14 June 1852 – 20 June 1852

There are various new reflections now of the light, viz. from the under sides of leaves (fresh and white) turned up by the wind, and also from the bent blades (horizontal tops) of rank grass in the meadows, — a sort of bluish sheeny light, this last. Saw a wild rose from the cars in Weston. The early red roses are out in gardens at home.

Tuesday. Silene Antirrhina, sleepy catch-fly, or snapdragon catch-fly, the ordinarily curled-up petals scarcely noticeable at the end of the large oval calyx. Gray says opening only by night or cloudy weather. Bigelow says probably nocturnal, for he never found it expanded by day. (I found it June 16th at 6 a. Mm. ex- panded, two of its flowers, — and they remained so for some hours, inmy chamber.) By railroad near Badger’s. Yesterday we smelt the sea strongly; the sea breeze alone made the day tolerable. This morning, a shower! The robin only sings the louder for it. He is inclined to sing in foul weather. To Clematis Brook, 1.30 P. m. Very warm. Now for a thin coat. This melting weather makes a stage in the year. The crickets creak louder and more steadily; the bullfrogs croak in ear- nest. The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard. The potatoes are of that height to stand up at night. Bathing cannot be omitted. The conversation of all boys in the streets is whether they will or not or who will go in a-swimming, and how they will not tell their parents. You lie with open windows and hear the sounds in the streets. The seringo sings now at noon on a post; has a light streak over eye. The autumnal dandelion (Leontodon, or Apargia). Erigeron integrifolius of Bigelow (strigosus, 2. e. narrow- leaved daisy fleabane, of Gray) very common, like a white aster. | I will note such birds as I observe in this walk, begin- ning on the railroad causeway in middle of this hot day. The chuckling warble of martins heard over the meadow, from a village box. The lark. The fields are blued with blue-eyed grass, — a slaty blue. The epilo- bium shows some color in its spikes. How rapidly new flowers unfold! as if Nature would get through her work too soon. One has as much as he can do to observe how flowers successively unfold. It is a flowery revolution, to which but few attend. Hardly too much attention can be bestowed on flowers. We follow, we march after, the highest color; that is our flag, our standard, our “ color.”” Flowers were made to be seen, not overlooked. Their bright colors imply eyes, spectators. There have been many flower men who have rambled the world over to see them. The flowers robbed from an Egyptian traveller were at length carefully boxed up and forwarded to Linneus, the man of flowers. The common, early cultivated red roses are certainly very handsome, so rich a color and so full of blossoms; you see why even blunderers have introduced them into their gardens. Ascending to pigeon-place plain, the reflection of the heat from the dead pine-needles and the boughs strewn about, combined with the dry, suffocating scent, is oppressive and reminds me of the first settlers of Con- cord. The oven-bird, chewink, pine warbler (?), thrasher, swallows on the wire, cuckoo, phcebe, red- eye, robin, veery. The maple-leaved viburnum is open- ing with a purplish tinge. Wood thrush. Is not that the Prunus obovata, which I find in fruit, a mere shrub, in Laurel Glen, with oval fruit and long pedicels in a raceme? And have I not mistaken the P. Virginiana, or northern red cherry, for this? Vide — Virginiana and also vide the P. depressa. Golden and coppery reflections from a yellow dor-bug’s coat of mail in the water. Is it a yellowbird or myrtle-bird? Huckleberry-bird. Walden is two inches above my last mark. It must be four or five feet, at least, higher than when I sounded it. Men are inclined to be amphibious, to sympathize with fishes, now. I desire to get wet and saturated with water. The North River, Assabet, by the old stone bridge, affords the best bathing-place I think of, —a pure sandy, uneven bottom, — with a swift current, a grassy bank, and overhanging maples, with transparent water, deep enough, where you can see every