16 May 1853 – 22 May 1853

E. Hoar saw the henbit (Lamium amplexi- caule) a week ago from Mr. Pritchard’s garden. Celan- dine is out a day or more, and rhodora, trillium, and yellow violets yesterday at least. Horse-chestnut to-day. What handsome long yellow, threadlike pe- duncles to the staminate flowers of the sugar maple! three inches long, tassel-like, appearing with the leaves. : A man is about town with a wagon-load of the Rhododendron maximum this evening from Gardiner, Maine. It is well budded; buds nearly an inch long; long, narrow, thick leaves, six inches long or more. He says it means the “‘rose of Dendrum” and will grow from a mere slip cut off and stuck in any soil, — only water it three times a day!!! No doubt of it. It has been oppressively warm to-day, the first really warm, sultry-like weather, so that we were prepared for a thunder-storm at evening. At 5 p. m., dark, heavy, wet-looking clouds are seen in the northern horizon, perhaps over the Merrimack Valley, and we say it is going down the river and we shall not get a drop. The main body goes by, there is a shower in the north, and the western sky is suffused with yellow where its thin skirts are withdrawing. People stand at their doors in the warm evening, listening to the muttering of dis- tant thunder and watching the forked lightning, now descending to the earth, now ascending to the clouds. This the first really warm day and thunder-shower. Had thunder-shower while I was in Haverhill in April. Nature appears to have passed a crisis. All slimy reptile life is wide awake. The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound; from the meadow the hylodes are heard more distinctly; and the tree-toad chirrups often from the elms (?). The sultry warmth and moister air has called him into life. We smell the fresher and cooler air from where the storm has passed. And now that it has grown dark, the skirts of the cloud seem to promise us a shower. It lightens incessantly right in the west; the right wing of the rear guard of the storm is steadily advancing and firing, and every flash shows the outlines of the cloud. We look out into the dark, and ever and anon comes a sudden illumination blind- ing our eyes, like a vast glow-worm, succeeded ere long by the roll of thunder. The first pattering of drops is heard; all west windows are hastily shut. The weak-eyed sit with their backs to windows and close the blinds. But we are disappointed, after all, and each flash reveals a narrow strip of evening red through the thin drops below the advancing cloud.

5 a. m.— To Island by boat. Everything has sensibly advanced during the warm and moist night. Some trees, as the small maples in the street, already look verdurous. The air has not sensibly cooled much. The chimney swallows are busily skimming low over the river and just touching the water without regard to me, as a week ago they did, and as they circle back overhead to repeat the experi- ment, I hear a sharp snap or short rustling of their wings. The button-bush now shows the first signs of life, on a close inspection, in its small round, smooth, greenish buds. The polygonums and pontederias are getting above water, the latter like spoons on long handles. The Cornus florida is blossoming; will be fairly out to-day... The Polygonatum pubescens; one on the Island has just opened. This is the smaller Solomon’s- seal. A thorn there will blossom to-day. The Vola’ palmata is out there, in the meadow. Everywhere the huckleberry’s sticky leaves are seen expanding, and the high blueberry is ia blossom. Now is the time to ad- mire the very young and tender leaves. ‘The blossoms of the red oak hang down under its young leaves as under a canopy. The petals have already fallen from the Amelanchier Botryapvum, and young berries are plainly forming. I hear the wood pewee, — pe-a-wat. The heat of yesterday has brought him on. P. M. — To Corner Spring and Fair Haven Cliffs. Myosotis laxa is out a day or two. At first does not run; is short and upright like M. stricta. Golden senecio will be out by to-morrow at least. The early cinquefoil is now in its prime and spots the banks and hillsides and dry meadows with its dazzling yel- low. How lively! It is one of the most interesting yellow flowers. The fields are also now whitened, per- haps as much as ever, with the houstonia. The buck- bean is out, apparently to-day, the singularly fuzzy- looking blossom. How inconspicuous its leaves now! - The rhodora is peculiar for being, like the peach, a profusion of pink blossoms on a leafless stem. This shrub is, then, a late one to leaf out. The bobolink skims by before the wind how far without motion of his wings! sometimes borne sidewise as he turns his head — for thus he can fly — and tinkling, link- ing, incessantly all the way. How very beautiful, like the fairest flowers, the young black oak shoots with leaves an inch long now! like red velvet on one side and downy white on the other, with only a red edge. Compare this with the pinker white oak. The Salix nigra just in bloom. The trientalis, properly called star-flower, is a white star, single, double, or treble. The fringed polygala surprises us in meadows or in low woods as a rarer, richer, and more delicate color, with a singularly tender or delicate-looking leaf. As you approach midsummer, the color of flowers is more intense and