22 May 1854 – 28 May 1854

5.30 a. m. — Up Assabet. Now begins the slightly sultryish morning air into which you awake early to hear the faint buzz of a fly or hum of other insect. The teeming air, deep and hollow, filled with some spiritus, pregnant as not in Winter or spring, with room for imps, — good angels and bad, — many chambers in it, infinite sounds. I partially awake the first time for a month at least. As if the cope of the sky lifted, the heat stretched and swelled it as a bladder, and it remained permanently higher and more infinite for the summer. Suggesting that the night has not been, with its incidents. Naked- fifowered] azalea in garden and wood. The dew now wets me completely each morning. Swamp white oak began to blossom apparently yesterday; the anthers completely shed their pollen at once and are effete — only a small part as yet, however. The red oak, 7. e. at point of Island; as I did not observe it out on the 19th, say 20th. The white oak will apparently begin to-day.? The hemlock may have begun to bloom the 20th. Cor- nus florida. Galls, puff-like, on naked azalea and huckleberries. The later thorn is not much if any later to leaf than the other, apparently. Saw a small diving duck of some kind suddenly dash out from the side of the river above the hemlocks, like my red- breasted merganser, plowing the water with a great noise and flapping, and dive in the middle of the stream. Searching carefully, I after saw its head out amid the alders on the opposite side. When I returned, it again dived in the middle of the stream. Why should it attract my attention first by this rush? Shoots along half risen from the water, striking it with its wings. I saw one of the same family run thus a long way on the Penobscot. Ranunculus recurvatus out at V. Muhlen- bergii Brook since the 17th; say 19th. 10 a. M. — To Fair Haven by boat. I see many young and tender dragon-flies, both large and small, hanging to the grass-tops and weeds and twigs which rise above the water still going down. They are weak and sluggish and tender-looking, and appear to have lately crawled up these stems from the bottom where they were hatched, and to be waiting till they are hardened in the sun and air. (A few, however, are flying vigorously as usual over the water.) Where the grass and rushes are thick over the shallow water, I see their large gauze-like wings vibrating in the breeze and shining in the sun. It is remarkable that such tender organizations survive so many accidents. The black oak apparently began to blossom yester- day. The bear shrub oaks apparently began to bloom with the red, though they are various. Put the chinqua- pin with them immediately after. Lousewort fairly out in front of geum, on Hill. Examined the button-bush hummock. It is about eighteen feet by ten at the widest part and from one to one and a half feet thick. It consists chiefly of but- ton-bushes, four or five feet high and now as flourish- ing as any, a high blueberry (killed), and some water silkweeds springing up (five or six inches) at the foot of the dry stalks, together with the grass and soil they grew in. Though these have been completely covered by the freshet for some weeks since it was deposited here, and exposed to high winds and waves, it has not sensibly washed away. ‘These masses draw so much water that they ground commonly on the edge of the river proper, and so all things combine to make this a border bush or edging. (‘They are sometimes, when the water is high, dropped in the middle of the meadow, and make islands there.) They thus help to define the ' limits of the river and defend the edge of the meadow, and, the water being still high, I see at Fair Haven the sweeping lines formed by their broad tops mixed with willows in the midst of the flood, which mark the mid- summer boundary of the pond. They not only bear but require a good deal of water for their roots. Ap- parently these will not feel their removal at all. Every rod or two there is a great hummock of meadow sward and soil without bushes. The muskrats have already taken advantage of this one to squat on and burrow under, and by raising the shore it will afford them a refuge which they had not before here. Senecio, probably earlier still at Boiling Spring. Rhus radicans apparently leafs with the Toxicodendron. The apple bloom is chiefly passed. Rubus sempervirens put forth leaf soon after R. Canadensis. The dwarf sumach is just starting, some of them decidedly later than the button-bush! At Clamshell, the small oblong yellow heads of yel- low clover, some days. Tall buttercup, a day or two. Dandelions, for some time, gone to seed. Water saxi- frage, now well out. As I started away from Clam- shell, it was quite warm — the seats — and the water glassy smooth, but a little wind rose afterward. Musk- rats are frequently seen to dive a dozen rods from shore and not discovered again. A song sparrow’s callow young in nest. A summer yellowbird close by sounded we we we tchea tchea teche wiss wiss wiss. I perceive some of that peculiar fragrance from the marsh at the Hubbard Causeway, though the marsh is mostly covered. Is it a particular compound of odors? It is more remarkable and memorable than the scent of any particular plant, — the fragrance, as it were, of the earth itself. ‘The loud cawing of a crow heard echoing through a deep pine wood, — how wild! un- converted by all our preaching. Now and then the dumping sound of frogs. Large pinweed six inches high. Lupines have been out under Fair Haven Hill several days. Viola pedata blue the field there.

