bill and jack-saw; are sometimes sold in London market. Nest, according to Selby,7 onground; according to others, in a hollow tree also. Found on the continent of Europe, northern Asia, and evenin Japan(?). Some breed in the Orkneys and thereabouts. My bird is 25 7/8 inches long and 35 in alar extent;from point of wing to end of primaries, 11 inches.It is a great diver and does not mind the cold. It appears admirably fitted for diving and swimming. Its body isflat, and its tail short, flat, compact, and wedge-shaped; its eyes peer out a slight slit or semicircle in the skin ofthe head; and its legs are flat and thin in one direction, and the toes shut up compactly so as to create the leastfriction when drawing them forward, but their broad webs spread them three and a half inches when they takea stroke. The web is extended three eighths of an inch beyond the inner toe of each foot. There are veryconspicuous black teeth-like serrations along the edges of its bill, and this also is roughened so that it may holdits prey securely.The breast appeared quite dry when I raised it from the water.The head and neck are, as Wilson says, black glossed with green, but the lower part of the neck pure white, andthese colors bound on each other so abruptly that one appears to be sewed on to the other.It is a perfect wedge from the middle of its body to the end of its tail, and it is only three and a quarter inchesdeep from back to breast at the thickest part, while the greatest breadth horizontally (at the root of the legs) isfive and a half inches. In these respects it reminds me of an otter, which however I have never seen.I suspect that I have seen near a hundred of these birds this spring, but I never got so near one before. In Yarrell’splate the depth of the male goosander is to its length (i.e. from tip of tail to most forward part of breast) as thirty-seven to one hundred and three, or the depth is more than one third. This length in Yarrell’s bird, calling thedistance from the point of the wing to the end of the primaries eleven inches, is about fourteen and a half inchesof which my three and a quarter is not one fourth. In Nuttall’s plate the proportion is thirty-two to ninety-one,also more than one third. I think they have not represented the bird flat enough.Yarrell says it is the largest of the British mergansers; is a winter visitor, though a few breed in the north ofBritain; are rare in the southern countries. But, according to Yarrell, a Mr. Low in his Natural History of Orkneysays they breed there, and, after breeding, the sexes separate; and Y. quotes Selby as saying that their nest isnear the edge of the water, of grass, roots, etc., lined with down, sometimes among stones, in long grass, underbushes, or in a stump or hollow tree. Y. continues, egg “a uniform buff white,” two and a half inches long.Sometimes carry their young on their backs in the water. It is common in Sweden and, according to the travellerAcerbi, in Lapland they give it a hollow tree to build in and then steal its eggs. The mother, he adds, carries heryoung to the water in her bill. Y. says it is well known in Russia and is found in Germany, Holland, France,Switzerland, Provence, and Italy. Has been seen near the Caucasus (and is found in Japan, according to one

4. Alexander Wilson, AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY, BY WILSON; WITH NOTES, BY JARDINE: TO WHICH IS ADDED, A SYNOPSIS OF AMERICAN BIRDS; INCLUDING THOSE DESCRIBED BY BONAPARTE, AUDUBON, NUTTALL, AND RICHARDSON, BY T.M. [Thomas Mayo] BREWER. WITH 29 PAGES OF STEEL PLATES OF NEARLY 400 BIRDS. 8vo. New York: H.S. Samuels, 1852.

5. Professor Thomas Nuttall, A MANUAL OF THE ORNITHOLOGY OF THE UNITED STATES AND OF CANADA, Cam bridge: Hilliard and Brown; Boston: Hilliard, Gray, 1832-1834.

6. William Yarrell, A HISTORY OF BRITISH BIRDS, 3 volumes, London: J. Van Voorst, 1843.7. Prideaux John Selby, ILLUSTRATIONS OF BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY, Volume II, Water Birds (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, 1833).

AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY

NUTTALL’S LAND BIRDS

NUTTALL’S WATER BIRDS

VOLUME II, WATER BIRDS




http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Public/wilson/front.html#galleries

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/32/1832_NuttallOrnithologyI.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/34/1834_NuttallOrnithologyII.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/33/1833_PrideauxJohnSelby_2.pdf


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authority). Also in North America, Hudson’s Bay, Greenland, and Iceland.