fiery. The reddest flower is the flower especially. Our blood is not white, nor is it yellow, nor even blue. ‘The nodding trillium has apparently been out a day or two. Methinks it smells like the lady’s-slipper. Also the Ranunculus recurvatus for a day or two. The small two or three leaved Solomon’s- seal is just out. The Viola cucullata is sometimes eight inches high, and leaves in proportion. It must be the largest of the violets except perhaps the yellow. The V. blanda is almost entirely out of bloom at the spring. Returning toward Fair Haven, I perceive at Pot- ter’s fence the first whiff of that ineffable fragrance from the Wheeler meadow, — as it were the promise of strawberries, pineapples, etc., in the aroma of their flowers, so blandly sweet,— aroma that fitly fore- runs the summer and the autumn’s most delicious fruits. It would certainly restore all such sick as could 1853} AN INEFFABLE FRAGRANCE 165 be conscious of it. The odors of no garden are to be named with it. It is wafted from the garden of gar- dens. It appears to blow from the river meadow from the west or southwest, here about forty rods wide or more. If the air here always possessed this bland sweetness, this spot would become famous and be visited by sick and well from all parts of the earth. It would be carried off in bottles and become an article of traffic which kings would strive to monopo- lize. The air of Elysium cannot be more sweet. Cardamine hirsuta out some time by the ivy tree. The Viola lanceolata seems to pass into the cucullata insensibly, but can that small round-leaved white violet now so abundantly in blossom in open low ground be the same with that large round-leaved one now about out of blossom in shady low ground? Arabis rhomboidea just out by the willow on the Cor- ner causeway. The Ranunculus repens perhaps yes- terday, with its spotted leaves and its not recurved calyx though furrowed stem. Was that a very large Veronica serpyllifolia by the Corner Spring? Who shall keep with the lupines? They will apparently blossom within a week under Fair Haven. The Viola sagittata, of which Viola ovata is made a variety, is now very marked there. The V. pedata there pre- sents the greatest array of blue of any flower as yet. The flowers are so raised above their leaves, and so close together, that they make a more indelible im- pression of blue on the eye; it is almost dazzling. I blink as I look at them, they seem to reflect the blue rays so forcibly, with a slight tinge of lilac. To be sure, there is no telling what the redder ovata might not do if they grew as densely, so many eyes or scales of blue side by side, forming small shields of that color four or five inches in diameter. The effect and inten- sity is very much increased by the numbers. I hear the first unquestionable nighthawk squeak and see him circling far off high above the earth. It is now about 5 o'clock p. mM. The tree-toads are heard in the rather moist atmosphere, as if presaging rain. I hear the dumping sound of bull(?)frogs, telling the weather is warm. ‘The paddocks, as if too lazy to be disturbed, say now to the intruder, “don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t;” also in the morning after the first sultry night. The chinquapin oak may be said to flower and leave out at the same time with the dzczfolia. It is distin- guished as well by its yellow catkins as by its leaves. Pyrus arbutifolia i is out, to-day or yesterday. A cra- teegus just out. TI sit now on a rock on the west slope of Fair Haven orchard, an hour before sunset, this warm, almost sul- try evening, the air filled with the sweetness of apple blossoms (this is blossom week), — or I think it is mainly that meadow fragrance still,—the sun partly con- cealed behind a low cloud in the west, the air cleared by last evening’s thunder-shower, the river now beau- tifully smooth (though a warm, bland breeze blows up here), full of light and reflecting the placid west- ern sky and the dark woods which overhang it. I was surprised, on turning round, to behold the serene and everlasting beauty of the world, ‘it was so soothing. I saw that I could not go home to supper and lose it. It was so much fairer, serener, more beautiful, than my mood had been. ‘The fields beyond the river have unexpectedly a smooth, lawn-like beauty, and in beau- tiful curves sweep round the edge of the woods. The rapidly expanding foliage of the deciduous [trees] (last evening’s rain or moisture has started them) lights up with a lively yellow green the dark pines which we have so long been used to. Some patches (I speak of woods half a mile or more off) are a lively green, some gray or reddish-gray still, where white oaks stand. With the stillness of the air comes the stillness of the water. The sweetest singers among the birds are heard more distinctly now, as the reflections are seen more distinctly in the water, — the veery constantly now. Methinks this serene, ambrosial beauty could hardly have been but for last evening’s thunder- shower, which, to be sure, barely touched us, but cleared the air and gave a start to vegetation. The elm on the opposite side of the river has now a thin but dark verdure, almost as dark as the pines, while, as I have said, the prevailing color of the deciduous woods is a light yellowish and sunny green. ' The woods rarely if ever present a more