11 September 1854 – 17 September 1854

Measured to-day the little Sternotherus odoratus which came out the ground in the garden September 9th. Its shell is thirty-two fortieths of an inch long, by twenty-five fortieths wide. It has a distinct dorsal ridge, and its head and flippers are re- markably developed. Its raised back and dorsal ridge, as in the case of the mud turtle, enable it to turn over very easily. It may have been hatched some time be- fore it came out, for not only there was no trace of the yolk (?), but its shell was much wider than the egg, when it first came out of the ground. I placed a sieve over it, and it remained in the hole it had made mostly concealed the two rainy days, — the 9th and 10th, — but to-day I found it against the edge of the sieve, its head and legs drawn in and quite motionless, so that you would have said the pulses of life had not fairly begun to beat. I put it into the tub on the edge of the mud. It seems that it does not have to learn to walk, but walks at once. It seems to have no infancy such as birds have. It is surprising how much cunning it already exhibits. It is defended both by its form and color and its instincts. As it lay on the mud, its color made it very inobvious, but, besides, it kept its head and legs drawn in and perfectly still, as if feigning death; but this was not sluggishness. At a little dis- tance I watched it for ten minutes or more. At length it put its head out far enough to see if the coast was clear, then, with its flippers, it turned itself toward the water (which element it had never seen before), and suddenly and with rapidity launched itself into it and dove to the bottom. Its whole behavior was calculated to enable it to reach its proper element safely and without attracting attention. Not only was it made of a color and form (like a bit of coal) which alone almost effectually concealed it, but it was made, infant as it was, to be perfectly still as if inanimate and then to move with rapidity when unobserved. The oldest turtle does not show more, if so much, cun- ning. I think I may truly say that it uses cunning and meditates how it may reach the water in safety. When I first took it out of its hole on the morning of the 9th, it shrunk into its shell and was motionless, feigning death. That this was not sluggishness, I have proved. When to-day it lay within half an inch of the water’s edge, it knew it for a friendly element and, without deliberation or experiment, but at last, when it thought me and all foes unobservant of its motions, with remarkable precipitation it committed itself to it as if realizing a long-cherished idea. Plainly all its motions were as much the result of what is called instinct as is the act of sucking in infants. Our own subtlest [szc] is likewise but another kind of instinct. The wise man is a wise infant obeying his finest and never-failing instincts. It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been. The little snapping turtle lies almost constantly on the mud with its snout out of water. It does not keep under water long. Yesterday in the cold rain, however, it lay buried in the mud all day! Surveying this forenoon, I saw a small, round, bright-yellow gall (some are red on one side), as big as a moderate cranberry, hard and smooth, saddled on a white oak twig. So I have seen them on the swamp white, the chinquapin, and the white, not to mention the Castile-soap one on the zliczfolza acorn edge. This is a cold evening with a white twilight, and threatens frost, the first in these respects decidedly autumnal evening. It makes us think of wood for the winter. For a week or so the evenings have been sen- sibly longer, and I am beginning to throw off my sum- mer idleness. This twilight is succeeded by a brighter starlight than heretofore.

Tuesday. A cool, overcast day threaten- ing a storm. Yesterday, after the two days’ cold rain, the air was very clear and fine-grained. This is a phe- nomenon we observe now after dog-days, until it is summed up in Indian summer. P. M. — To Hubbard Bath. Methinks these cool cloudy days are important to show the colors of some flowers, — that with an ab- sence of light their own colors are more conspicuous and grateful against the cool, moist, dark-green earth, —the Aster puniceus (the most densely massed), the (now beginning to prevail) Tradescanti, purple ge- rardia, etc., etc. The river has at length risen percep- tibly, and bathing I find it colder again than on the 2d, so that I stay in but a moment. I fear that it will not again be warm. The weeds in midstream are mostly drowned and are washing up to the shore, —much vallisneria and heart-leaf (with its threadlike stems) are added to the previous wreck. (Vide Sep- tember Sth.) A sprinkling drove me back for an umbrella, and I started again for Smith’s Hill via Hubbard’s Close. I see plump young bluebirds in small flocks along the fences, with only the primaries and tail a bright blue, the other feathers above dusky ashy-brown, tipped with white. How much more the crickets are heard a cool, cloudy day like this! Is it not partly because the air is stiller? I see the Kpilobiwm molle (?) (linear) in Hubbard’s Close still out, but I cannot find a trace of the fringed gentian. I scare pigeons from Hubbard’s oaks beyond. How like the creaking of trees the slight sounds they make! Thus they are concealed. Not only their prating or quvvet is like a sharp creak, but I heard a sound from them like a dull grating or cracking of bough on bough. I see the small aster (?) in the woods with