14 August 1854 – 20 August 1854

Tuesday. 5.15 a. m.— To Hill by boat. By 5.30 the fog has withdrawn from the channel here and stands southward over the Texas Plain, forty or fifty feet high. Some birds, after they have ceased to sing by day, continue to sing faintly in the morning now as in spring. I hear now a warbling vireo, a robin (half strain), a golden robin whistles, bluebirds warble, pigeon woodpecker; not to mention the tapping of a woodpecker and the notes of birds which are heard through the day, as wood peawai, song sparrow, cuckoo, etc. On the top of the Hill I see the goldfinch eating the seeds (?) of the Canada thistle. I rarely ap- proach a bed of them or other thistles nowadays but I hear the cool twitter of the goldfinch about it. I hear a red squirrel’s reproof, too, as in spring, from the hickories. Now, just after sunrise, I see the western steeples with great distinctness, — tall white lines. The fog eastward over the Great Meadows appears indefi- nitely far, as well as boundless. Perhaps I refer it to too great a distance. It is interesting when the fluvia- tile trees begin to be seen through it and the sun is shining above it. By 6 o’clock it has risen up too much to be interesting. The button-bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom, so that it is too late to see the river’s brink in its perfection. It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button- bush, before you feel this sense of lateness in the year, before the meadows are shorn and the grass of hills and pastures is thus withered and russet. 9 a. M. — Walk all day with W. E. C., northwest into Acton and Carlisle.

8 a. M.— To climbing fern with John Russell. He says that my winkle fungus is a Boletus of Lin- neus, Polyporus of others, Auricularia (ear-like) now. My beautiful purple grass, now in flower, the Poa hirsuta. Peppermint has just begun. Walked along the Dennis shore. That sedge by edge of river with three- ranked linear leaves is Dulichium spathaceum. My wool-grass is a trichophorum. Says that in Chelmsford they rub the pigeon bait with the Solidago odora to attract pigeons. ‘That fuzzy-topped yw Sedge with slender spikes in straw- = colored ovate heads, arranged umbel- > like, he thought Scirpus (probably Cy- perus) strigosus. Aster puniceus, a day or two. That saw-like spiked grass which is an autumnal] 1854) A WALK WITH JOHN RUSSELL 447 sight in the mown fields is Paspalum ciliatifolium. Choke-cherry leaves are now many reddened. Scirpus capillaris, turned yellow, only two or three inches high, now covers the sand on Lupine Hill. A bluet still. Aster longifolius, a day or two. A pear-formed puff- ball (Lycoperdon), in Yellow This- [~ tle Meadow, now dry, buff-colored. =) That concave, chocolate-colored one I have is a Lycoperdon bovi(something), — “>> from being in pastures. That potamogeton in Nut Meadow Brook at the watering- place beyond Jenny’s is P. Claytont, with many long, linear, pellucid immersed leaves half an inch wide and some floating. My stag-horn lichen is the [Parmelia]| Borreri. The former grows on the ground and is more like a cladonia. Aster levis, two or three days, if I have not mentioned it before. Hypnum riparium in the Harrington trough. Vola pedata again. Uva-ursi berries reddened, but R. says not ripe or soft till spring. Saw the variolaria on the white pines on Harrington Road, and opegrapha, like Arab characters. Showed me the Prussian eagle in the stem of the brake. Aster corymbosus (?), some time by this road. (Russell thought it cordifolius, but the flowers are white and petioles not winged.) In the T. Wheeler pasture, showed me the Cladonia rangiferina (the common white one), the C. sylvestris (the green one with it), also the furcata, and spoke of the alpina as common in woods.

Warbling vireo in morning, — one.

Sunday. I hear no trilling of birds early. 5.15 a. M. — To Hill.