beautiful aspect from afar than now. Methinks the black oak at early leafing is more red than the red oak. Ah, the beauty of this last hour of the day — when a power stills the air and smooths all waters and all minds — that partakes of the light of the day and the stillness. of the night! Sit on Cliffs. The Shrub Oak Plain, where are so many young white oaks, is now a faint rose-color, almost like a distant peach orchard in bloom and seen against sere red ground. What might at first be taken for the color of some sere leaves and bare twigs still left, its tender red expanding leaves. You might say of the white oaks and of many black oaks at least, “When the oaks are in the red.” The perfect smooth- ness of Fair Haven Pond, full of light and reflecting the wood so distinctly, while still occasionally the sun shines warm and brightly from behind a cloud, giv- ing the completest contrast of sunshine and shade, is enough to make this hour memorable. The red pin- cushion gall is already formed on the new black oak leaves, with little grubs in them, and the leaves, scarcely more than two inches long, are already attacked by other foes. Looking down from these rocks, the black oak has a very light hoary or faint silvery color; the white oak, though much less advanced, has a yet more hoary color; but the red oaks (as well as the hickories) have a lively, glossy aspen green, a shade lighter than the birch now, and their long yellowish catkins appear further advanced than the black. Some black as well as white oaks are reddish still. The new shoots now color the whole of the juniper (creeping) with a light yellow tinge. It appears to be just in blossom,’ and those little green berries must be already a year old; and, as it is called dicecious, these must be the fertile blossoms. This must be Krigia Virginica now budded, close by the juniper, ? [This is queried in pencil.] and will blossom in a day or two.!’ The low black- berry, apparently, on Cliffs is out, earlier than else- where, and Veronica arvensis (?), very small, obscure pale-blue flower, and, to my surprise, Linaria Cana- densis. Returning slowly, I sit on the wall of the orchard by the white pine. Now the cows begin to low, and the river reflects the golden light of the sun just before his setting. The sough of the wind in the pines is more noticeable, as if the air were otherwise more still and hollow. The wood thrush has sung for some time. He touches a depth in me which no other bird’s song does. He has learned to sing, and no thrumming of the strings or tuning disturbs you. Other birds may whistle pretty well, but he is the master of a finer- toned instrument. His song is musical, not from association merely, not from variety, but the charac- ter of its tone. It is all divine, — a Shakespeare among birds, and a Homer too. This sweetness of the air, does it not always first succeed a thunder-storm? Is it not a general sweetness, and not to be referred to a particular plant? He who cuts down woods beyond a certain limit exterminates birds. How red are the scales of some hickory buds, now turned back! The fragrance of the apple blossom reminds me of a pure and innocent and unsophisticated country girl bedecked for church. The purple sunset is reflected from the surface of the river, as if its surface were tinged with lake. Here is a field sparrow that varies his strain very sweetly. Coming home from Spring by Potter’s Path to the Corner road in the dusk, saw a dead-leaf-colored hylodes; detected it by its expanding and relapsing bubble, nearly twice as big as its head, as it sat on an alder twig six inches from ground and one rod from a pool. The beach plum is out to-day. The whip-poor- will sings. Large insects now fly at night. This is a somewhat sultry night. We must begin now to look. out for insects about the candles. The lilac out. Genius rises above nature; in spite of heat, in spite of cold, works and lives. May. 18. ‘The rhodora is one of the very latest- leafing shrubs, for its leaf-buds are but just expanding, making scarcely any show yet, but quite leafless amid the blossoms. ‘The Celtis occidentalis in bloom, maybe a day. Its shoots have grown two inches. It is as forward as the hickory at least; more than the elm. A red clover in blossom. A geranium budded; will open in a day or two. Surprised to see a Ranunculus Purshtit open. A choke-cherry blossomed in a tumbler yesterday,’ and probably outdoors. Finding the Linaria Canadensis yesterday at the Cliffs on a very close search for flowers makes me think that, by looking very carefully in the most fa- vored and warmest localities, you may find most flowers out some weeks even in advance of the rest of their kind. ? Apparently same with that by red house and Jenny Duziiy s and probably not beach plum. ? On Island, May 20th. We have had no storm this spring thus far, but it mizzles to-night. Perchance a May storm is brewing. This day it has mizzled, — as it were a dewy atmos- phere, through which for the most part the sun shines. Methinks this is common at this season of the tender foliage, which requires a moist air and protection against the sun. A singular effect produced by a mass of ferns at a little distance, some rods square, their light yellow- green tops seen above the dark masses of their fruit. At first one is puzzled to account for it. White ash fully in bloom.

