3 May 1852 – 9 May 1852

5 a. M.—To Cliffs. A great brassy moon going down in the west. A flock of neat sparrows, small, striped-throated, whitish over eye, on an apple tree by J. Potter’s. At Hayden’s orchard, quite a concert from some small sparrows, forked-tailed, many jingling together like canaries. Their note still somewhat like the chip-sparrow’s. Can it be this? Fair Haven. How cheering and glorious any land- scape viewed from an eminence! For every one has its horizon and sky. It is so easy to take wide views. Snow on the mountains. The wood thrush reminds me of cool mountain springs and morning walks. That oven-birdish note which I heard here on May Ist I now find to have been uttered by the black and white warbler or creeper. He has a habit of looking under the branches. The towhee finch is the loudest singer here now. Does that long-drawn, interesting note, something like ha, ha, tull-a-lull tull-a-lull, proceed from the chickadee ? ! | Looking from the Cliff, now, about 6 a. m., the landscape is as if seen in a mirage, the Cliff being in shadow, and that in the fresh and dewy sunshine (not much dew yet). Cool sunlight. The landscape lies in a fresh morning light; the earth and water smell fresh and new; the water is marked by a few smooth’streaks. The atmosphere suits the grayish-brown landscape, — the still ashy maple swamps and now nearly bare shrub oaks. The white pine, left here and there over the sprout-land, is never more beautiful than with the morning light— the early sunlight and the dew — on it. (Dew comes with grass? and for it?) Before the water is rippled and the morning song of the birds is quenched. Hear the first brown thrasher,—two of them. Minott says he heard one yesterday, but does he know it from a catbird? ‘They drown all the rest. He says cherruwit, cherruwit ; go ahead, go ahead ; give it to him, give it to him; etc., etc., etc. Plenty of birds in the woods this morning. The huckleberry birds and the chickadees are as numerous, if not as loud, as any. The flicker taps a dead tree as some what [sic] uses a knocker on a door in the village street. In his note he begins low, rising higher and higher. Is it a wood pewee or a vireo that I hear, something like pewrt pewirt chowy chow? It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I am willing to omit the gun.’ P. M. — Cinquefoil or five-finger (Potentilla Canaden- sis). Also the golden saxifrage (what a name!) (Chrys- osplentum Americanum), in the meadow at Brister’s Hill, in the water, in moss-like beds. It may have been in bloom some time; an obscure flower.

R. W. E. tells me he does not like Haynes as well as I do. I tell him that he makes better manure than most men. : This excitement about Kossuth is not interesting to me, it is so superficial. It is only another kind of dancing or of politics. Men are making speeches to him all over the country, but each expresses only the thought, or the want of thought, of the multitude. No man stands on truth. They are merely banded together as usual, one leaning on another and all together on nothing; as the Hindoos made the world rest on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and had nothing to put under the tortoise." You can pass your hand under the largest mob, a nation in revolution even, and, however solid a bulk they may make, like a hail-cloud in the atmosphere, you may not meet so much as a cobweb of support. They may not rest, even by a point, on eternal foundations. But an indi- vidual standing on truth you cannot pass your hand under, for his foundations reach to the centre of the universe. So superficial these men and their doings, it is life on a leaf or a chip which has nothing but air or water beneath. I love to see a man with a tap-root, though it make him difficult to transplant.? It is un- important what these men do. Let them try forever, they can effect nothing. Of what significance the things you can forget ? : A little thought is sexton to all the world. TI see the slate-colored snowbird still,—a few. What was that large olive-yellow bird on Heywood’s apple trees? The female flower of the sweet-gale, red, like so many female flowers. The meadow-sweet begins to leave out. ‘The male flowers of the maple look yellow- ish-scarlet, looking up to the sky.. The elms are still in full blossom. The cowslip’s is a vigorous growth and makes at present the most show of any flower. Leaf, * [Cape Cod, and Miscellanies, pp. 470, 471; Misc., Riv. 273.] stem, bud, and flower are all very handsome in their place and season. It has no scent, but speaks wholly to the eye. The petals are covered at base with a transparent, dewy (dew-like), apparently golden nectar. Better for yellows than for greens. I hear trees creak here (at Saw Mill Brook) like inn signs in the street. The singularly rough winged (?) barked elms here, which run up so high, blossom only at top. They are very easy to climb, the bark is so rough and furrowed and soft, affording a support to the clothes. The bark on the twigs strips up long. A kind of corky bark, but flower like the common. The little frogs begin to peep in good earnest toward sundown.