ink-black spots at the base of the leaves. (It looks like a duwmosus, but has no flowers.) White oak acorns have many of them fallen. They are small and very neat light-green acorns, with small cups, com- monly arranged two by two close together, often with a leaf growing between them; but fre- quently three, forming a little star with three rays, looking very artificial. Some black scrub oak acorns have fallen, and a few black oak acorns also have fallen. The red oak began to fall first. Thorn apples are now commonly ripe and the prinos berries are conspicu- ous. Beside many white birch I now see many chest- nut leaves fallen and brown in the woods. There is now at last some smell of fungi in the woods since the rains. On a white oak beyond Everett’s orchard by the road, I see quite a flock of pigeons; their blue-black droppings and their feathers spot the road. The bare limbs of the oak apparently attracted them, though its acorns are thick on the ground. These are found whole in their crops. ‘They swallow them whole. I should think from the droppings that they had been eating berries. I hear that Wetherbee caught ninety- two dozen last week. I see maple viburnum berries blue-black with but little bloom. No full cymes, and the cymes rather less spreading than the other kinds. Some time. Now, especially, the strong bracing scent of the delicate fern by the Saw Mill Brook path. Dicksonia? or a coarser? How long has the mitchella been mpe? I see many still perfectly green in the swamp. Fruit of the damp and mossy forest floor ripening amid the now mildewy and bracing fern scent of the damp wood. Medeola berries shining black (or perhaps dark blue-black?) on long peduncles; how long? The whorls of leaves now stand empty for most part like shallow saucers, with their purple centres and bare peduncles. I hear that many upland plover have been seen on the burnt Brooks’s meadow. Marsh speedwell and yellow Bethlehem-star still out.

Wednesday. P. M. — To Great Fields. Many butternuts have dropped, — more than wal- nuts. A few raspberries still fresh. I find the large thistle (Cirsium muticum) out of bloom, seven or eight rods, perhaps, north of the potato-field and seven feet west of ditch, amid a clump of raspberry vines.

Thursday. 6 a. m.— To Hill. I hear a vireo still in the elms. The banks have now begun fairly to be sugared with the Aster Tradescanti. I get very near a small dipper behind Dodd’s, which sails out from the weeds fairly before me, then scoots over the surface crosswise the river, throwing the water high, dives, and is lost. A Vola lanceolata out on the meadow. The sun soon after rising has gone into a mackerel sky this morning, and, as I come down the hill, I ob- serve a singular mirage (?). There is a large dense field of mackerel sky with a straight and distinct edge parallel with the southeast horizon and lifted above it, apparently about double the height of the highest hills there; beneath this a clear sky, and lower still some level bars of mist, which cut off the top of Pine Hill, causing it to loom. The top, fringed with pines on account of the intervening lower mist, is seen as it were above the clouds, appears much too high, being referred to a far greater distance than the reality. Our humble scenery appears on a grand scale. I see the fair forms of mighty pines standing along a mountain ridge above the clouds and overlooking from a vast distance our low valley. I think that the image is not really elevated, but the bars of mist below make me refer it to too great a distance and therefore it is seen as higher. The appearance of those fine-edged pines, a narrow strip of a mountain ridge half a mile in length, is stupendous and imposing. It is as if we lived in a valley amid the Himmalaya mountains, a vale of Cashmere. There was a fog last night which I think prevented a frost. 8 a. M. — To opposite Pelham’s Pond by boat. Quite cool, with some wind from east and southeast. Took a watermelon for drink. I see many new and perfect upright cobwebs on the sium gone to seed by the side of the river. Now, instead of haying, they are raking cranberries all along the river. The raker moves slowly along with a basket before him, into which he rakes (hauling) the berries, and his wagon stands one side. It is now the middle of the cranberry season. The river has risen about a foot within a week, and now the weeds in midstream have generally dis- appeared, washed away or drowned. The ranunculus stems and leaves are added to the floating wreck. Now . our oars leave a broad wake of large bubbles, which are slow to burst. Methinks they are most numerous, large, and slow to burst near the end of a warm and dry spell, and that the water loses some of this tenacity inarain. But now we have had rain. At any rate on the 4th, just after the first rains (of the Ist and 2d), they would not readily form to the hand. There is such a difference in the state of the water. As we go up the Clamshell Reach I see the reflections of oaks very much prolonged by the fine ripple. Perhaps it is re-reflected from ripple to ripple. The rainbow portion of the bayo- net rush is just covered now by the rise of the river. This cooler morning methinks the jays are heard more. Now that the pontederias have mostly fallen, the poly- gonums are the most common and conspicuous flowers of the river. The smaller one has not shown more be- fore. I see a stream of small white insects in the air over the side of the river. W. Wheeler is burning his hill by the Corner road, just cut over. I see the scarlet