Thunder-showers in the night, and it still storms, with holdings-up. A May storm, gentle and rather warm. The days of the golden willow are over for this season; their withered catkins strew the cause- ways and cover the water and also my boat, which is moored beneath them. The locust has grown three inches and is blossom-budded. It may come just after the white ash at least, and before the celtis. The weather toward evening still cloudy and some- what mizzling. The foliage of the young maples, elms, etec., in the street has become, since the rain commenced, several shades darker, changing from its tender and lighter green, as if the electricity of the thunder-storm may have had some effect on it. It is best observed while it is still cloudy; almost a bluish, no longer yellowish green, it is peculiarly rich. The very grass appears to have undergone a similar change.

The 18th and 19th a rather gentle and warm May storm,— more rain, methinks, than we have had before this spring at one time. Began with thunder-showers on the night of the 18th, the flashing van of the storm, followed by the long, dripping main body, with, at very long intervals, an occasional firing or skirmishing in the rear or on the flanks. 6 a. mM. — To Island by river. Probably a red-wing blackbird’s nest, of grass, hung between two button-bushes; whitish eggs with irregular black marks. Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), probably two days. White oak, swamp white, and chestnut oak probably will open by the 22d. The white ashes are in full flower now, and how long? 8 a. M.— To Flint’s Pond. Cornus Canadensis just out. Probably the C. florida should be set down to-day, since it just begins to shed pollen and its involucre is more open. It is a fair but cool and windy day, a strong northwest wind, and the grass, to which the rain has given such a start, con- spicuously waves, showing its lighter under side, and the buttercups toss in the wind. The pitch and white pines have grown from one to five inches. On Pine Hill.—In this clear morning light and a strong wind from the northwest, the mountains in the horizon, seen against some low, thin clouds in the background, look darker and more like earth than usual; you distinguish forest and pasture on them. This in the clear, cool atmosphere in the morning after a rain-storm, with the wind northwest. They will grow more ethereal, melting into the sky, as the day advances. The beech is already one of the most densely clothed trees, or rather makes a great show of verdure from the size of its fully expanded light-green leaves, though some are later. The fresh shoots on low branches are five or six inches long. It is an interesting tree to me, with its neat, close, tight-looking bark, like the dress which athletes wear, its bare instep, and roots begin- ning to branch like bird’s feet, showing how it is planted and holds by the ground. Not merely stuck in the ground like a stick. It gives the beholder the same pleasure that it does to see the timbers of a house above and around. Do they blossom here? I found nuts, but apparently not sound, at Haverhill the other day, — last year’s. There are some slender, perfectly horizontal limbs which go zigzagging, as it were creeping through the air, only two or three feet above the ground, over the side-hill, as if they corresponded to concealed rills in the ground beneath. Plenty of arums now in bloom. Probably my earliest one was in bloom, for I did not look within it. What is that pretty, transparent moss in the brooks, which holds the rain or dewdrops so beautifully on the under sides of the leafets, through which they sparkle crystal- linely? Fresh checkerberry shoots now. The cedars are full of yellowish cedar apples and minute berries just formed, the effete staminiferous blossom still on. When did they begin to bloom? I find none of the rare hedyotis yet on Bare Hill. The peach bloom is