fish in it. Though you stand still, you feel the rippling current about you. First locust. The pea-wai. There is considerable pollen on the pond; more than last year, notwithstanding that all the white pines near the pond are gone and there are very few pitch. It must all come from the pitch pine, whose sterile blos- soms are now dry and empty, for it is earlier than the white pine. Probably I have never observed it in the river because it is carried away by the current. The umbelled pyrola is just ready to bloom. Young robins, dark-speckled, and the pigeon wood- pecker flies up from the ground and darts away. I for- get that there are lichens at this season. The farmhouses under their shady trees (Baker’s) look as if the inhabitants were taking their siesta at this hour. I pass it [s2c] in the rear, through the open pitch pine wood. Why does work go forward now ? No scouring of tubs or cans now. The cat and all are gone to sleep, preparing for an early tea, excepting the inde- fatigable, never-resting hoers in the corn-field, who have carried a jug of molasses and water to the field and will wring their shirts to-night. I shall ere long hear the horn blow for their early tea. The wife or the hired Irish- woman steps to the door and blows the long tin horn, a cheering sound to the laborers in the field. The motive of the laborer should be not to get his living, to get a good job, but to perform well a certain work. A town must pay its engineers so well that they shall not feel that they are working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love, and pay him well. On Mt. Misery, panting with heat, looking down the river. The haze an hour ago reached to Wachusett; now it obscures it. Methinks there is a male and female shore to the river, one abrupt, the other flat and mead- owy. Have not all streams this contrast more or less, on the one hand eating into the bank, on the other depos- iting their sediment ? The year is in its manhood now. The very river looks warm, and there is none of that light celestial blue seen in far reaches in the spring. I see fields a mile distant reddened with sorrel. The very sight of distant water is refreshing, though a bluish steam appears to rest on it. Catbird. The waxwork is just in blossom and groves [of] hickories on the south of Mt. Misery. How refreshing the sound of the smallest waterfall in hot [weather]! I sit by that on Clematis Brook and listen to its music. The very sight of this half-stagnant pond-hole, drying up and leaving bare mud, with the pollywogs and turtles making off in it, is agreeable and encouraging to behold, as if it contained the seeds of life, the liquor rather, boiled down. The foulest water will bubble purely. They speak to our blood, even these stagnant, slimy pools. It, too, no doubt, has its falls nobler than Montmorenci, grander than Niagara, in the course of its circulations. Here is the primitive force of Egypt and the Nile, where the lotus grows. Some geraniums are quite rose-colored, others pale purplish-blue, others whitish. ‘The blossom of the Len- tago is rather sweet smelling. Orobanche uniflora, sin- gle-flowered broom-rape (Bigelow), [or] Aphyllon uni- florum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray), grows by this brook-side, — a naked, low, bluish-white flower, even re- minding you of the tobacco-pipe. Cattle walk along in a brook or ditch now for coolness, lashing their tails, and browse the edges; or they stand concealed for shade amid thick bushes. How perfectly acquainted they are with man, and never run from him! Thorn bushes appear to be just out of blossom. I have not observed them well. Woodchucks and squirrels are seen and heard in a walk. How much of a tortoise is shell! But little is gone with its spirit. It is well cleaned out, I trust. It is emptied of the reptile. It is not its exuvie. I hear the scream of a great hawk, sailing with a ragged wing against the high wood-side, apparently to scare his prey and so detect it, —shrill, harsh, fitted to excite terror in sparrows and to issue from his split and curved bill. I see his open bill the while against the sky. Spit with force from his mouth