Prideaux John Selby’s Goosander





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June 25, Wednesday: Friend Daniel Ricketson to his journal, in New Bedford with Henry Thoreau:

June 25. An abundance of the handsome corncockle (Lychnis), apparently in prime, in midst of a rye-field, together with morning-glories by the Acushnet shore. Black-grass in bloom, partly done. A kind of rush(?) with terete leaves and a long spike of flowers, one to two feet high, somewhat like a loose plantain spike. Itinclines to grow in circles a foot or more in diameter. Seaside plantain and rosemary, not long out. Veronicaarvensis one foot high (!) on the shore there. Spergularia rubra var. marina.P.M. — Called at Thomas A. Greene’s in New Bedford, said to be best acquainted with the botany of thisvicinity (also acquainted with shells, and somewhat with geology). In answer to my question what were the rareor peculiar plants thereabouts, he looked over his botany deliberately and named the Aletris farinosa, or star-grass; the Hydrocotyle vulgaris (probably interrupta of Gray), which he thought was now gone; Proserpinacapectinacea, at the shallow pond in Westport where I went last fall with Ricketson; Panax trifolium. Thatchenopodium-like plant on the salt-marsh shore, with hastate leaves, mealy under sides, is Atriplex patula, notyet out.Brewer, in a communication to Audubon (as I read in his hundred(?)-dollar edition), makes two kinds of songsparrows, and says that Audubon has represented one, the most common about houses, with a spot in the centreof the breast, and Wilson the other, more universally spotted on the breast. The latter’s nest will be two feet highin a bush and sometimes covered over and with an arched entrance and with six eggs (while the other has notmore than five), larger and less pointed than the former’s and apparently almost wholly rusty-brown. This buildsfurther from houses. [Vide June 23, 1860.]

1856

Cooler, unsettled, and signs of rain, wind S.W. At homeand about this forenoon, Thoreau busy collectingmarine plants from the river side. Went to town thisP.M. with Thoreau. Called at Thomas A. Greene’s withT. who wished to confer with him about rare plants andthose peculiar to this section — afterwards went to thecity library and examined Audubon’s Ornithology for aspecies of the sparrow which we have on our place andwhich as yet I have been unable to identify with anydescribed in Wilson or Nuttall.




DANIEL RICKETSON AND HIS FRIENDS. LETTERS POEMS SKETCHES ETC. EDITED BY HIS DAUGHER AND SON ANNA AND WALTON RICKETSON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1902.


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The printing firm originally known as Swan & Tileston, which had been renamed Ilickling, Swan, and Brewer, was renamed Brewer & Tileston as Thomas Mayo Brewer became a primary partner.

The initial part of Thomas Mayo Brewer, M.D.’s NORTH AMERICAN OÖLOGY ; OR, DESCRIPTIONS AND FIGURES OF THE EGGS OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS, WITH NOTICES OF THEIR GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION DURING THE BREEDING SEASON, embracing the Birds of Prey, the Swifts, Swallows, Goatsuckers, and Kingfishers. Due to the great cost of the illustrations, nothing more would appear.

1857





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May 30, Tuesday: In 1843 the Hudson’s Bay Company had established a settlement and fur-trading post on Vancouver Island. At this point, with Sir Arthur Kennedy as governor of the island the need to maintain order during the gold rush caused the British Parliament to revoke the charter of the Hudson’s Bay Company to the island and to the mainland of British Columbia as well.