Tuesday. P. M.— To Cedar Swamp by Assabet. The cobwebs, apparently those I saw on the bushes the morning of the 12th, are now covered with insects, etc. (small gnats, etc.), and are much dilapidated where birds have flown through them. As I paddle up the Assabet, off the Hill, I hear a loud rustling of the leaves and see a large scared tortoise sliding and tumbling down the high steep bank a rod or more into the water. It has probably been out to lay its eggs. The old coal-pit heap is a favorite place for them. The wood pewee sings now in the woods behind the spring in the heat of the day (2 P. M.), sitting on a low limb near me, pe-a-wee, pe-a-wee, etc., five or six times at short and regular intervals, looking about all the while, and then, naively, pee-a-oo, emphasizing the first syllable, and begins again. The last is, in emphasis, like the scream of a hen-hawk. It flies off occasionally a few feet, and catches an insect and re- turns to its perch between the bars, not allowing this to interrupt their order. Scare up a splendid wood (?) duck, alternate blue and chestnut (?) forward, which flew into and lit in the woods; or was it a teal? After- ward two of them, and my diver of yesterday. The bent grass now lies on the water (commonly light-colored) for two feet. When I first saw this on a pool this spring, with the deep dimple where the blade emerges from the surface, I suspected that the water had risen gently in calm weather and was heaped about the dry stem as against any surface before it is wetted. But now the water is rapidly falling, and there is considerable wind. Moreover, when my boat has passed over these blades, I am surprised on looking back to see the dimple still as perfect as before. I lift a blade so as to bring a part which was under water to the surface, and still there is a perfect dimple about it; the water is plainly repelled from it. I pull one up from the bottom and passing it over my lips am sur- prised to find that the front side is perfectly dry from the root upward and cannot be wet, but the back side is wet. It has sprung and grown in the water, and yet one of its surfaces has never been wet. What an invaluable composition it must be coated with! The same was the case with the other erect grasses which I noticed growing in the water, and with those which I plucked on the bank and thrust into it. But the flags were wet both sides.'. The one surface repels moisture perfectly. The barbarea has been open several days. The first yellow dor-bug struggling in the river. The white cedar has now grown quite perceptibly, and is in ad- vance of any red cedar which I have seen. Saw a hummingbird on a white oak in the swamp. It is strange to see this minute creature, fit inhabitant of a parterre, on an oak in the great wild cedar swamp. The clustered andromeda appears just ready to open; say to-morrow.” The smilacina is abundant and well out here now. A new warbler (?). We soon get through with Nature. She excites an expectation which she cannot satisfy. The merest child which has rambled into a copsewood dreams of a wilderness so wild and strange and inexhaustible as Nature can never show him. The red-bird which I saw on my companion’s string on election days I thought but the outmost sentinel of the wild, immortal camp, — of the wild and dazzling infantry of the wilderness, — that the deeper woods abounded with redder birds still; but, now that I have threaded all our woods and waded the swamps, I have never yet met with his compeer, still less his wilder kindred.* The red- bird which is the last of Nature is but the first of God. The White Mountains, likewise, were smooth mole- hills to my expectation. We condescend to climb the crags of earth. It is our weary legs alone that praise them. That forest on whose skirts the red-bird flits is not of earth. I expected a fauna more infinite and various, birds of more dazzling colors and more celes- tial song. How many springs shall I continue to see the common sucker (Catostomus Bostoniensis) floating dead on our river! Will not Nature select her types from a new fount? The vignette of the year. This earth which is spread out like a map around me is but the lining of my inmost soul exposed. In me is the sucker that I see. No wholly extraneous object can compel me to recognize it. I am guilty of suckers. I go about to look at flowers and listen to the birds. There was a time when the beauty and the music were all within, and I sat and listened to my thoughts, and there was a song in them. [ sat for hours on rocks and wrestled with the melody which possessed me. I sat and listened by the hour to a positive though faint and distant music, not sung by any bird, nor vibrating any earthly harp. When you walked with a joy which knew not its own origin. When you were an organ of which the world was but one poor broken pipe. I lay long on the rocks, foundered like a harp on the seashore, that knows not how it is dealt with. You sat on the earth as on a raft, listening to music that was not of the earth, but which ruled and arranged it. Man should be the harp articulate. When your cords were tense. Think of going abroad out of one’s self to hear music, —to Europe or Africa! Instead of so living as to be the lyre which the breath of the morning causes to vibrate with that melody which creates worlds—to sit up late and hear Jane Lind! You may say that the oaks (all but the chestnut oak I have seen) were in bloom yesterday; 1. e., shed pollen more or less. Their blooming is soon over. Water- bugs and skaters coupled. Saw in Dakin’s land, near the road, at the bend of the river, fifty-nine bank swallows’ holes in a small upright bank within a space of twenty by one and a half feet (in the middle), part above and part below the sand-line. This would give over a hundred birds to this bank. They continu- ally circling about over the meadow and river in front, often in pairs, one pursuing the other, and filling the air with their twittering. Mulberry out to-day.