5 a. mM. — Frost in night; hence the grass is wet. Hear the seringo-bird on an apple tree. I think it must be one of the species of song sparrow. Hear on the elms in the street, for the first time that I re- member, the purple finch (without the crimson) singing loud, like a warbling vireo but with more variety. Hear also this morning in the village the chickadees’ fine, ringing, air-possessing twll-a-lull tull-a-lull. Is this the third note of this bird, and confined to this season ?! Heard it the morning of the brown thrasher. The other afternoon I could not hear the birds sing, the wind in the woods made such a noise. 3 p. M. — To little ponds. A really warm day. I perspire in my thick coat. Hear the dream frogs, but fainter than by night. The aspect of the woods half a mile distant shows the state of the atmosphere. There isa very slight transparent haze on them, just enough to glass them; somewhat such a reflec- tion and seething in the air as I have described by moon- light. The maple-tops show red with their blossoms against the higher trees. What is the color of their tops in winter? The red maples and the elms, now covered with full rich [sc], are now on the whole the most com- mon and obvious blossoms. It is their season, and they are worthy of it. The one has the woods and swamps and causeways; the other, the village. My seringo-bird sounds now from the railroad like the dropping of a file, or any bit of steel, on an anvil. Saw a shad-fly. The white-bellied (?) swallow soars and sails like a hawk. Leave the Cut. The woods are now dry, and the ground feels crisp under my feet. Fires in the woods will now rage. I see their traces by the railroad. I smell the dry leaves. Nature invites fire to sweep her floors, for purification. From the high field, see smokes toward Wachusett. The shade is even agreeable to- day. I smell the pines lately ; is it because they are starting? Oh, the huckleberry-bird! The Viola pedata budded, ready to blossom. In Stow’s clearing. Every part of the world is beautiful to-day; the bright, shim- mering water; the fresh, light-green grass springing up on the hills, tender, firm, moss-like before it waves; — the very faint blue sky, without distinct clouds, is least beautiful of all, having yielded its beauty to the earth; —and the fine light smokes, sometimes blue against the woods; and the tracts where the woods have been cut the past winter. The beautiful, ethereal, not misty, blue of the horizon and its mountains, as if painted. Now all buds may swell, methinks; now the summer may begin for all creatures. The wind appears to be a little north of west. The waters, still high, have a fine shimmering sparkle over a great part of their surface, not so large nor quite so bright as in the fall. As I can throw my voice into my head and sing very loud and clear there, so I can throw my thought into a higher chamber, and think louder and clearer above the earth than men will understand. The maple woods half a mile distant are not a bright red, but a little brighter than the oak leaves have been. It looks best from a hilltop a quarter of a mile distant, seen rising amid pines, with a light rosaceous tint in the sun, in Holden’s Swamp. I can see them of a dull red a mile and a half distant. The blossom (male) of the maple has very little fragrance, but that agreeable. This and the elm may go together, possessing the season to careless eyes. Now the flies are heard to buzz about you, as you sit on a rock on the hillside. How long is it since I saw geese and ducks? Methinks ever since the Great Freshet. They are swept northward with the storms, — a transient wildness. Is that a hop-hornbeam under the Cliffs which looks like a black birch? There is red-stemmed moss on the earth-covered rocks half-way down. The male flowers of the grandidentata begin to dry up. The young oaks on the plain have suddenly, I think within a day or two, lost all their leaves, being about to put forth new. In its America of enterprise and active life, does not the mind lose its adipose tissue that Knox tells of ? A tree-toad again. The outlines of Fair Haven Pond begin to appear, and the two arms that claim the island. Few birds are heard from the Cliffs now at 4 p. m. Sunrise is already their hour. I succeed best when I recur to my experience not too late, but within a day or two; when there is some dis- tance, but enough of freshness. Saxifrage and crowfoot abundant, though I Bikve found but one violet. The crowfoot has a sweet spring- like fragrance, like the dandelion, if you have many, but very little of it. A gloss like varnish on its thin petals. It makes a show here in the grass over warm rocks. Saxifrage still less scent. Heard the first cricket singing, on a lower level than any bird, observing a lower tone — the sane, wise one —than all the singers. He came not from the south, but from the depths. He has felt the heats at last, — that migrates downward. The smallest of birds. The myrtle-bird again, rather tame. A pretty little crim- son willow, 2. e. its four-divided stigmas, either the Salia tristis or humilis, one to two feet high, catkins a third of an inch long, recurved. I have seen no fe- male willow so handsome, but neither Gray nor Emer- son describes its beauty. It turns greenish as it grows old. Dotted with minute crimson stigmas. In the small ponds I hear a slight bullfroggy note. The andromeda is now a brownish-green; very little of the redness left. Seen from the sun side, now the sun is getting low, it looks like a large bed of greenish-gray moss, reflecting the light. What has become of its red leaves? Does it shed them, and the present fresher ones not till next spring? These leaves show their under sides appressed to the stem. The sweet-fern now begins to shed its yellow pollen. The first anemones on a warm hillside west of the Island Pond. Thalictrum anemonoides (rue-leaved). What the shrub now leaving out at the east of the Long Pond, with sticky buds? A cherry or plum?! There is a dust on Walden, — where I come to drink, —which I think is the pollen of such trees and shrubs as are now in blossom, — aspens, maples, sweet- fern, etc.,— food