with an undula- tory quaver imparted to it from his wings or motion as he flies. A hawk’s ragged wing will grow whole again, but so will not a poet's. By half past five, robins more than before, crows, of course, and jays. Dogsbane is just ready to open. Swal- lows. It is pleasant walking through the June-grass (in Pleasant Meadow), so thin and offering but little obstruction. The nighthawk squeaks and booms. The Veratrum viride top is now a handsome green cluster, two feet by ten inches. Here also, at Well Meadow Head, I see the fringed purple orchis, unexpectedly beautiful, though a pale lilac purple, —a large spike of purple flowers. 1 find two, — the grandiflora of Bigelow and fimbriata of Gray. Bigelow thinks it the most beautiful of all the orchises. I am not prepared to say it is the most beautiful wild flower I have found this year. Why does it grow there only, far in a swamp, remote from public view? It is somewhat fragrant, reminding me of the lady’s-slipper. Is it not significant that some rare and delicate and beautiful flowers should be found only in unfrequented wild swamps? There is the mould in which the orchis grows. Yet I am not sure but this is a fault in the flower. It is not quite perfect in all its parts. A beau- tiful flower must be simple, not spiked. It must have a fair stem and leaves. This stem is rather naked, and the leaves are for shade and moisture. It is fairest seen rising from amid brakes and hellebore, its lower part or rather naked stem concealed.- Where the most beautiful wild-flowers grow, there man’s spirit is fed, and poets grow. It cannot be high-colored, growing in the shade. Nature has taken no pains to exhibit [it], and few that bloom are ever seen by mortal eyes. ‘The most striking and handsome large wild-flower of the year thus far that I have seen. Disturbed a company of tree-toads amid the bushes. They seemed to bewilder the passer by their croaking; when he went toward one, he was silent, and another sounded on the other side. ‘The hickory leaves are fra- grant as I brush past them. Quite a feast of straw- berries on Fair Haven, —the upland strawberry. The largest and sweetest on sand. The first fruit. ‘The night-warbler. There are few really cold springs. I go out of my way to go by the Boiling Spring. How few men can be believed when they say the spring is cold ! There is one cold as the coldest well water. What a treasure is such a spring! Who divined it? The cis- tuses are all closed. Is it because of the heat, and will they be open in the morning? C. found common hound’s-tongue (Cynoglossum officinale) by railroad. No moon. A deafening sound from the toads, and intermittingly from bullfrogs. What I have thought to be frogs prove to be toads, sitting by thousands along the shore and trilling short and loud, — not so long a quaver as in the spring, — and I have not heard them in those pools, now, indeed, mostly dried up, where I heard them in the spring. (I do not know what to think of my midsummer frog now.) The bullfrogs are very loud, of various degrees of baseness and sonorousness, answering each other across the river with two or three grunting croaks. They are not nearly so numerous as the toads. It is candle-light. The fishes leap. The meadows sparkle with the coppery light of fireflies. The even- ing star, multiplied by undulating water, is like bright sparks of fire continually ascending. The reflections of the trees are grandly indistinct. There is a low mist slightly enlarging the river, through which the arches of the stone bridge are just visible, as a vision. The mist is singularly bounded, collected here, while there is none there; close up to the bridge on one side and none on the other, depending apparently on cur- rents of air. A dew in the air it is, which in time will wet you through. See stars reflected in the bottom of our boat, it being a quarter full of water. There is a low crescent of northern light and shooting stars from time to time. (We go only from Channing’s to the ash above the railroad.) I paddle with a bough, the Nile boatman’s oar, which is rightly pliant, and you do not labor much. Some dogs bay. A sultry night.

