in Thoreau’s Journal:

It seemed that nature sympathised with his [Humboldt] experiments when it had got to be April I heard it last.

It was simply the regulated & increased tinkling of a brook—as the history of simpler ages—as the memory of early days comes over a man—so this sound of the night—  It sounded like a sentence of Herodotus— It was an incident worthy to be recorded by the father of History—away in nut meadow—by Jenny Dugan’s—beyond the Jimmy Miles place—as if it were an alto singer among the bitterns.  Some ardea.  It was news [of] a wind from Scythia. It was the dream or reminiscence of a primitive age coming over the modern life—as night veils the day—as the dews of evening succeed the sutltry sun.