May 30: Hear of lady’s-slipper seen the 23d; how long? I saw the Nuphar advena above water andyellow in Shrewsbury the 23d.P.M. —To hen-harrier’s [Northern Harrier Circus cyaneus] nest and to Ledum Swamp. Edward Emersonshows me the nest which he and another discovered. It is in the midst of the low wood, sometimes inundated,just southwest of Hubbard’s Bath, the island of wood in the meadow. The hawk rises when we approach andcircles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. The nest is in a morebushy or open place in this low wood, and consists of a large mass of sedge and stubble, with a very few smalltwigs, as it were accidentally intermingled. It is about twenty inches in diameter and remarkably flat, the slightdepression in the middle not exceeding three quarters of an inch. The whole opening amid the low bushes is notmore than two feet in diameter. The thickness of it raises the surface about four inches above the ground. Theinner and upper part is uniformly rather fine and pale-brown sedge. There are two dirty, or rather dirtied, whiteeggs left (of four that were), one of them one and seven tenths inches long, and not “spherical,” as Brewer says,but broad in proportion to length.8

Ledum, one flower out, but perhaps if Pratt had not plucked some last Sunday it might have bloomed hereyesterday? It is decidedly leafing also. Andromeda Polifolia by the ditch well out, how long? I perceive theturpentine scent of the ledum in the air as I walk through it.As I stand by the riverside some time after sundown, I see a light white mist rising here and there in wisps fromthe meadow, far and near, — less visible within a foot of me, —to the height of three or four or ten feet. It doesnot rise generally and evenly from every part of the meadow, but, as yet, over certain spots only, where there issome warm breath of the meadow turned into cloud.

1858

8. Another is one and seven eights inches long by one and a half inches. Vide the last (which was addled).





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December 7, Tuesday: Henry Thoreau checked out, from Harvard Library, Enrico “Iron Hand” de Tonti’s RELATION DE LA LOUISIANA OU MISSISSIPPI PAR LE CHEVALIER DE TONTI (1734).9

9. Henry, Chevalier de Tonti was born in Gaeta, Italy in about 1650, a son of Lorenzo Tonti. He entered the French army as a cadet and served in addition in the French navy. In 1678 he accompanied René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-1687) to Canada. In 1680, during an exploration of the Mississippi he was left in command of Fort Crevecoeur on the Illinois River near Peoria, Illinois. After making an unsuccessful attempt to found a settlement in Arkansas, in 1685 he took part in an expedition of the Western Indians against the Senecas. He twice went down the Mississippi to its mouth while in search of La Salle, and then needed to go down the river a third time to meet M. D’Iberville. During September 1704 he died at Fort Saint Loûis (now Mobile, Alabama). There is a report by him in Margry’s RELATIONS ET MEMOIRES, and an English translation of this report, “An Account of Monsieur de la Salle’s Last Discoveries in North America. Presented to the French King, and Published by the Chevalier Tonti, Governour of Fort St. Louis, in the Province of the Illinois ...,” would be printed in London by J. Tonson, S. Buckley, and R. Knaplock in 1698 and reprinted in New-York in 1814. Refer to Benjamin Franklin French’s HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA AND FLORIDA (Volume I, 1846).





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Thoreau also checked out Volume IV of the five volumes of Benjamin Franklin French’s HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS OF LOUISIANA, EMBRACING MANY RARE AND VALUABLE DOCUMENTS RELATING TO THE NATURAL, CIVIL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THAT STATE. COMPILED WITH HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES, AND AN INTRODUCTION... (New York: Wiley & Putnam). Part I of this, Historical Documents from 1678-1691, contains La Salle’s memoir of the discovery of the Mississippi, Joutel’s journal, and Hennepin’s account of the Mississippi. Part II contains Marquette and Joliet’s voyage to discover the Mississippi, De Soto’s expedition, and Coxe’s “Carolana.” Part III contains La Harpe’s journal of the establishment of the French in Louisiana, Charlevoix’s journal, etc. Part IV, the volume from which Thoreau was extracting into his Indian Notebook #11, printed in 1852, contains narratives of the voyages, missions, and travels among the Indians, by Marquette, Joliet, Dablon, Allouez, Le Clercq, La Salle, Hennepin, Membre, and Douay, with biographical and bibliographical notices of these missionaries and their works, by John Gilmary Shea, and contains the 1673 Thevenot chart of the “R. Mitchisipi ou grand Riviere” indicating the native tribes along its tributaries, “Carte de la decouverte faite l’an 1673. dans l’Amerique Septentrionale.”

Part V contains Dumont’s memoir of transactions with the Indians of Louisiana, from 1712 to 1740, and Champégny’s memoirs.