4.30 a. mM. — To Cliffs. A considerable fog, but already rising and retreating to the river. There are dewy cobwebs on the grass. The morning came in and awakened me early, — for I slept with a window open, — and the chip-bird was heard also. As I go along the causeway the [sun] rises red, with a great red halo, through the fog. When T reach the hill, the fog over the river already has its erectile feathers up. I am a little too late. But the level expanse of it far in the east, now lit by the sun, with countless tree-tops like oases seen through it, reminds of vast tracts of sand and of the seashore. It is like a greater dewy cobweb spread over the earth. It gives a wholly new aspect to the world, especially in that direc- tion. The sun is eating up the fog. As I return down the hill, my eyes are cast toward the very dark moun- tains in the northwest horizon, the remnants of a hard blue scalloped rim to our saucer. Asif a more celestial ware had formerly been united there to our earthen. Old china are they, worth keeping still on our side- boards, though fragmentary. | The early cinquefoil now generally yellows the banks. Put the sage willow with the black for the present. The black spruce apparently blossomed with the white [szc], but its leaf-buds have not yet fairly started. P. M. — To Pedrick’s meadow. The side-flowering sandwort well out in Moore’s Swamp. The pyrus has now for some days taken the place of the amelanchier, though it makes less show. How sweet and peculiar the fragrance of the different kinds of cedar! It is imparted to your hands. Lady’s- slipper since the 18th; say 22d. Waded into Beck Stow’s. The water was so cold at first that I thought it would not be prudent to stand long in it, but when I got further from the bank it was comparatively warm. True, it was not then shaded nor quite so deep, but I suppose there were some springs in the bank. Sur- prised to find the Andromeda Polzfolia in bloom and apparently past its prime at least a week or more. It is in water a foot and a half deep, and rises but little above it. The water must have been several inches higher when it began to bloom. A timid botanist would never pluck it. Its flowers are more interesting than any of its family, almost globular, crystalline white, even the calyx, except its tips, tinged with red or rose. Properly called water andromeda: you must wade into water a foot or two deep to get it. The leaves are not so conspicuously handsome as in the winter. Also the buck-bean, apparently as old, —say a week, — in the same depth of water. The calyculata almost completely done, and the high blueberry getting thin. Potentilla Canadensis var. simplex, perhaps two days. I find a male juniper, with effete blossoms quite large, yet so fresh that I suspect I may have antedated it. Between Beck Stow’s and Pedrick’s meadow. The red cedar has grown considerably, after all. My Rubus triflorus (only Bigelow and Gray place it on hillsides) is nearly out of bloom. It is the same I found at the Miles Swamp; has already some green fruit as big as the smallest peas. Must be more than a week old. It is the only annual rubus described. May it not be a new kind ? | This evening I hear the hum of dor-bugs, — a few, —but listen long in vain to hear a hylodes. There being probably no shrub or tree which has not begun to leaf now, I sum up the order of their leafing thus (wild and a few tame).’ Their buds begin to burst into leaf: — The earliest gooseberry in garden and swamp, April 20. ? Elder, longest shoots of any, in some places (May 5). Raspberry in swamps. 298 ~3 ~~ Re PP PP “3 “~ r ? Thimble-berry (perhaps in favorable places only). Wild red cherry in some places. Meadow-sweet. Red currant, but slow to advance; observed only ours, which is late? Second gooseberry. Salix alba, April 27. Black currant, not seen. Small dark native willow blossoming (?) and leafing. Early willow, two-colored, not seen. Muhlenberg’s (? ), not seen. Young black cherry. Choke-cherry shoots. Viburnum Lentago nudum Diervilla, advances fast. Barberry in favorable places. Some young apples in favorable places. Young alders, slow to advance, both kinds. Early rose. Moss rose, not seen. Sweet-fern, slow to advance. Mountain-ash, May 5, larger leaves than any tree and first to show green at a distance. Cultivated cherry. Pyrus arbutijolia. Late pyrus, not seen. Horse-chestnut. Hazel, May 5. Beaked hazel, not distinguished. Early large apples. Late gooseberry in garden. Pears, not seen. Wild red cherry generally; or let it go with the earliest. Dwarf or sand cherry. Hardhack. not carefully distinguished between. ?? Clematis, shoots five or six inches long, May 16. Low blackberry. 