for fishes. I did not see any when I last drank here, a short time ago. A fine scarlet sunset. As I sit by my window and see the clouds reflected in the meadow, I think it is impor- tant to have water, because it multiples the heavens. Evening. — To the Lee place rock. Moon not up. The dream frog’s is such a sound as you can make with a quill on water, a bubbling sound. Behind Dodd’s. The spearers are out, their flame a bright yellow, reflected in the calm water. Without noise it is slowly carried along the shores. It reminds me of the light which Columbus saw on approaching the shores of the New World. There goes a shooting star down towards the horizon, like a rocket, appearing to describe a curve. The water sleeps with stars in its bosom. I see another light in the far southwest. To a stranger in the dark they would appear like light- houses on low points, lighting voyagers to our shores. This might be called the spearer’s moon this year, if it were of use to him. Hear a pout-like sound of frogs. (The chickadee? says now: in morning, har (long), pe-e-e pe-e-e p-e-e-e, the last trill something like tull-a- lull lull-a-lull.) The dream of the frogs ? is very indis- tinct at a distance. Venus, the evening star, high in the sky. The spearers’ light reveals the forms of trees and bushes near which it passes. When it is not seen, it makes a pillar of reddish or rosy light on the twigs above it. I see even the lamps of the village in the water, the river is so high. As I went up the Groton road, I saw a dim light at a distance, where no house was, which appeared to come from the earth. Could it be a traveller with a lanthorn ? Could it be a will-o’-the-wisp ? (Who ever saw one? Are not they a piece of modern mythology ?) You wonder if you will ever reach it; already it seems to recede. Is it the reflection of the evening star in water? or what kind of phosphorescence? But now I smell the burning. I see the sparks go up in the dark. — It is a heap of stumps half covered with earth, left to smoulder and consume in the newly plowed meadow, now burst forth into dull internal flames. Looks like a gipsy encampment. I sit on the untouched end of a stump, and warm me by it, and write by the light, the moon not having risen. What a strange, Titanic thing this Fire, this Vulcan, here at work in the night in this bog, far from men, dangerous to them, consuming earth, ’ [“Myrtle-bird” is substituted in pencil for “chickadee.”’ Thoreau afterward learned that the bird was the white-throated sparrow!] ? [‘‘ Toads ” substituted in pencil for “ frogs.”’] gnawing at its vitals! The heap glows within. Here sits hungry Fire with the forest in his mouth. On the one side is the solid wood; on the other, smoke and sparks. Thus he works. The farmer designs to con- sume, to destroy, this wood, remains of trees. He gives them to his dog or vulture Fire. They burn like spunk, and I love the smell of the smoke. The frogs peep and dream around. Within are fiery caverns, incrusted with fire as a cave with saltpetre. No wonder at sala- manders. It suggests a creature that lives in it, gener- ated by it. The glass men are nearer the truth than the men of science. I hear Barrett’s sawmill! running by night to improve the high water. Then water is at work, another devourer * of wood. These two wild forces let loose against na- ture. It is a hollow, galloping sound; makes tearing work, taming timber, in a rude Orphean fashion pre- paring it for dwellings of men and musical instruments, perchance. I can imagine the sawyer, with his lanthorn and his bar in hand, standing by, amid the shadows cast by his light. There is a sonorous vibration and ring to it, as if from the nerves of the tortured log. ‘Tear- ing its entrails. I go forward. The rabbit goes off from the wood-side with a squeak and bounce. I hear him strike the ground each time. He squeaks once like an alarmed bird. The rocks are very slightly warm, perhaps because it 1s not cold enough to-night, and it is a very little colder in the hollows. The moon is just rising (9.30). She has not yet freed herself from the clouds of earth and reached the clear and serene heavens. No nighthawks heard yet. I stand by the bubbling frogs (dreamers at a distance). They are sometimes intermittent, with a quavering. I hear betweenwhiles a little bird-like conversation be- tween them. It is evidently their wooing.

3 ep. ma. —To Conantum. Heard the first warbling vireo this morning on the elms. This almost makes a summer. Heard also, as 1 sat at my desk, the unusual low of cows being driven to their country pastures. Sat all day with the window open, for the outer air is the warmest. The balm-of- Gilead was well blossomed out yesterday, and has been for three or four days probably. The woods seen a mile off in the horizon are more indistinct yesterday and to- day, these two summer-like days (it is a summer heat), the green of the pines being blended with the gray or ash of the deciduous trees; partly, perhaps, because the fine haze in the air is the color of the twigs, and partly because the buds are expanded into leaves on many; but this last cause is hardly admissible. Now the wasps have come. My dream frog turns out to be a toad. I watched half a dozen a long time at 3.30 this afternoon in Hub- bard’s Pool, where they were frogging ( ?) lustily. They sat in the shade, either partly in the water, or on a stick; looked darker and narrower in proportion to their length than toads usually do, and moreover are aquatic. I see them jump into the ditches as I walk. After an 9 interval of silence, one appeared to be gulping the wind into his belly, inflating himself so that he was con- siderably expanded; then he discharged it all into his throat while his body or belly collapsed suddenly, ex- panding his throat to a remarkable size. Was nearly a minute inflating itself; then swelled out its sac, which is rounded and reminded me of the bag to a work- table, holding its head up the while. It is whitish specked (the bag) on a dull bluish or slate ground, much bigger than all the rest of the head, and nearly an inch in diameter. It was a ludicrous sight, with