THE MITCHISIPI RIVER




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/52/1852_BFFrenchLOUISIANA_IV.pdf


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Thoreau also checked out Jean-Frédéric Bernard’s RECUEIL DE VOYAGES AU NORD, CONTENANT DIVERS MÉMOIRES TRÈS UTILES AU COMMERCE & À LA NAVIGATION, 1715-1738 (A Amsterdam, Chez J.F. Bernard), and would make extracts in his Indian Notebook #11. According to the edition statement contained in the 4th volume, this is the 4th edition of the work and Volume 2 had been printed in 1715, Volumes 1 and 3 in 1716, Volume 6 in 1723, Volume 5 in 1724, Volume 7 in 1725, and Volume 8 in 1727 (of the final two of the 10 volumes, Volumes 9 and 10, this 1732 printing says nothing, of course because they had not yet been put through the press).

Unfortunately, Google Books has scanned so far of these ten volumes only Volume 4 — so that is all I am able to provide for you here:

JEAN-FRÉDÉRIC BERNARD




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/17/30DECADE/32/1732_JFBernard_04.pdf


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Thoreau also checked out Father Louis Hennepin’s VOYAGES | CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX | DE MESSIEURS | HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, | OU L’ON VOIT UNE DESCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE | NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUSE DES | CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, | LEURS MŒURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION &C. | LE TOUTE ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES. | [Emblem.] | A AMSTERDAM, AUX DEPENS DE LA COMPAGNIE. MDCXI (this was an exact reprint of the edition of 1704, with merely a slight change to the title page).

Sieur de la Borde is a mysterious figure, for all we know for sure is that he worked, perhaps as a lay brother, for a short period with Jesuit missionaries, especially with Father Simon at the mission on St. Vincent Island in the Antilles.

I am guessing that he was part of the Langlade family that had come over from Castle Sarrasin in Bassee, Guyenne, France (at first known as the family Mouet de Moras) that had settled at Trois-Rivières, Québec in





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1668, and I am guessing that his full name was Louis Mouet De Moras, Sieur de la Borde and that he was the 4th of the sons of Pierre Mouet, Landlord of Moras, who was an ensign in the Carignan-Salières regiment, with Marie Toupin, Madame de Moras (born on August 19, 1651 at Québec, died on March 13, 1722/1723 at Trois-Rivières),

that he had been baptized on October 9, 1676 and would die on March 27, 1699 (but this is guesswork based on family genealogies, and does not at all jibe with an original date of his publication of 1674 at Paris; none of this makes sense if his book was published before he was born, and everything of this makes somewhat more sense if his book actually was published in 1694, when he was perhaps 18 years of age and had perhaps already in his teens as a lay brother assisted Father Simon at his mission in St. Vincent Island, and simply went through the press with a numerical typo on its title page).





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Thoreau would extract something about heavy surf from this source, for use in Chapter 8 “The Highland Light” of CAPE COD.]

CURIEUX ET NOUVEAU




http://www.archive.org/stream/cihm_36769#page/n5/mode/2up


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CAPE COD: Our host said that you would be surprised if you wereon the beach when the wind blew a hurricane directly on to it, tosee that none of the drift-wood came ashore, but all was carrieddirectly northward and parallel with the shore as fast as a mancan walk, by the inshore current, which sets strongly in thatdirection at flood tide. The strongest swimmers also are carriedalong with it, and never gain an inch toward the beach. Even alarge rock has been moved half a mile northward along the beach.He assured us that the sea was never still on the back side ofthe Cape, but ran commonly as high as your head, so that a greatpart of the time you could not launch a boat there, and even inthe calmest weather the waves run six or eight feet up the beach,though then you could get off on a plank. Champlain andPoitrincourt could not land here in 1606, on account of the swell(la houlle), yet the savages came off to them in a canoe. In theSieur de la Borde’s “Relation des Caraibes,” my edition of whichwas published at Amsterdam in 1711, at page 530 he says:–

“Couroumon a Caraibe, also a star [i.e. a god], makes the great lames à la mer, and overturnscanoes. Lames à la mer are the long vagues which are not broken (entrecoupees), and such asone sees come to land all in one piece, from one end of a beach to another, so that, howeverlittle wind there may be, a shallop or a canoe could hardly land (aborder terre) without turningover, or being filled with water.”