Wednesday. 4.30 a. M.—A low fog on the meadows, but not so much as last night, — a low incense frosting them. The clouds scattered wisps in the sky, like a squadron thrown into disorder at the approach of the sun. The sun now gilds an eastern cloud a broad, bright, coppery-golden edge, fiery bight, notwithstand- ing which the protuberances of the cloud cast dark shadows ray-like up into the day. The curled dock (Rumex crispus) and the Malva,' the cheese mallows. A new season. The earth looks like a debauchee after the sultry night. Birds sing at this hour as in the spring. You hear that spitting, dumping frog and the bullfrogs occasionally still, for the heat is scarcely less than the last night. No toads now. 'The white lily is budded. Paddle from the ash tree to the swimming-place. The further shore is crowded with polygonums (leaves) and pontederia leaves. There seems to have intervened no night. The heat of the day is unabated. You per- spire before sunrise. The bullfrogs boom still. The river appears covered with an almost imperceptible blue film. The sun is not yet over the bank. What wealth in a stagnant river! There is music in every sound in the morning atmosphere. As I look up over the bay, I see the reflections of the meadow woods and the Hosmer hill at a distance, the tops of the trees cut off by a slight ripple. Even the fine grasses on the near bank are distinctly reflected. Owing to the reflections of the distant woods and hills, you seem to be paddling into a vast hollow country, doubly novel and interesting. Thus the voyageur is lured onward to fresh pastures. The melting heat begins again as soon as the sun gets up. My shoes are covered with the reddish seeds of the grass, for I have been walking in the dew. I hear a stake-driver, like a man at his pump, which sucks, — fit sound for our sluggish river. What is the devil’s- needle about? He hovers about a foot above the pads on humming wings thus early, from time to time dart- ing one side as if in pursuit of some invisible prey. Most would suppose the stake-driver the sound of a farmer at a distance at his pump, watering his cattle. It oftener sounds like this than hke a stake, but some- times exactly like a man driving a stake in the meadow. Mistook a crow blackbird, on a dark-brown rock rising out of the water, for a crow or a bittern, referring it to a greater distance than the actual, by some mirage. It had a boat tail, conspicuous when it flew. The bull- frogs lie on the very surface of the pads, showing their great yellow throats, color of the yellow breeches of the old school, and protuberant eyes. His whole back out, revealing a vast expanse of belly. His eyes like ranun- culus or yellow lily buds, winking from time to time and showing his large dark-bordered tympanum. Im- perturbable-looking. His yellow throat swells up like a smaj] moon at a distance over the pads when he croaks. The floating pondweed (Potamogeton natans), with the oblong oval leaf floating on the surface, now in bloom. The yellow water ranunculus still yellows the river in the middle, where shallow, in beds many rods long. It is one of the capillary-leaved plants. It is Bigelow’s spotted geranium (G. maculatum), or crane’s-bill, that we have. The fisherman offers you mackerel this sultry wea- ther. By and by the bidens (marigold) will stand in the river, as now the ranunculus. The summer’s fervor will have sunk into it. The spring yellows are faint, cool, innocent as the saffron of the morning compared with the blaze of noon. The autumnal, methinks, are the fruit of the dog-days, heats of manhood or age, not of youth. The former are pure, transparent, crystal- line, viz. [sic] the willow catkins and the early cinque- foils. This ranunculus, too, standing two or three inches above the water, is of a light yellow, especially at a distance. This, I think, is the rule with respect to spring flowers, though there are exceptions. P. M.— To Great Meadows, 4 o’clock. All but dogs and Englishmen are housed. It has been quite breezy, even windy, this month. The new foliage has rustled. Already leaves are eaten by in- sects. Isee their excrement in the path; even the pads on the river have many holes in them. The Viola pe- data and the columbines last into June, but now they are scarce. The Lysimachia thyrsiflora, tufted loose- strife, by the Depot Field Brook. 9 p. Ms— Down railroad. Heat lightning in the horizon. A sultry night. A flute from some villager. How rare among men so fit a thing as the sound of a flute at evening! Have not the fireflies in the meadow relation to the stars above, étincelant? When the darkness comes, we see stars beneath also. The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening. Ever and anon the sound of his trombone comes over the meadows and fields, a-lulling all Concord to sleep. Do not the stars, too, show their light for love, like the fireflies? There are northern lights, shooting high up withal. Even the botanist calls your fine new flower “a troublesome weed,’’ — hound’s-tongue.

Thursday. 4 a.m. —To Cliffs. No fog this morning. At early dawn, the windows being open, I hear a steady, breathing, cricket-like sound from the chip-bird (?), ushering in the day. Perhaps these mornings are the most memorable in the year, — after a sultry night and before a sultry day, — when, especially, the morning is the most glorious sea- son of the day, when its coolness is most refreshing and you enjoy the glory of the summer gilded or sil- vered with dews, without the torrid summer’s sun or the obscuring haze. The sound of the crickets at dawn after these first sultry nights seems like the dreaming of the earth still continued into the daylight. I love that early twilight hour when the crickets still creak right on with such dewy faith and promise, as if it were still night, — expressing the innocence of morning, — when the creak of the cricket is fresh and bedewed. While the creak of the cricket has that ambrosial sound, no crime can be committed. It buries Greece and Rome past resurrection. The earth-song of the cricket! Before Christianity was, it is. Health! health!