their sO serious prominent eyes peering over it; and a deafen- ing sound, when several were frogging at once, as I was leaning over them. The mouth [seemed] to be shut always, and perhaps the air was expelled through the nostrils. The strain appeared prolonged as long as the air lasted, and was sometimes quavered or made inter- mittent, apparently by closing the orifice, whatever it was, or the blast. One, which I brought home, answers well enough to the description of the common toad (Bufo Americanus), though it is hardly so gray. Their piping (?) was evidently connected with their loves. Close by, it is an unmusical monotonous deafening sound, a steady blast, — not a peep nor a croak, but a kind of piping, — but, far away, it is a dreamy, lull- ing sound, and fills well the crevices of nature. Out of its place, as very near, it would be as intolerable as the thrumming of children. The plower yesterday dis- turbed a toad in the garden, the first I have heard of. I must catch him and compare them. Their heads are well above the water when they pipe. Saw a striped snake lying by the roadside as if watch- ing for toads, though they must be scarce now, his head just on the edge of the road. ‘The most flexible of crea- tures, it is so motionless it appears the most rigid, in its waving line. The yellow willows on the causeways are now fairly leaving out. They are more forward in this respect than that early willow, or any other that I see. The trees are already a mass of green, partly concealing the yellow stems, — a tender, fresh light green. No érees look so forward in this respect, and, being in rows, they make the more show, their branches are so thick and numer- ous, Close together. If some have leaves as large, they are much more scattered and make no such show. I did not observe what time the willow bark would strip -and make whistles. ‘The female maple is more crimson, the male more scarlet. The horse-chestnut buds are so advanced that they are larger than the leaves of any tree. The elder, the wild cherry, thimble-berries, sweet- briars, cultivated cherry, and early apples, etc., white birches, hazels, aspens, hornbeams, maples, etc., etc., — not quite the hickory and alder,—are opening their buds; the alders are beginning to. It is pleasant when the road winds along the side of a hill with a thin fringe of wood through which to look into the low land. It furnishes both shade and frame for your pictures,—as this Corner road. The first Anemone nemorosa, wind-flower or wood anemone, its petals more slightly tinged with purple than the rue- leaved. See the ferns here at the spring curling up like the proboscis of the sphinx moth. The first Viola blanda (sweet-scented white), in the moist ground, also, by this spring. It is pretty numerous and may have been out a day or two. I think I could not find so many blue ones. It has a rather strong scent like helio- trope(?). The Convallaria bifolia budded. Sometimes the toad reminds me of the cricket, its note also pro- ceeding from the ground. See now the woodchuck rol- licking across a field toward his hole and tumbling into it. See where he has just dug anew hole. Their claws long and rather weak-looking for digging. The wood- peckers tapping. The first columbine (Aquilegia Cana- densis) to-day, on Conantum. Shade is grateful, and the walker feels a desire to bathe in some pond or stream for coolness and invigoration. Cowslips show at a distance in the meadows (Miles’s). The new butter is white still, but with these cows’ lips in the grass it will soon be yellow, I trust. This yellow- ness in the spring, derived from the sun, affects even the cream in the cow’s bag, and flowers in yellow butter at last. Who has not turned pale at the sight of hay butter? These are the cows’ lips. The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man? There are odors enough in nature to remind you of everything, if you had lost every sense but smell. The fever-bush is an apothecary’s shop. The farmers are very busily harrowing and rolling in their grain. The dust flies from their harrows across the field. The tearing, toothed harrow and the pon- derous cylinder, which goes creaking and rumbling over the surface, heard afar, and vying with the sphere. The cylinder is a simple machine, and must go into the new symbols. It is an interesting object, seen drawn across a grain-field. ‘The willows are now suddenly of a light, fresh, tender yellowish-green. A green bittern, a gawky bird. As I return over the bridge, shadflies very numerous. Many insects now in the evening sun- shine, especially over the water. Houstonia (Hedyotis cerulea), bluets, now just begun. Dewey calls it Venus’ Pride. Gray says truly, “a very delicate little herb, . . . producmg in spring a profu- sion of handsome bright blue blossoms fading to white, with a yellow eye.” I should say bluish-white. The dwarf andromeda (A. calyculata) just begun; leaves called evergreen; flowers on “‘ one-sided leafy racemes.” Methinks its leaves remain two years, and fall in the spring, the small ones continuing to grow.' The ground is now strewn with the old red-brown lower leaves, and only the smaller and fresher green ones remain. The common toad, with which I compared the dream toad I brought home, has two horn-like dark marks reaching over the eyes. It is not depressed, but rather has a tubercle, on the top of the head between the eyes. It is also much wider in proportion to length, and is triangular, as I have drawn in report. Yet they are probably the same. The garden toad made the same faint chicken-like, musical croak, when I held him in my hand, with the other, and in the same man- ner swelling his bag. The garden toad was yellowish beneath, the other white with some small spots. The latter turned much lighter-colored, — from brown to a yellowish and light-brown green, or rather greenish- brown, — while I had him. They have a bright eye, with coppery or golden-coppery iris. It is their redeem- ing feature. But why do I not hear them in the garden ? They appear to frequent the water first, and breed there, then hop to the gardens, and turn lighter and grow thicker.