1854) THE ORDER OF LEAFING 299 ?? Rubus triflorus, eight inches high, May 22. ? Quince. ?? Mayflower, not seen. Young red maples. ?? Fever-root, four or five inches high, May 12. Creeping juniper comes forward like fir balsam. Larch, opens slowly; makes a show, May 12. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum. Amelanchter Botryapium, fast. High blackberry. ? Sempervirens, not seen. Young rock maple. Large white “ Alders generally. P? Linnea, not seen. Ostrya. Amelanchier oblongijolza. Early trembles suddenly. ?? Dwarf cassandra. Balm-of-Gilead. Early thorns. ? Late “ , not seen. Yellow birch. ? Cockspur thorn, not seen. Canoe birch, shoots. White “ , shoots. Black, young (large not on 12th). Canada plum. Pitch pine. Bear-berry, not seen. Norway pine, not seen. White pine. Young hornbeam. Cornus alternifolia. ? Round-leaved [cornel], seen late. Panicled cornel. Suky o Sweet-gale, May 11. ~S ~S Ww ~~ ~ TU Red oak, May 11. Bass, sudden. Young chestnuts and lower limbs; full leafing of large not seen. ?? Clethra, seen late.} Old hornbeam. Maple-leaved arrow-wood, not seen till late. Arrow-wood. Butternut. High blueberry. Rhus Toxicodendron. ? var. radicans, seen late. Sweet-briar generally; earliest not seen. ? Swamp rose, seen late. ?? Beech, not seen. White-ash, May 12. Fir-balsam. Fever-bush, seen rather late. ?? Woodbine, not seen. Black shrub oak. Elm, young. Slippery [elm], not seen. Great red maples, May 13. Clustered andromeda, 138th. Young Populus grandidentata (large three or four days later ?). Black oak. Black willow. P?? Sage “ , seen late. ? Chinquapin oak. ?? Chestnut ** , Dot seen. Celtis. Cranberry. Locust, 14th. Nemopanthes. ? Witch-hazel, in our garden. Swamp white oak, slow. ? Large sugar maples, not well observed. White swamp-pink. ~ ? “9 “-. ? = 1854) THE ORDER OF LEAFING 301 Buttonwood. Cornus florida. Panicled andromeda, not generally; several days later. ? Waxwork, seen but lost place. Pignut hickory, make a show suddenly. ? Mockernut hickory. ?? Black walnut. Young white oak (old 15th, slow). Prinos verticillatus, 15th. ? Single-berry prinos, seen late. Huckleberries, black. N. B. — Trees generally! ! Grape. Smilax. ?? Pinweeds, seen late, six or more inches high; the large, May 22. ?? Cistus, as early at least. Mulberry, May 16. ?? Carrion-flower, four or five feet long, the 31st of May. White spruce,! slow. Sassafras, slow. Lambkill. ?? Mountain laurel, not seen early. ?? Andromeda Poltfolia, seen late. ? Rhodora. Tupelo. Poison-dogwood. Jersey tea. Azalea nudiflora, 17th. Button-bush, but does not show, being few buds. Beach plum, 19th; scarcely makes any show the 24th, no more than the button-bush. . a. growth not obvious, and difference in trees; not Betts sure of date. Young hemlocks, 20th; old, 21st. Checkerberry, 20th, shoots just visible. ? Mountain sumach, 22d. ? Black spruce,” 24th, hardly yet at Potter’s. Of common deciduous shrubs or trees, the button- bush is the latest to leaf, and, from the fewness of its buds, 2. e. the great intervals between them, they ap- pear later than other plants which leaf nearly at the same time. Their being subject to overflows at this season may have to do with this habit, as hardhacks, etc., under these circumstances are equally late. Of all deciduous shrubs and trees the mountain sumach at Hubbard’s field is the latest to leaf. I have not observed those under Fair Haven.° The beach plum at a little distance does not make so much show of green even as the button-bush. Do the young shoots show more? Tree-toads heard oftener, and at evening I hear a dor-bug hum past. The mouse-ear down begins to blow in fields.