now gone and the apple bloom come. Heard the seringo note, like a rattling watch-spring, from a flock passing swiftly overhead. The wind makes such a din in the woods that the notes of birds are lost, and added to this is the sound of the waves of Flint’s Pond breaking on the shore, — the fresh surf. The pond is spotted with whitecaps, five or six feet long by one foot, like a thin flock of sheep running toward the southeast shore. The smallest lakes can be lashed into a sort of fury by the wind, and — are quite ocean-like then. ‘These caps are a striving to dilute the water with air. The barberry will probably blossom to-day. Here, by the side of the pond, a fire has recently run through the young woods on the hillside. It is surprising how clean it has swept the ground, only the very lowest and dampest rotten leaves remaining, but uvularias and smilacinas have pushed up here and there conspicuously on the black ground, a foot high. At first you do not observe the full effect of the fire, walking amid the bare dead or dying trees, which wear a perfect winter aspect, which, as trees generally are not yet fully leaved out and you are still used to this, you do not notice, till you look up and see the still green tops everywhere above the height of fifteen feet. Yet the trees do not bear many marks of fire commonly ; they are but little blackened except where the fire has run a few feet up a birch, or paused at a dry stump, or a young evergreen has been killed and reddened by it and is now dropping a shower of red leaves. Hemlock will blossom to-morrow. The geranium is just out, and the lady’s-slipper. Some with old seed- vessels are still seen. Hear again, what I have heard for a week or more sometimes, that rasping, springy note, a very hoarse chirp, — ooh, twee twee twee,—from a bluish bird as big as a bluebird, with some bright yellow about head, white beneath and lateral tail-feathers, and black cheeks (?). This and that sort of brown-creeper-like bird — of May 12 — and the chickadee-like bird (which may be the chickadee), and the ah te ter twee of deep pine woods (which also may be the chickadee), I have not identified. Arbor-vitee has been out some time and the butter- nut some days.‘ Mountain-ash on the 18th. Larch apparently ten days. Nemopanthes several days. The swamp blueberry abundantly out. Saw a tanager in Sleepy Hollow. It most takes the eye of any bird. You here have the red-wing reversed, — the deepest scarlet of the red-wing spread over the whole body, not on the wing-coverts merely, while the wings are black. It flies through the green foliage as if it would ignite the leaves. Of deciduous trees and shrubs, the latest to leaf out, as I find by observation to-day, must be the panicled andromeda, rhodora, and button-bush. In some places, however, the first has perfectly formed leaves, the rho- dora at most not half unfolded, the button-bush for the most part just bursting buds. But I have not seen the prinos and perhaps one or two other shrubs. I have no doubt that the button-bush may be called the latest of all. Is that female ash by river at Lee’s Hill a new kind? In bloom fully May 18th. Even this remote forest, which stands so far away and innocent, has this terrible foe Fire to fear. Light- ning may ignite a dead tree or the dry leaves, and in a few minutes a green forest be blackened and killed. This liability to accident from which no part of nature is exempt. Plucked to-day a bunch of Viola pedata, consisting of four divisions or offshoots around a central or fifth root, all wnzted and about one inch in diameter at the ground and four inches at top. Flowers Buds Ist division contained 10 5 Qd s is 11 4 3d = - 9 4 4th s¢ a 8 4 5th t cs 11 5 And perhaps more buds would still make their appear- ance, and undoubtedly half a dozen more would have blown the next day. Forming a complex, close little testudo of violet scales above their leaves.