The hornet’s nest is built with many thin layers of his paper, with an interval of about an eighth of an inch between them, so that his wall is one or two inches thick. This probably for warmth, dryness, and lightness. .So sometimes the carpenter has learned to build double walls. When I attended to the lichens last winter, I made out: — First, the Umbilicaria Muhlenbergi, which Tucker- man says was the favorite rock-tripe in Frank- lin’s Journey. Second, U. pustulata. Third, U. Duilleni. All common on our rocks. The first like a cinder beneath, the second pustuled, the third like an old dried felt hat. Parmelia perforata (with great shields). P. caperata (wrinkled sulphur (H.)). P. saxatilis (gray rock (Hooker)). P. conspersa (greenish chestnut shielded (Hooker) ). One of the Parmelia Citrine (Is it the P.- chry- sophthalma on the apple trees of the Cape? In Loudon, Borrert chrysophthalma? What is that on the elm ?). P. stellaris (?). P. hypoleuca (?), very handsome on black oak. P. perlata (?). P. orcina, crustaceous on rocks, yellow and fine. P. albella. P. Borrert. P. scruposa (?), on the ground. Sticta pulmonaria, on rocks. S. glomerulifera (?), at the foot of oaks. Cetraria lacunosa, perforated, very common. (C. Islandica famous. Some kinds dark-colored, some greenish.) Evernia jubata, on the pitch pine, dark brown. E. prunastri, stag’s-horn, very handsome. Ramalinas of two or more kinds, especially on red oaks. Usneas of several kinds, some fine, some coarse, some long, some short, some ferruginous. Cladonias, as C. Coccifere, the red-fruited, on the earth and on stumps. Cladonias, Scyphifere, cup lichens of various kinds, on ground under banks and on stumps. Cladonias, various cladonias of the reindeer moss kind (which last I have not identified), very common on dry pastures and hills. Endocarpon miniatum, on moist rocks, Conantum. Pertusaria papillata (Porina Ach.), minute, black, crustaceous. On a small piece of bark, Pertusaria jaginea, Par- melia subfusca, and Lecidea parasema (with the black border). What is that very common greenish (when wet), pliant, leathery or gelatinous (?) lichen, very common on the earth and amid moss on rocks, with the shield on the under side? There is another, flat, small-leaved, and ash-colored when dry. The dead black birch bark is covered with many handsome small crustaceous lichens. With roses rose-bugs have come. 7% p. M. — To Cliffs. No moon. Methinks I saw and heard goldfinches. Pyrolas are beginning to blossom. The four-leaved loosestrife. The longest days in the year have now come. The sun goes down now (this moment) behind Watatic, from the Cliffs. St. John’s-wort is beginning to blossom; looks yellow. I hear a man playing a clarionet far off. Apollo tending the flocks of King Admetus. How cultivated, how sweet and glorious, is music! Men have brought this art to great perfection, the art of modulating sound, by long practice since the world began. What superiority over the rude harmony of savages ! There is something glorious and flower-like in it. What a contrast this evening melody with the occupations of the day! It is perhaps the most admirable accomplish- ment of man.