5.30 a. mM. — To Hill. Smilax. Heard and saw by the sassafras shore the rose-breasted grosbeak, a handsome bird with a loud and very rich song, in character between that of a robin and a red-eye. It sang steadily like a robin. Rose breast, white beneath, black head and above, white on shoulder and wings. The flowering ferns‘ just begin to light up the meadow with their yellowish green. Cliffs, and perhaps started first.

Friday. 5.30 a. mM. — To climbing ivy. Pipe-grass equisetum. Buttercups now densely spot the churchyard. Now for the fragrance of firs and spruce. P. M. — To Walden. Horse-radish, several days; rye four feet high. The luxuriant and rapid growth of this hardy and valuable grass is always surprising. How genial must nature be to it! It makes the revolution of the seasons seem a rapid whirl.- How quickly and densely it clothes the earth! Thus early it suggests the harvest and fall. At sight of this deep and dense field all vibrating with motion and light, looking into the mass of its pale(?)- green culms, winter recedes many degrees in my mem- ory. This the early queen of grasses with us (?). Indian corn the 2d, or later. It always impresses us at this season with a sense of genialness and bountifulness. Grasses universally shoot up like grain now, in many places deceiving with the promise of a luxuriant crop where in a few weeks they will be dry and wiry. Pas- tures look as if they were mowing-land. The season of grass, now everywhere green and luxuriant. The leaves have now grown so much that it [is] dif- ficult to see the small birds in the tree-tops, and it is too late now to survey in woods conveniently. Saw Mr. Holbrook trying an experiment on an elm this morn- ing, which he endeavored in vain to make perpendicu- lar last year with a brace. It was about six inches in diameter, and he had sawed it a little more than half through at about six feet from the ground and then driven in an ashen wedge about three quarters of an inch thick on the outside. This made it perpendicular, and he was about filling it with clay and protecting it. In Nathan Stow’s sprout-land every black cherry is completely stripped of leaves by the caterpillars, and they look as if dead, only their great triangular white nests being left in their forks. I see where a frost killed the young white oak leaves and some hickories in deep sprout-land hollows, apparently about a week ago, when the shoots were about an inch long and the leaves about the same. Evergreen-forest note still, — the first syl- lable three times repeated, er-er-er, etc., — flitting amid the tops of the pines. Some young red or scarlet (?) oaks have already grown eighteen inches, 2. e. within a fortnight, before their leaves have two-thirds ex- panded. In this instance, perhaps, they have accom- plished more than half their year’s growth, as if, being held back by winter, their vegetative force had accu- mulated and now burst forth like a stream which has been dammed. They are properly called shoots. Gath- ered some small pincushion galls on a white oak. ‘They are smaller and handsome, more colored than those I first saw on shrub oaks about a week ago. They are shaped somewhat like little bass-drum sticks with large pads, — on the end of last year’s twigs. It is a globular mass composed of fine crystalline rays, somewhat like stigmas, the ground white ones, thickly sprinkled with bright-scarlet (rather than crimson) dimples. This is one of the most faery-like productions of the woods. These young white oak leaves and young leaves gen- erally are downy, —downy-swaddled, as if for protec- tion against frosts, etc. Are not the more tender the most downy? Why is the downy Populus grandidentata so much later than the other? The lint now begins to come off the young leaves.