P. M. — Up Assabet to cress, with So- phia. Land on Island. One of the most beautiful things to me now is the reddish-ash, and, higher, the silvery, canopies of half a dozen young white oak leaves over their catkins, — thousands of little tents pitched in the air for the May training of the flowers, so many little parasols to their tenderer flowers. Young white oaks and shrub oaks have a reddish look quite similar to their withered leaves in the winter. It is still windy weather, and while I hear the bobo- link strain dying away in the distance through the maples, I can [sic] the falling apple blossoms which I do not see, as if they were his falling notes. Yet the water is quite still and smooth by the Hemlocks, and as the weather is warm, it 1s a soothing sight to see it covered with dust there over the Deep Eddy. Landed beyond the grape-vine bower and cleared out the spring of leaves and sticks and mud, and deepened it, making an outlet, and it soon ran clear and cold. The cress, which proves to be the rock cress, or herb of St. Barbara, is now luxuriant and in bloom in many places along the river, looking like mustard. Found the Ranunculus abortivus, apparently some time in blossom, in the woods opposite to the cress. Put it after the repens. There are, apparently, two kinds of thorns close together on Nawshawtuct,-— one now and for some days in blossom, both bushes and the largest tree, — which are evidently varieties of the Crategus coccinea, or scarlet-fruited thorn. The tree one is about eleven feet high by ten feet, and would be taken for an apple tree; is crowded full with white bloom very compact and handsome; the most showy of any native tree in these parts when in bloom. Its thorns are stout. But there is another kind, thin, wisp-shaped trees, not yet in bloom, with very long, slender, straight needle-shaped thorns and two or three stipules to each peduncle. As it has the usual petioles, is not the cockspur, but may be a variety of the first-named. The grass begins to be conspicuously reddened with sorrel. The white maple keys are nearly two inches long by a half-inch wide, in pairs, with waved inner edges like green moths ready to bear off their seeds.’ The red maple keys are not half so large now, and are a dull red, of a similar form. The hickories are budded and show the red anthers.

Sunday. 'To Nobscot with W. E. C. This is the third windy day following the two days’ rain. A washing day, such as we always have at this sea- son, methinks. The grass has sprung up as by magic since the rains. The birds are heard through the plea- sant dashing wind, which enlivens everything. It is clear June, the first day of summer. The rye, which, when I last looked, was one foot high, is now three feet high and waving and tossing its heads in the wind. We ride by these bluish-green waving rye- fields in the woods, as if an Indian juggler had made them spring up in a night. Why, the sickle and cradle will soon be taken up. Though I walk every day I am never prepared for this magical growth of the rye. I am advanced by whole months, as it were, into sum- mer. Sorrel reddens the fields. Cows are preparing the milk for June butter. Already the falling apple blossoms fill the air and spot the roads and fields, and some are already turned dark with decay on the ground. With this warmth and wind the air is full of haze, such as we have not had before. The lilac is scented at every house. The wood pewee’s warm note is heard. We ride through warm, sandy shrub oak roads, where the Viola pedata blues the edge of the path, and the sand cherry and the choke-cherry whiten it. The crickets now first are generally heard. Houstonias whiten the fields and are now in their prime. The thorn bushes are full of bloom. Observed a large sassafras tree in bloom, — a rich lemon (?) yellow. Left our horse at the Howe tavern. The oldest date on the sign is “D. H. 1716.” An old woman, who had been a servant in the family and said she was ninety-one, said this was the first house built on the spot. Went on to Nobscot. Very warm in the woods, — and hear the hoarse note of the tanager and the sweet pe-a-wai,— but pleasantly breezy on the bare hilltops. Can’t see the mountains. Found an abundance of the Viola Muhlenbergi * (debilis of Big- elow), a stalked violet, pale blue and bearded. The krigia out, a redder, more July, yellow than the dandelion; also a yellow Bethlehem-star and ribwort; and the mountain cranberry still here and there in blossom, though for the most part small berries formed. An abundance of saxifrage going to seed, and in their midst two or three looking densely white like the pearly everlasting — round dense white heads, apparently an abortion, an abnormal state, without stamens, etc., which I cannot find described. The pastures on this hill and its spurs are sprinkled profusely with thorny pyramidal apple scrubs, very thick and stubborn, first planted by the cows, then browsed by them and kept down stubborn and thorny for years, till, as they spread, their centre is protected and beyond reach and shoots up into a tree, giving a wine-glass form to the whole; and finally perchance the bottom disappears and cows come in to stand in the shade and rub against and redden the trunk. They must make fine dark shadows, these shrubs, when the sun is low; perfectly pyramidal they are now, many of them. You see the cow-dung every- where now with a hundred little trees springing up in it. Thus the cows create their own shade and food.’ This hill, Nobscot, is the summit of the island (?) or cape between the Assabet and Musketaquid — per- haps the best point from which to view the Concord River valley. The Wayland hills bound it on the east; Berlin, Bolton, [and] Harvard hills on the west. The Sudbury meadows, seen here and there in distance, are of a peculiar bluish green. This is the first truly lively summer Sunday, what with lilacs, warm wea- ther, waving rye, slight[ly] dusty sandy roads in some places, falling apple blossoms, etc., etc., and the wood pewee. ‘The country people walk so quietly to church, and at five o’clock the farmer stands reading the news- paper while his cows go through the bars. I ought perhaps to have measured the great white oak by Howe’s. A remarkably thick white pine wood this side of Willis’s Pond !! When yesterday Sophia and I were rowing past Mr. Prichard’s land, where the river is bordered by a row of elms and low willows, at 6 P. M., we heard a singular note of distress as it were from a catbird — a loud, vibrating, catbird sort of note, as if the cat- bird’s mew were imitated by a smart vibrating spring. Blackbirds and others were flitting about, apparently attracted by it. At first, thinking it was merely some peevish catbird or red-wing, I was disregarding it, but on second thought turned the bows to the shore, looking into the trees as well as over the shore, think- ing some bird might be in distress, caught by a snake or in a forked twig. The hovering birds dispersed at my approach; the note of distress sounded louder and nearer aS I approached the shore covered with low osiers. ‘The sound came from the ground, not from the trees. I saw a little black animal making haste to meet the boat under the osiers. A young musk- rat? a mink? No, it was a little dot of a kitten. It was scarcely six inches long from the face to the base —or I might as well say the tip —of the tail, for the latter was a short, sharp pyramid, perfectly per- pendicular but not swelled in the least. It was a very handsome and very precocious kitten, in perfectly good condition, its breadth being considerably more than one third of its length. Leaving its mewing, it came scrambling over the stones as fast as its weak legs would permit, straight to me. I took it up and dropped it into the boat, but while I was pushing off it ran the length of the boat to Sophia, who held it while we rowed homeward. Evidently it had not been weaned — was smaller than we remembered that kittens ever were — almost infinitely small; yet it had hailed a boat, its life being in danger, and saved itself. Its per- formance, considering its age and amount of experi- ence, was more wonderful than that of any young mathematician or musician that I have read of. Va- rious were the conjectures as to how the kitten came there, a quarter of a mile from a house. The possible solutions were finally reduced to three: first, it must either have been born there, or, secondly, carried there by its mother, or, thirdly, by human hands. In the first case, it had possibly brothers and sisters, one or both, and its mother had left them to go a-hunt- ing on her own account and might be expected back. In the second, she might equally be expected to re- turn. At any rate, not having thought of all this till we got home, we found that we had got ourselves into a scrape; for this kitten, though exceedingly interesting, required one nurse to attend it constantly for the present, and, of course, another to spell the first; and, beside, we had already a cat well-nigh grown, who manifested such a disposition toward the young stranger that we had no doubt it would have torn it in pieces in a moment if left alone with it. As no- body made up his or her mind to have it drowned, and still less to drown it, — having once looked into its innocent extremely pale blue eyes (as of milk thrice skimmed) and had his finger or his chin sucked by it, while, its eyes being shut, its little paws played a soothing tune, — it was resolved to keep it till it could be suitably disposed of. It rested nowhere, in no lap, under no covert, but still faintly cried for its mother and its accustomed supper. It ran toward every sound or movement of a human being, and whoever crossed the room it was sure to follow at a rapid pace. It had all the ways of a cat of the maturest years; could purr divinely and raised its back to rub all boots and shoes. When it raised its foot to scratch its ear, which by the way it never hit, it was sure to fall over and roll on the floor. It climbed straight up the sitter, faintly mewing all the way, and sucked his chin. In vain, at first, its head was bent down into saucers of milk which its eyes did not see, and its chin was wetted. But soon it learned to suck a finger that had been dipped in it, and better still a rag; and then at last it slept and rested. The street was explored in vain to find its owner, and at length an Irish family took it into their cradle. Soon after we learned that a neighbor who had heard the mewing of kittens in the partition had sent for a carpenter, taken off a board, and found two the very day at noon that we sailed. That same hour it was first brought to the light a coarse Irish cook had volunteered to drown it, had carried it to the river, and without bag or sinker had cast it in! It saved itself and hailed a boat! What an eventful life! What a precocious kitten! We feared it owed its first plump condition to the water. How strong and effective the instinct of self-preservation! Our quince blossomed yesterday. Saw many low blackberries in bloom to-day.