Friday. 4.30 a. m.—To Cliffs. Has been a dew, which wets the feet, and I see a very thin fog over the low ground, the first fog, which must be owing to the warm weather. Heard a robin singing powerfully an hour ago, and song sparrows, and the cocks. No peeping frogs in the morning, or rarely. The toads sing (? ), but not as at evening. I walk half a mile (to Hubbard’s Pool, in the road), before I reach those I heard, — only two or three. The sound is uttered so low and over water; still it is wonderful that it should be heard so far. The traveller rarely perceives when he comes near the source of it, nor when he is farthest away from it. Like the will-o’-the-wisp, it will lead one a long chase over the fields and meadows to find one. They dream more or less at all hours now. I see the relation to the frogs in the throat of many a man. The full throat has relation to the distended paunch. I would fain see the sun as a moon, more weird. The sun now rises in a rosaceous amber. Methinks the birds sing more. some mornings than others, when I cannot see the reason. I smell the damp path, and de- rive vigor from the earthy scent between Potter’s and Hayden’s. Beginning, I may say, with robins, song sparrows, chip-birds, bluebirds, etc., I walked through larks, pewees, pigeon woodpeckers, chickadee tull-a- lulls, to towhees, huckleberry-birds, wood thrushes, brown thrasher, jay, catbird, etc., etc. Entered a cool stratum of air beyond Hayden’s after the warmth of yesterday. The Viola pedata still in bud only, and the other (q. v.). Hear the first partridge drum. The first oven-bird. A wood thrush which I thought a dozen rods off, was only two or three, to my surprise, and betrayed himself by moving, like a large sparrow with ruffled feathers, and quirking his tail like a pewee,' on a low branch. Blackbirds are seen going over the woods with a chattering bound to some meadow. A rich bluish mist now divides the vales in the east- ern horizon mile after mile. (I am ascending Fair Haven.) An oval-leaved pyrola (evergreen) in Brown’s pines on Fair Haven. Cliffs. — This is the gray morning; the sun risen; a very thin mist on the landscape; the falling water smooth. Far below, a screaming jay seen flying, against the bare stems of the pines. The young oaks on the plain, the pines standing here and there, the walls in Conantum pastures seen in the sun, the little groves on the opposite side of the river lit up by it while I am [in] shade, these are memorable and belong to the hour. Here at this hour the brown thrasher often drowns the other birds. The towhee has been a main bird for regular morning singing in the woods for a little while. The creeper is regularly heard, too. Found the first strawberry blossoms (Fragaria Virginiana) on Fair Haven. The sedge grass blossom is now quite large and showy on the dry hillside where the wood has recently been cut off. I think that birds vary their notes considerably with the seasons. When I hear a bird singing, I cannot think of any words that will imitate it. What word can stand in place of a bird’s note? You would have to bury [?] it, or surround it with a chevausx de jrise of accents, and exhaust the art of the musical composer besides with your different bars, to represent it, and finally get a bird to sing it, to perform it. It has so lit- tle relation to words. The wood thrush says ah-tully- tully for one strain. There appear to be one or more little warblers in the woods this morning which are new to the season, about which I am in doubt, myrtle- birds among them. For now, before the leaves, they begin to people the trees in this warm weather. The first wave of summer from the south. The purple finch (sober-colored) is a rich singer. As I said the other day, something lke the warbling vireo, only louder, clearer, mellower, and more various. Bank swallows at Hayden’s. I fear that the dream of the toads will not sound so musical now that I know whence it proceeds. But I will not fear to know. They will awaken new and more glorious music for me as I advance, still farther in the horizon, not to be traced to toads and frogs in © slimy pools. P. M. — To Nawshawtuct. The vireo comes with warm weather, midwife to the leaves of the elms. I see little ant-hills in the path, already raised. How long have they been? The first small pewee sings now che-vet, or rather chirrups chevet, tche-vet —a rather delicate bird with a large head and two white bars on wings. The first summer yellow- birds on the willow causeway. The birds I have lately mentioned come not singly, as the earliest, but all at once, 7. e. many yellowbirds all over town. Now I remember the yellowbird comes when the willows be- gin to leave out. (And the small pewee on the willows also.) So yellow. They bring summer with them and the sun, tche-tche-tche-tcha tcha-tchar. Also they haunt the oaks, white and swamp white, where are not leaves. On the hill I sit in the shadow of the locust trunks and branches, for want of other shade. This is a mistake in Nature, to make shade necessary before she has ex- panded the leaves. The catnep is now up, with a lustrous purple tinge to the under side of its leaves. (Why should so many leaves be so painted on the under side, concealed from men’s eye—only not from the insects—as much as the sculptures on the tops of columns?) There is some- thing in its fragrance as soothing as balm to a sick man. It advances me ever to the autumn and beyond it. How full of reminiscence is any fragrance! If it were not for virtuous, brave, generous actions, could there be any sweet fragrance ? “Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.” Now you may say the trees generally are beginning to leave out, excepting the