Saturday. 8.30 a.m.—To Flag Hill —on which Stow, Acton, and Boxboro corner —with C., with bread and butter and cheese in pocket. A comfortable breezy June morning. No dust to-day. To explore a segment of country between the Stow hills and the railroad in Acton, west to Boxboro. A fine, clear day, a journey day. A very small blue veronica in the bank by the roadside at Mrs. Hosmer’s, appar- ently the same with that I saw on the Cliffs with toothed leaves. Interesting from being blue. The traveller now has the creak of the cricket to encourage him on all country routes, out of the fresh sod, still fresh as in the dawn, not interrupting his thoughts. Very cheering and refreshing to hear so late in the day, this morning sound. The whiteweed colors some meadows as completely as the frosting does a cake. The waving June grass shows watered colors like grain. No mower’s scythe is heard. The farmers are hoeing their corn and potatoes. Some low blackberry leaves are covered with a sort of orange-colored mildew or fungus. The clover is now in its glory. Whole fields are rosed with it, mixed with sorrel, and looking deeper than it is. It makes fields look luxuriant which are really thinly clad. The air is full of its sweet fragrance. I cannot find the linnea in Loring’s; perhaps because the woods are cut down; perhaps I am too late. The robins sing more than usual, maybe because of the coolness. Buttercups and geraniums cover the meadows, the latter appearing to float on the grass, — of various tints. It has lasted long, this rather tender flower. Methinks there are most tall buttercups now. These and the senecio, now getting stale, prevail in the mead- ows. Green early blueberries on hillsides passim re- mind you of the time when berries will be ripe. This is the ante-huckleberry season, when fruits are green. The green fruit of the thorn is conspicuous, and of the wild cherry and the amelanchiers and the thimble-berry. These are the clover days. The small white-starred flowers of the stitchwort (Stellaria longifolia), amid grass and bushes by the meadow-sides. Some grass may perchance be well named bent, if from its bended blade. The light of June is not golden but silvery, not a torrid but somewhat temperate heat. See it reflected from the bent grass and the under sides of leaves. Also I perceive faint silvery gleaming ripples where there is a rapid in the river (from railroad bridge at Darby’s), without sun on it. At the pond on Lord’s land saw the Villarsia lacu- nosa (Bigelow), common villarsia, with its small rounded heart-shaped leaves like a small pond-lily leaf, and its transparent frosty white flowers, spotting the whole surface like the white petals of some flower which had fallen on it. It belongs to a stagnant pond like this. What is that smooth elliptical leaf, three or four inches long, of the texture of the white lily leaf, peltate and almost, if not quite, vermilion on the under side? I do not see its flower. The mullein out, with a disagreeable scent, and the dogsbane, with a quite handsome bell-shaped flower, beautifully striped with red (rose red ?) within. Facts collected by a poet are set down at last as winged seeds of truth, samaree, tinged with his expecta- tion. Oh, may my words be verdurous and sempiter- nal as the hills! Facts fall from the poetic observer as ripe seeds. At Willis’s Spring under the railroad, a cocoanut shell from the other side of the globe to drink at a New England spring. Water kept cool in the bowels of the earth, the cellar of the earth. The meadow thalictrum there. Aralia hispida. The river has a June look, dark, smooth, reflecting surfaces in shade, and the water is refreshing as suggesting coolness. The shadows in and under elms and other trees have not been so rich hitherto. It is grateful to look forward half a mile into some dark umbrageous elm or ash. Is A : yey x 1% that the common puffball, now white, convex, nubby ? The panicled cornel (under which Gray puts Bigelow’s white cornel), with pure white flowers. This and the Viburnum dentatum, now out, show handsome corymbs (and the V. nudum) in copses, both in sun and shade, against and amid the green leaves of the shrubs or trees. Grape in bloom; agreeable perfume to many, to me not so. This is not the meadow fragrance, then, which I have perceived. I hear the wiry phoebe note of the chickadee. Maybe the huckleberry-bird best expresses the season, or the red-eye. The four-leaved loosestrife covers large sandy tracts by the side of the railroad. The new shoots of the oaks are long enough to droop gracetully. What subtile differences between one season and another! The warmest weather has, perchance, arrived and the longest days, but not the driest. When I re- member gathering ripe blackberries on sandy fields or stones by the roadside, the very berries warmed by the sun, I am convinced of this. ‘The seasons admit of in- finite degrees in their revolutions. Found one of the purple orchises in an open meadow.

7 p. Ms —'To Hubbard Bathing-Place. The blue-eyed grass is shut up. When does it open? Some blue flags are quite a red purple, — dark wine- color. Identified the Iris prismatica, Boston iris, with linear leaves and round stem.