But on the Bay side the water even at its edge is often as smoothand still as in a pond. Commonly there are no boats used alongthis beach. There was a boat belonging to the Highland Light whichthe next keeper after he had been there a year had not launched,though he said that there was good fishing just off the shore.Generally the Life Boats cannot be used when needed. When thewaves run very high it is impossible to get a boat off, howeverskilfully you steer it, for it will often be completely coveredby the curving edge of the approaching breaker as by an arch, andso filled with water, or it will be lifted up by its bows, turneddirectly over backwards and all the contents spilled out. A sparthirty feet long is served in the same way.I heard of a party who went off fishing back of Wellfleet someyears ago, in two boats, in calm weather, who, when they had ladentheir boats with fish, and approached the land again, found sucha swell breaking on it, though there was no wind, that they wereafraid to enter it. At first they thought to pull forProvincetown, but night was coming on, and that was many milesdistant. Their case seemed a desperate one. As often as theyapproached the shore and saw the terrible breakers thatintervened, they were deterred. In short, they were thoroughlyfrightened. Finally, having thrown their fish overboard, those inone boat chose a favorable opportunity, and succeeded, by skilland good luck, in reaching the land, but they were unwilling totake the responsibility of telling the others when to come in,and as the other helmsman was inexperienced, their boat wasswamped at once, yet all managed to save themselves.

DE LA BORDE

PEOPLE OFCAPE COD




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/CAPE/PeopleMentionedInCAPE.pdf


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The full title of the book to which Thoreau refers in CAPE COD, “the Sieur de la Borde’s ‘Relation des Caraibes,’ my edition of which was published at Amsterdam in 1711,” is VOYAGES | CURIEUX ET NOUVEAUX | DE MESSIEURS | HENNEPIN & DE LA BORDE, | OU L’ON VOIT UNE DESCRIPTION TRÈS PARTICULIERE, D’UN GRAND PAYS DANS L’AMERIQUE, ENTRE LE | NOUVEAU MEXIQUE, & LA MER GLACIALE, AVEC UNE RELATION CURIEUSE DES | CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE, | LEURS MŒURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION &C. | LE TOUTE ACCOMPAGNÉ DES CARTES & FIGURES NECESSAIRES. | [Emblem.] | A AMSTERDAM, AUX DEPENS DE LA COMPAGNIE. MDCXI (this is an exceedingly rare volume, but was a mere reprint of the more available edition of 1704, with slight change in the title page). The original date of his publication RELATION CURIEUSE DES CARAIBES SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE had been 1674, when it had appeared at Paris under the title RELATION DE L’ORIGINE, MOEURS, COÛTUMES, RELIGION, GUERRES & VOYAGES DES CARAIBES, SAUVAGES DES ISLES ANTILLES DE L’AMERIQUE. FAITE PAR LE SIEUR DE LA BORDE EMPLOYE A LA CONVERSION DES CARAIBES, ESTANT AVEC LE R.P. SIMON JESUITE; ET TIREE DU CABINET DE MONSIEUR BLOUDEL ... DIVIDED INTO 12 COMPARTMENTS, EXHIBITING THE UTENSILS, DWELLINGS, AND MANUFACTURES OF THE CARIBS.

While he was in Cambridge, Thoreau also checked out Père Claude Dablon’s RELATION OF THE VOYAGES OF FATHER JAMES MARQUETTE, 1673-75 (1677).

“There is no Frigate like a BookTo take us Lands away”

— Emily Dickinson

After leaving the Harvard Library with his load of books of the history of French Catholic10 exploration to study, such as JESUIT RELATIONS for 1670-1672, from which he would copy into his Indian Notebook #11, Thoreau visited the Boston Society of Natural History to do some ornithology.

10. It never ceases to amaze me how Thoreau, with his Huguenot family history of persecution by French Catholics, and despite the rampant anti-Catholicism that marred the USer attitudes of those times, was able so benignly to consider the positive accomplishments of French Catholics! Clearly he carried with him no grudge at all in regard to what had been in its day the largest mass religious expulsion and genocide (prior, of course, to the Holocaust).