oaks, celtis, late water willow, etc., etc. But only the willows and the balm-of-Gileads make any show in our landscape yet, —of native or wild trees, — the latter where they grow in clumps. Its catkins are five inches long. Top of hill. — The haze is remarkably thick to-day as if all the distant western woods were on fire. (The wind west and what coolness in it most grateful.) The haze makes the western view quite rich, so many edges of woodland ridges where you see the pine tops against the white mist of the vale beyond. I count five or six such ridges rising partly above the mist, but succes- sively more indistinct, the first only a quarter of a mile off. Of course there are no mountains. It belongs to this warm weather. The lower part of the sky is white, like a fog; only in the zenith do I see any blue. It makes the outlines of the blue water on the meadow eastward agreeably indistinct, being more nearly the color of the water itself than the land. A maple swamp in bloom, westward from this hill, is a rich sight, even like a rosy orchard in bloom. The dust flies. I am not sure whether my first violet was the cucul- lata or ovata,' or the same with that minute one which I found prepared to blossom by the Spring Path this morning. A fern, one of the osmundas, beyond the celtis, one foot high, covered with reddish wool, unfold- ing its blossom ( ?) as it rises. The wool used for birds’ nests. Might be used for other purposes? It is such weather as in summer we expect a thunder-shower after. 1T“T . . . whether” and “cucullata or” crossed out in pencil.] Is this smoke-like haze produced by the warm west wind meeting the still cool earth? Or is it smoke? The ground under the walnuts is richly strewn with nut- shells, broken and.gnawed by squirrels, like an unswept dining-hall in early times. That little early violet close to the ground in dry fields and hillsides, which only children’s eyes detect, with buds showing purple but lying so low, as if stooping to rise, or rather its stems actually bent to hide its head amid the leaves, quite unpretending. The gnaphalium, though without scent, is now a pure, dry, enduring flower and bears inspec- tion. The first peetweet; myrtle-birds numerous. The catbird does not make the corn-planting sounds. The toads dream loudly these first warm days. A yellow- throated green frog in the river, by the hemlocks, — bright silk-green the fore part of the body, tiger-striped legs. The eyes of toads and frogs are remarkably bright and handsome, — oval pupils (?) or blacks and golden or coppery irides. ‘The hop-hornbeam is almost in bloom. The red-wing’s shoulder, seen in a favorable light, throws all epaulets into the shade. It is General Abercrombie, methinks, when they wheel partly with the red to me. The crow blackbirds make a noise like crows, and also a singular and rarely heard scream or screech. ‘They fly with lark-like wings. We require just so much acid as the cranberries afford in the spring. The first humblebee, that prince of hummers, — bom- byle [sic], looking now over the ground as if he could find something. He follows after flowers. To have your existence depend on flowers, like the bees and hummingbirds! The willow twigs now may make wreaths so pretty and graceful with their expanding leaves. They afford the only chaplets yet, fit to crown the fairest. The horse-chestnuts in the yards have opened their parasol-like leaves to-day, reminding me of tropical palms; and the rock maples’ large buds are almost open. Such a haze as this makes a dark night.

4.30.— The robin and the bluebird have sung for some time. The haziness is now like a sea- turn, through which the sun, shorn of beams, looks claret, and at length, when half an hour high, scarlet. You thought it might become rain. Many swallows flying in flocks high over the river,—the chimney swallow for one. What is the other? They sustain themselves sometimes on quivering wings, making little progress, as if to catch insects. A pretty little blossom on a willow, male and female sometimes on one catkin. The female catkins of the early willows are now ex- panded to two or three inches in length, making the otherwise backward tree look green. The male catkins have lost all their anthers for some time. The female maples are lengthening their stems for the keys. Some are a quite yellowish green (?), stigmas and all. A singular noise from a jay this morning. Hear the yel- lowbird, the creeper, and the myrtle-bird this morning, all together; they are much alike. The creeper, a faint oven-bird note; the myrtle-bird, a little more of the s or y in it than the yellowbird and more various. I hear the wit er che," Maryland yellow-throat. Two gold robins; they chatter like blackbirds; the fire bursts forth on their backs when they lift their wings. A fresh scent blows off from the meadows, the river rapidly going down. The leaves of the young rock maples, which have first expanded this morning, make little crosses against the sky,—four leaves, —or stars, the leaves being finely cut. The ground was found frozen still to-day, in the shade behind Aunt’s house. P. M.