P.-M.— To Saw Mill Brook. Geum rivale, a day or two at Hubbard’s Close; also the Rubus triflorus abundant there along the brook next the maple swamp, and still in bloom. Wild pinks (Silene), apparently a day or two. The red-eye is an indefatigable singer, — a succession of short bars with hardly an interval long continued, now at 3 p. mM. The pincushion galls on young white oaks and on shrub oaks are now in their prime. It is a kind of crystalline wool. Those which I have noticed on the shrub oaks are the largest, and are crimson-spotted, while those on the young white oaks are scarlet-spotted and for the most part about the size of a cranberry. They are either at the extremity of last year’s twig or saddled on it midway. No fruit perhaps catches my eye more. It is remarkable that galls are apparently as early to form as the leaves to start, and that some of them are among the most beautiful products of the wood. Within small hard kernels in the midst of these I find minute white grubs. I see and hear the yellow-throated vireo. It is somewhat similar (its strain) to that of the red-eye, prelia pre-li-ay, with longer intervals and occasionally a whistle like tlea tlow, or chowy chow, or tully ho (??) on a higher key. It flits about in the tops of the trees. I find the pensile nest of a red-eye between a fork of a shrub chestnut near the path. It is made, thus far, of bark and different woolly and silky materials. The arums—some of them — have bloomed probably as early as the last I saw at the Miles Swamp. Viola pubescens must be about out of bloom (??). Actea alba fully out, the whole raceme, say two days. I see young gooseberries as big as small green peas. Is that low two or three leaved plant without stem about Saw Mill f Brook a wood lettuce ? That tall swamp fern by Eb. Hubbard’s Close, with fertile fronds separate and now cinnamon-colored, perhaps a little later than the interrupted, appears to be the cinna- momea. Is that very wide, loose-spread fern, three or four feet high, now beginning to fruit terminally, the spectabilis, — a large specimen ?

Sunday. The F. hyemalis, fox-colored sparrow, rusty grackles, tree sparrows, have all gone by; also the purple finch. The snipe has ceased (?) to boom. I have not heard the phoebe of late, and methinks the bluebird and the robin are not heard so often (the former certainly not). Those tumultuous morning concerts of sparrows, tree and song, hyemalis, and grackles, like leaves on the trees, are past, and the woodland quire will rather be diminished than in- creased henceforth. But, on the other hand, toads and frogs and insects, especially at night, all through June, ‘betray by the sounds they make their sensitiveness to the increasing temperature, and theirs especially is the music which ushers in the summer. Each warmer night, like this, the toads and frogs sing with increased energy, and already fill the air with sound, though the bullfrogs have not yet begun to trump in earnest. To this add the hum and creak of insects. These still herald or expect the summer. The birds do not fore- tell that. 12 m. — By boat to Lee’s Cliff. Larch cones are now conspicuous and handsome, — dark-crimson, about half an inch long. Pitch pine cones, too, are now handsome. The larch has a little of the sweetness of the fir, etc. Pontederias, flags, Polygonum hydropiperoides (just showing itself), that coarse utricularia, often floating, potamogetons, etc., etc., now begin to make a conspicuous border to the river, and its summer limits begin to be defined. Pads began to be eaten by insects as soon as they appeared, though it is still so high that I am obliged to lower my mast at the bridges. Even this spring the arches of the stone bridge were completely concealed by the flood, and yet at midsummer I can sail under them without lowering my mast, which is[ ]'feet high from the bottom of the boat. Critchicrotches have been edible . some time in some places. It must be a kind of water milfoil, whose leaves I now see variously divided under water, and some nearly two feet long.’ ? [A blank space left here.] 2 Probably Ssum. At the old bridge at the hill, the water being quite smooth, I saw a water-bug cross straight from the south to the north side, about six rods, furrowing the water in a waving line, there being no other insects near him on the surface. It took but about a minute. It was an interesting sight, proving that this little insect, whose eyes are hardly raised above the plane of the water, sees, or 1s cognizant of, the opposite shore. I have no doubt that they cross with ease and rapidity lakes a mile wide. It looked like an adventurous voyage for it. Probably he is in danger from fishy monsters, — though it must be difficult for a fish to catch one. I see the exuvie or cases of some insects on the stems of water plants above the surface. The large devil’s- needles are revealed by the reflection in the water, when I cannot see them in the air, and at first mistake them for swallows. Broom-rape, perhaps yesterday. Thimble-berry out, — at Lee’s Cliff day before yester- day at least. Distinguished by the downy under sides of its leaves. I see those large, thin, transparent