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December 7. To Boston.At Natural History Rooms.The egg of Turdus solitarius is light-bluish with pale-brown spots. This is apparently mine which I call hermitthrush, though mine is [sic] redder and distincter brown spots.The egg of Turdus brunneus (called hermit thrush) is a clear blue.The rail’s egg (of Concord, which I have seen) is not the Virginia rail’s, which is smaller and nearly pure white,nor the clapper rail’s, which is larger. Is it the sora rail’s (of which there is no egg in this collection)?My egg found in R.W.E.’s garden is not the white-throated sparrow’s egg.Dr. Bryant calls my seringo (i.e. the faint-noted bird) Savannah sparrow. He says Cooper’s hawk is just like thesharp-shinned, only a little larger commonly. He could not tell them apart. Neither he nor Brewer11 can identifyeggs always. Could match some gulls’ eggs out of another basket full of a different species as well as out of thesame basket.

On this day his letter arrived in New Bedford, so in the evening Friend Daniel Ricketson was waiting for the train from Boston at the Tarkiln Hill depot at the head of the river, and picked up Thoreau with his load of books, and Thomas Cholmondeley, and took them to his Shanty — where they talked of the English poets Thomas Gray, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth, etc. until they retired at 10 PM.

On this day Thoreau was being written to by Ticknor & Fields in Boston.

Boston Decr 7/58Henry D. Thoreau EsqConcord Mass.Dear SirReferring to our file of letters for 1857 we find a note from you of which the enclosed is a copy. As our letter –to which it is a reply– was missent, we doubt not but our answer to yours of a few months since has been subjected to the same, or a similar irregularity.RespectfullyYours &c.Ticknor & Fieldspr Clark

11. Thomas Mayo Brewer had written in the Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History for the years 1851-1854, on page 324 of volume 4, that Thoreau copied into his Commonplace Book #2. Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway would create the 3-volume A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS. LAND BIRDS (Boston: Little, Brown, 1874-1884). Brewer’s specialty in bird study was nesting and eggs.







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The Smithsonian Institution republished, in Volume IX of SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE, the initial part of Thomas Mayo Brewer’s OÖLOGY OF NORTH AMERICA of 1857, devoted to an account of the geographical distribution of the birds of North America during the breeding season, with descriptions of their eggs, and covering the Birds of Prey, the Swifts, Swallows, Goatsuckers, and Kingfishers.

1859





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Thomas Mayo Brewer translated, from French into English, Francis E. Sumichrast’s THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE NATIVE BIRDS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF VERA CRUZ, WITH A LIST OF THE MIGRATORY SPECIES.

1869





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Over the following decade Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway would be issuing the three volumes of A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS (Boston: Little, Brown). For the time being this would deal only with land birds. For these volumes Dr. Brewer was the author of the life histories of the birds — which actually comprises about 2/3ds of the material.

1874





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During this year and the following one, subsequent to his retirement from his publishing obligations at the firm of Brewer & Tileston, Thomas Mayo Brewer was visiting nearly all the great oölogical collections of Europe and Great Britain. (And why not?)

1875





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August: Thomas Mayo Brewer described his oölogical trip to Europe (eggs, eggs, and more eggs) for the benefit of the readers of Popular Science Monthly.

1877





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January 23, Friday: Thomas Mayo Brewer had completed the final revision of the manuscript of his share of the remaining portion of the work A HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICAN BIRDS, on the water birds (this would see publication in 1884). After a brief illness he died at his residence in Boston at the age of 66. In his will he left his large collection of eggs to the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge.

1880





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Spencer Fullerton Baird, Thomas Mayo Brewer, and Robert Ridgway’s THE WATER BIRDS OF NORTH AMERICA (two volumes, posthumous; unfortunately, Google Books does not yet seem to have scanned Volume I).

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

1884

WATER BIRDS, VOL. IWATER BIRDS, VOL. II







Nothing to show you, as yet.

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/80S/84/1884_WaterBirdsII.pdf


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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: June 4, 2014

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST




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Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.


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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.




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