— Down river to Red Bridge. The blackbirds have a rich sprayey warble now, sit- ting on the top [of] a willow or an elm. They possess the river now, flying back and forth across it. The high-backed, elliptical stinkpot covered with leeches. They lie near the shore with their backs out of water, dry in the sun. The spotted, and especially the painted, how they love to lie in the sun on rails and rocks! No tarts that I ever tasted at any table possessed such a refreshing, cheering, encouraging acid that lit- erally put the heart in you and set you on edge for this world’s experiences, bracing the spirit, as the cranberries I have plucked in the meadows in the spring. They cut the winter’s phlegm, and now I can swallow another year of this world without other sauce. Even on the Thanksgiving table they are comparatively insipid, have lost as much flavor as beauty, are never so beautiful as in water. The warm weather (looking back over the past days) has [come] very suddenly. One day I had a fire (which day? Vide back a week or two), and the next night, and each night since, I slept with my window open, as I have sat with it all day. Everything has taken a sud- den start within three or four days, and our thoughts are equally affected. The air has been remarkably hazy or smoky. The weather has been delightfully warm; not what you would call sultry, for there is, after all, a grateful coolness in the breeze. The haze is so thick that only the zenith is blue to-day and yesterday. The aspens, with their young leaves, now make a show in the woods like light-green fires amid the other trees. Martins are heard over the meadows — their rich warble — and in one place they make the street alive. The white maple is covered with small leaves now, as forward or perhaps more so than the sugar maple. The cross they make is more irregular, two of the leaves being longer than the others. Is that female maple higher up the river a white one? Horse-mint is up (above ground). The blackbirds fly in flocks and sing in concert on the willows,— what a lively, chattering concert! a ereat deal of chattering with many liquid and rich warbling notes and clear whistles, — till now a hawk sails low, beating the bush: and they are silent or off, but soon begin again. Do any other birds sing in such deafening concert? The red-wings, male and female. The red maple in blossom is most beautiful near to. Here too, on Red Bridge causeway, I find the yellow- birds on the willows. The Salix alba has bloomed to- day and fills the causeway with sweet fragrance, though there are yet but few flowers. Here are boys making whistles. Now no instrumental music should be heard in the streets more youthful and innocent than willow whistles. Its sound has something soft in it as the wood of the willow. A rather rich scent has this willow blossom. Sundown. — To Cliffs. (No moon.) I am most impressed by the rapidity of the changes within a week. Saw a load of rock maples on a car from the country. Their buds have not yet started, while ours are leaved out. They must have been brought from the northern part of Vermont, where is winter still. A tree, with all its roots, which has not felt the influence of spring is a most startling evidence of win- ter, — of the magic worked by the railroad. The young sugar maples in our streets are now green with young leaves. These trees from the north are whirled into their midst from a region of ice and snow, with not a bud yet started, at least a fortnight or three weeks more backward, not fairly awaked from their winter’s sleep. Children are digging dandelions by the roadside with a pan and a case-knife. For the first time, this evening I observe the twittering of swallows about the barns. The sun has set in the haze. Methinks I have heard the snipe. Now hear the lark, the song sparrow, etc. The peeper, is he not lord of sound? so tiny, yet heard farther than a man! A cool but an agreeable wind. (Going by Bear Garden.) The sounds of peeping frogs (Hylodes) and dreaming toads are mingled into a sort of indistinct universal evening lullaby to creation, while the wind roars in the woods for a background or sea of sound, in which — on whose bosom — these others float. The young birch leaves, very neatly plaited, small tri- angular light-green leaves, yield an agreeable sweet fragrance, just expanded and sticky, — sweet-scented as innocence. The song sparrow and the robin sing early and Jate. The night-warbler while it is yet pretty light. It is that kind of mirage now in which the slope of the hills appears not a position but a motion. The hills ascend, the earth rocks. Do I not hear the veery’s yorick? The “whipp-or-u-wills” begin. When I heard the first one the other night, feeling myself on the verge of winter, I was startled as if I had heard a summer sound in the midst of winter. I hear a catbird singing within a rod among the alders, but it is too dark to see him. Now he stops and half angrily, half anxiously and inquisitively, inquires char-char, sounding like the caw of a crow, not like a cat. Venus is the evening star and the only star yet visi- ble. Starlight marks conveniently a stage in the evening, 2. €. When the first star can be seen. Does it not coin- cide with the whip-poor-wills’ beginning? I am struck by the blackness of the small pines at this hour, two or three feet high, on the plain below Fair Haven Hill. It is already midnight behind or within them. Is there as great a contrast in the summer, when the grass in this field is more green? Such trees are, as it were, nuclei of the night. A strong but not cold southwest wind is blowing against the rocks mercilessly, an aerial surf, having been ordered to do so. The twilight seems long this evening. Is it not made so by the haze? Hayden tells me that when he has been to water his cattle some time since in the pool behind his house, the little peepers have been so thick all together as to hinder his cattle from drinking, — a hundred together. It was when the weather was cooler. Was it not for warmth, and when they were asleep in the morning ? Methinks the scent is a more primitive inquisition than the eye, more oracular and trustworthy. When I criticise my own writing, I go by the scent, as it were. The scent reveals, of course, what is concealed from the other senses. By it I detect earthiness.’