radical heart (?) leaves’ floating on the surface, as if bitten off by some creature. I see breams’ nests which have been freshly cleared out and are occupied. The red choke-berry is fully out, and I do not know but it is as early as the black. Red clover at Clamshell, a day or two. Saw that common snake Coluber eximius of De Kay, — checkered adder, etc., etc.,— forty-one inches long. A rather light brown above, with large dark-brown, irregularly quadrangular blotches, mar- gined with black, and similar small ones, on the sides; abdomen light salmon-white, — whitest toward the head, —checkered with quadrangular blotches; very light bluish-slate in some lights and dark-slate or black in others. Abdominal plates 201, caudal scales 45. I should think from Storer’s description that his speci- men had lost its proper colors in spirits. He describes not the colors of a living snake, but those which alcohol - might impart to it(?). It is as if you were to describe the white man as very red in the face, having seen a drunkard only. The huckleberries, excepting the late, are now gen- erally in blossom, their rich clear red contrasting with the light-green leaves; frequented by honey-bees, full of promise for the summer. One of the great crops of the year. The blossom of the Vaccinium vacillans is larger and paler, but higher-colored on one side and more transparent (?), less concealed by leaves. These are the blossoms of the Vacciniew, or Whortleberry Family, which affords so large a proportion of our berries. The crop of oranges, lemons, nuts, and raisins, and figs, quinces, etc., etc., not to mention tobacco and the like, is of no importance to us compared with these. The berry-promising flower of the Vacciniee. This crop grows wild all over the country, — wholesome, bountiful, and free, —a real ambrosia (one is called V. Vitis-Idea, Vine of Mt. Ida), — and yet men — the foolish demons that they are—devote themselves to culture of tobacco, inventing slavery and a thousand other curses as the means, — with infinite pains and inhumanity go raise tobacco all their lives. Tobacco is the staple instead of huckleberries. Wreaths of to- bacco smoke go up from this land, the incense of a million sensualists. With what authority can such dis- tinguish between Christians and Mahometans ? Finding the low blackberry nearly open, I looked long and at last, where the vine ran over a rock on the south hillside, the reflected heat had caused it [to] open fully its large white blossoms. In such places, apparently yesterday. The high blackberry in similar places, at least to-day. At these rocks I hear a sharp peep, — methinks of a peetweet dashing away. Four pale-green (?) eggs, finely sprinkled with brown, in a brown thrasher’s nest, on the ground (!!) under a barberry bush. The night-warbler, after his strain, drops down almost perpendicularly into a tree-top and is lost. The crickets, though it is everywhere an op- pressively warm day (yesterday I had a fire!!) and I am compelled to take off my thinnish coat, are heard, particularly amid the rocks at Lee’s Cliff. They must love warmth. As if it were already autumn there. White clover under the rocks. I see the ebony spleen- wort full-grown. The pitch pines are rather past bloom here, — the cobwebs they contain yellowed with their dust, — probably generally in bloom elsewhere. Tur- ritis stricta, apparently out of bloom. Young wild cherry under rocks, fully out two or three days; gen- erally or elsewhere not quite out; probably will begin to-morrow. It would be worth the while to ask ourselves weekly, Is our life innocent enough? Do we live inhumanely, toward man or beast, in thought or act? To be serene and successful we must be at one with the universe. The least conscious and needless injury inflicted on any creature is to its extent a suicide. What peace — or life — can a murderer have ? Fair Haven Cliffs. The lint has begun to come off the young leaves. The birches are still the darkest green to be seen in large masses, except evergreens. The last begin to be less conspicuous, beginning to be lost in the sea of verdure. The shrub oak plain is now fairly greened again, only slightly tinged with redness here and there, where are the youngest white oak leaves. As I sail down toward the Clamshell Hill about an hour before sunset, the water is smoothed like glass, though the breeze is as strong as before. How is this? Yet I have not seen much smooth water this spring. I think the fall must be the time. The rounded green hills are very fair and elysian. ‘The low clumps of bushes on their sides, just clothed with tender verdure, look like islets half sunk and floating in a cool sea of grass. ‘They do not stand, but float on the cool glaucous swells. Though the grass is really short and thin there. Whole schools of fishes leap out of water at once with a loud plashing, even many rods distant, scared by my sail. Cracks in the earth are still visible, and hips of the late rose still hold on under water in some places. The inhumanity of science concerns me, as when I am tempted to kill a rare snake that I may ascertain its species. I feel that this is not the means of acquir- ing true knowledge.