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“All good things are wild, and free.” Thoreau amassed a sizable—if somewhat
haphazard—collection of pyrite, copper ore,
Thoreau spent most of his adult life collecting and studying the quartz, chalcedony, feldspar, gypsum and
natural world. “I have the habit of attention to such excess that my other minerals. His interest also extended
senses get no rest,” he wrote in 1852. But he reminded himself that to the mundane and local, such as clay
observation was not all about effort: “Go not to the object, let it come from Martha’s Vineyard and fragments
to you.” Thoreau collected according to his interests, which comprised of granite from the neighboring town of
anything and everything relating to natural and human history in and Billerica. Of the latter, Thoreau took
around his hometown of Concord. note of their unique form: a rounded top
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote of the pleasure and privilege of with a narrow neck and pedestal-like base
walking with Thoreau: “He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and (figure 6). In a journal entry dated July 22,
passed through it as freely by paths of his own ... Under his arm he 1859, he speculated that these rocks
carried an old music-book to press plants; in his pocket, his diary and were shaped by the friction of pebbles
pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine.” His and other material which had washed
attention to the small and even mundane patterns of the world around against them by the rush of the stream at
him was recorded in the dozens of journals kept throughout his life. high water. Figure 6: Fragment of granite,
One facet of his collecting concerned wildlife, and especially birds. Thoreau stored his rock collection collected 19th century.
Thoreau regularly recorded information on bird songs, migratory pat- inside one of several “geological cases” he Th56, Collection of the Concord
terns, and taxonomies in his journals; scholars estimate he penned made for himself and others, including Museum.
8,433 entries relating to birds over twenty-five years of record-keeping. three stackable boxes crafted in 1849 for photo courtesy of the Concord Museum
In 1841, Thoreau undertook a four-day walk with companion Richard the Osgood family in Scituate (figure 7).
Fuller from Concord to the summit of Mount Wachusett in Princeton, The precise layout and construction of these boxes demonstrates
Massachusetts. Two years later, his essay about this excursion, “A Walk Thoreau’s competence as a woodworker, another skill he acquired in
to Wachusett” (published in the short lived periodical The Boston order to be self-sufficient. While the box remains at the Concord
Miscellany) recalled: “The cherry-birds flitter around us, the nuthatch Museum, much of his rock collection is now at the Fruitlands Museum
and flicker were heard among the bushes, the titmouse perched within in Harvard, Massachusetts, purchased by Clara Endicott Sears in 1910.
a few feet, and the song of the wood-thrush again rung along the ridge.”
Like many early 19th century “Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
amateur ornithologists, Thoreau
collected bird skins, eggs, and Botany, or the study of plants, also fascinated Thoreau. As early as
nests. However, unlike other 1842 he documented the flora of the Concord region, noting where
scientists of the era, Thoreau did he found them and their Latin names. In subsequent years,
not shoot birds in order to study the arrival of naturalist Louis Agassiz at
them. And while he was skeptical of Harvard and the publication of Asa
scientific instruments as a replacement for human Gray’s Manual of Botany (1848)
senses, in 1853 Thoreau purchased a spyglass to aid Figure 4: Spyglass, c.1854. stimulated his interest. By 1850 he
his birdwatching. (figure 4) This object, along Th41, Gift of Mr. Walton Ricketson and was collecting and preserving speci-
with a well-loved copy of Wilson’s American Miss Anna Ricketson (1929). mens in his personal herbarium,
Ornithology (originally published in nine volumes photo courtesy of the Concord Museum expanding his purview to include examples
between 1801 and 1814), enabled Thoreau to found throughout New England. All told,
record empirical observations, though his writerly voice was far more Thoreau’s collection grew to about 900 specimens.
reflective and emotional than scientific and objective (figure 5). For Thoreau’s herbarium offers a peek into a mind driven by a need to
example, in a journal entry dated June 1853, Thoreau described the study the world around him. Recording all the flora in Concord was an
Wood Thrush as “the only bird whose note affects me like impossible task, one that Thoreau was nonetheless determined to meet.
music. It lifts and In May 1853, Thoreau wrote in his journal “how long some very con-
exhilarates me. It spicuous ones [flowers] may escape the most diligent walker, if you do
is inspiring. It not chance to visit their localities the right week or fortnight.” Three
changes all hours years later, he commented “It will take you half a lifetime to find out
to an eternal where to look for the earliest flower.”
morning.” Occasionally, Thoreau got lucky and came upon something truly
special. On November 24, 1851, while surveying the Ministerial
Swamp in Concord, Thoreau discovered Lygodium palmatum, also
Figure 5: Wilson’s known as the climbing fern, the only fern
American Figure 7: Geological
Ornithology. in New England that twines like a vine. Of Specimen Box, c.1849.
New York: this extremely rare specimen, Thoreau Th114, Gift of Mrs. Gilbert S.
Samuels, 1853. wrote: “It is a most beautiful slender and Tower (1962).
Th15, Gift of Mr. delicate fern, photo courtesy of the Concord Museum
Walton Ricketson twining
and like [a]
Miss Anna vine about
Ricketson (1929). the stem of
photo courtesy of the the meadow-sweet,
Concord Museum
[panicled] andromeda,
“It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see” goldenrods, etc., to
the height of three
feet or more, and
In addition to creatures which flew overhead, Thoreau’s eye also difficult to detach
roamed the earth in search of treasures. While the practice of collecting from them ... Our most
rocks and minerals dates to the fifteenth century, by the mid-nineteenth beautiful fern, and most
century, the professionalization of geology resulted in a wave of suitable for wreaths or garlands.”
amateur interest in the same subject. (figure 8)

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