Sunday Morning. — To Trillium Woods. Apples and cherry trees begin to look green at a dis- tance. I see the catkin of afemale Populus tremuloides far advanced, 7. e. become large like the willows. These low woods are full of the Anemone nemorosa, half opened at this hour and gracefully drooping, — sepals with a purple tinge on the under side, now exposed. They are in beds and look like hail on the ground; their now globular flowers spot the ground white. Saw a Mary- land yellow-throat, whose note I have heard before, — the little restless bird that sits low, 2. e. on low bushes. The golden senecio, ragwort, or squaw-weed (Senecio aureus), whose lower or radical leaves, roundish and crenate, somewhat resemble the cowslip early in the meadows, has now got up six inches high and shows purple buds. It is the plant whose stem when broken yields that sweet scent. Low blueberry bushes and high are well budded to bloom. The bluet (sometimes at least ?) begins with a kind of lilac-blue, fading through white, delicately tinged with blue, to white. ? [Channing, p. 299.] P. M. — To hill north of Walden. I smell the blossoms of the willows, the row of Salix alba on Swamp Bridge Brook, a quarter of a mile to windward, the wind being strong. There is a delightful coolness in the wind. Reduce neck-cloth. Nothing so harmonizes with this condition of the atmosphere — warm and hazy—as the dream of the toad. The sa- mare on Cheney’s elms now give it a leafy appearance, or as if covered with hops, before the buds are ex- panded. Other elms are nearly as forward. The gray, misty-looking deciduous woods now appear to imbosom the evergreens, which before stood out distinct. It is partly to be referred now, I think, to the expanding leaves as well as the haze. They are closing in around them, and there is an indescribable change in the ap- pearance of the evergreens. Now and for some days the west and southwest winds have prevailed. The early blueberry is almost in flower. The arbutus (?) pyrus shows red scales (?). The barren plants of the Equisetum arvense now shoot up rapidly on the rail- road bank and make it suddenly green. Viola ovata in bloom. The shrub oak buds are expanding, red of va- rious hues and mixtures, quite rich. There is a positive sweetness in the air from flowers and expanding leaves, a universal sweetness. A longish yellow-abdomened bee. Chickadee’s phoebe note is common now, the tull-a-lull more rare and in mornings. It is‘impossible to remember a week ago. A river of Lethe flows with many windings the year through, separating one season from another. The heavens for a few days have been lost. It has been a sort of para- dise instead. As with the seashore, so is it with the universal earth-shore, not in summer can you look far into the ocean of the ether. They who come to this world as to a watering-place in the summer for cool- ness and luxury never get the far and fine November views of heaven. Is not all the summer akin to a para- dise? We have to bathe in ponds to brace ourselves. The earth is blue now, —the near hills, in this haze. The yellowish-white birch catkins are now opened. The buds of the white oak are now well swollen; they are later than the black and red oaks, which are begin- ning to leave out. The oaks, excepting the white, are quite as early if not earlier than the hickory. A choke (?) cherry well budded by Brooks’s clearing; will blos- som to-morrow or next day. The cinquefoil, which so much resembles a straw- berry, comes yellow not white. Do yellow flowers often bear an edible fruit? The Viola ovata is one of the minutest of spring flowers, — two leaves and a blossom- bud showing the blue close to the earth. What haste to push up and open its lesser azure to the greater above ! Such a disproportion of blossom to the leaves! Almost literally a pretty delicate blue flower bursting forth from the scurf of the earth. The rue-leaved ane- mone not for scent, but a pretty leaf. The chair flag is six or eight inches high in the water, bluish-green. Swarms of little gnats with two plumes on their heads just born on the edge of the pond. The chestnuts are perhaps more advanced than oaks. Bees know what flowers have bloomed, but they must depend mainly on the willows as yet. I am not sure but the pond is higher than ever. Some rich young oak buds I see, young and tender reddish leaves under scales, making buds [two] or three inches long, making a kind of cross with a fifth in the middle, — red oak, I think. There is also the number five in the form of the wood, when you cut the end of a twig. Some of the female catkins on cone- bearing willows are now more than three inches long. Tortoises out sunning, on rails, etc. Some young trees very forward in a warm place. The leaves of the maple are sharply recurved, partly so as to protect the tender parts, apparently. In such a place the scales have re- curved from the hickory buds, revealing already devel- oped branches. Saw a green snake, twenty or more inches long, on a bush, hanging over a twig with its head held forward six inches into the air, without sup- port and motionless. What there for? Leaves gener- ally are most beautiful when young and tender, before insects or weather has defaced them. These are the warm-west-wind, dream-frog, leafing- out, willowy, haze days. Is not this summer, whenever it occurs, the vireo and yellowbird and golden robin being here? The young birch leaves reflect the light in the sun. Mankind seen in a dream. The gardener asks what kind of beans he shall plant. Nobody is looking up into the sky. In our woods it is the aspens now and the birches that show their growth at a distance. It was in such a season and such a wind that the crow brought the corn from the southwest. Our eyes are turned to the west and southwest. It grows somewhat clearer; a cloud, threatening rain, coming up in the west. The veiny leaves of the hawkweed appear. The Salva tristis is in bloom. Saw pigeons in the woods, with their in- quisitive necks and long tails, but few representatives of the great flocks that once broke down our forests. Heard the night warbler. Our moods vary from week to week, with the winds and the temperature and the revolution of the seasons. The first shad-bush, June- berry, or service-berry (Amelanchier Canadensis), in blossom. The first Viola pedata and also, in a low place, the first Viola cucullata. That I observed the first of May was a V. ovata, a variety of sagittata. Saw one of the peeping frogs this afternoon, sitting on a dead leaf on the surface of the water. The color of a white oak leaf at present, so that it is hard to detect one, — much lighter and more decidedly fawn-colored than those I had. They will peep on the sideboard. The clumps of alders now look greenish with expand- ing leaves. The haze is now going off before a coming shower. The bluebird’s warble is soon in a great mea- sure drowned by the notes of new birds.