4 July 1853 – 10 July 1853

Raspberries, some days. Such a habit have cows in a pasture of moving for- ward while feeding that, in surveying on the Great Fields to-day, I was interrupted by a herd of a dozen cows, which successively passed before my line of vision, feeding forward, and I had to watch my opportunity to look between them. Sometimes, however, they were of use, when they passed behind a birch stake and made a favorable background against which to see it.

I can sound the swamps and meadows on the line of the new road to Bedford with a pole, as if they were water. It may be hard to break through the crust, but then it costs a very slight effort to force it down, sometimes nine or ten feet, where the surface is dry. Cut a straight sapling, an inch or more in [diam- eter]; sharpen and peel it that it may go down with the least obstruction. The larch grows in both Moore’s and Pedrick’s swamps. Do not the trees that grow there indicate the depth of the swamp? I drink at the black and sluggish run which rises in Pedrick’s Swamp and at the clearer and cooler one at Moore’s Swamp, and, as I lie on my stomach, I am surprised at the quantity of decayed wood continually borne past. It is this process which, carried on for ages, formed this accumulation of soil. The outlets of a valley being obstructed, the decayed wood is no longer carried off but deposited near where it grew.

Very dry weather. Every traveller, horse, and cow raises a cloud of dust. It streams off from their feet, white and definite in its outline, like the steam from a locomotive. ‘Those who walk behind a flock of sheep must suffer martyrdom. Now is that annual drought which is always spoken of as some- thing unprecedented and out of the common course. Is that a utricularia which fills the water at the north end of Beck Stow’s? Sarsaparilla berries are ripe. Paddled up the river this evening. It is remarkable that, in pushing a boat up a river with a sandy bottom, the sound of the oar on the sand should be commu- nicated so distinctly through the oar to the air. It is perhaps as distinct as if no water intervened. We have cool nights now after warm days, — cooler than in June. You cannot safely wear your thin coat into evening outdoors. The Asclepias incarnata, or water asclepias now.

Large cnothera. Toads are still heard occasionally at evening. ‘To-day I heard a hylodes peep (perhaps a young one), which have so long been silent.

Galiwm asprellum, probably about the 5th or 6th. The side-flowering scutellaria now. Hedge- nettle, a day or two. Lysimachia lanceolata var. hybrida, some days. Yellow lily now common (since the 4th). The large seed-vessels of the blue flag conspicuous. The rainbow rush has been in bloom for some time. Epilobtum coloratum. A rough eupatorium budded at Hubbard’s burning. Ludwigia palustris, probably for ten days. Rubus Canadensis now. The red cap- sules of the Hypericum ellipticum begin to show in low lands. The cardinal-flower shows red. At Car- dinal Shore a large Polygonum amphibium, seven feet long, left by the water, creeping over the shore and rooting in it at the joints; not yet in flower. The bream poised over its sandy nest on waving fin — how aboriginal! So it has poised here and watched its ova before this New World was known to the Old. Still I see the little cavities of their nests along the shore. Lycopus sinuatus, water horehound.