flame licking along the ground, not in a continuous rank, but upright individual tongues of flame, undu- lating, flashing, forked, — narrow erect waves about the size of a man or boy; next the smoke rising per- pendicularly, blue against the pines and fuscous against the sky. Not till high in the sky does it feel the southerly wind. When [ look round for those light under sides of the crisped leaves, which were so conspicuous in the drought three weeks and more ago, I see none. Methinks they have not so much flattened out again since the rains, but have fallen, and that thus there are two falls every year. Those leaves which are curled by the drought of July and August apparently fall with the first fall rains, about the first week of Septem- ber, and those which remain are green as usual and go on to experience their regular October change. The only difference this year will be that there will not be so many leaves for the second fall. The first fall is now over. * For example, on the 17th I see that all those which had changed Crossing Fair Haven, the reflections were very fine, — not quite distinct, but prolonged by the fine ripples made by an east wind just risen. At a distance, enter- ing the pond, we mistook some fine sparkles, probably of insects, for ducks in the water, they were so large, which when we were nearer, looking down at a greater angle with the surface, wholly disappeared. Some large-leaved willow bushes in the meadow southeast of Lee’s reflected the light from the under sides of a part of their leaves, as if frost-covered, or as if white asters were mingled with them. We saw but two white lilies on this voyage; they are now done. About a dozen pontederia spikes, no mikania (that is now “white or gray), four or five large yellow lilies, and two or three small yellow lilies. The Bidens Becki is drowned or dried up, and has given place to the great bidens, the flower and ornament of the riversides at present, and now in its glory, especially at I. Rice’s shore, where there are dense beds. It is a splendid yellow — Channing says a lemon yellow — and looks larger than it is (two inches in diameter, more or less). Full of the sun. It needs a name. I see tufts of ferns on the edge of the meadows at a little dis- tance, handsomely tipped on edge with cinnamon brown. Like so many brown fires they light up the meadows. The button-bush everywhere yellow- ung. We see half a dozen herons in this voyage. Their wings are so long in proportion to their bodies that on Pine Hill have fallen and many tree-tops, maple and chesinut, are bare. there seems to be more than one undulation to a wing as they are disappearing in the distance, and so you can distinguish them. You see another begin before the first has ended. It is remarkable how common these birds are about our sluggish and marshy river. We must attract them from a wide section of country. It abounds in those fenny districts and meadow pond- holes in which they delight. A flock of thirteen tell- tales, great yellow-legs, start up with their shrill whistle from the midst of the great Sudbury meadow, and away they sad im a flock,—a sailing (or skimming) jlock, that is something rare methinks, — showing their white tails, to alight in a more distant place. We see some small dippers and scare up many ducks, black mostly, which probably came as soon as the earliest. The great bittern, too, rises from time to time, slowly flapping his way along at no great height above the meadow. | The small polygonum is first particularly abundant in the bend above the coreopsis, but it is [in] greatest abundance and perfection at three quarters through the great meadow, in great beds one to three rods wide, very dense and now rising but six or eight inches or so above the water. It is now apparently in perfection. See swallow like a barn swallow. Counted twenty haycocks in the great meadow, on staddles, of various forms,— tied round Va » [ \ ( \ a; min diye <2? ee ropes. They are picturesque objects in the meadow. Little as the river has risen, these meadows are already wet. The phragmites is still green. Why does not that large typha above the Causeway bear fruit ? ! Just above the Mill Village Bridge there is an in- teresting view of Nobscot, clad with wood, up the broad meadows on Larned Brook, which comes in there. Above the Pelham Pond Bridge, a short distance further, we dined; then went on. An interesting view and part of the river, — quite broad at the Great Chestnut house, — and a good land[ing] just before on the left. Went half a mile or more above the Chestnut house. Plenty of hibiscus out of bloom just above the Chestnut house on the west side, and some opposite some elms where we had dined, — all in Wayland. What is that large, sharply triangular, hollow-sided sedge about four feet high on the north edge of the river in middle of the great meadow? Coarse, grass- like somewhat.’ We went up thirteen or fourteen miles at least, and, as we stopped at Fair Haven Hill returning, rowed about twenty-five miles to-day. ‘ Sept. 15. P. M.— To boat under Fair Haven Hill and down river. Desmodium (?) or lespedeza ticks cover my clothes. I know not when I get them. The witch-hazel has opened since the 8th; say 11th.* Its leaves, a third or a half of them, are yellow and brown. Solidago spe- Mountain, where it is probably more exposed to the sun and drier. Sophia was there. ciosa at Clamshell out several days. Goodwin, the one- eyed fisherman, is back again at his old business (and Haynes also). He says he has been to Cape Cod a-haying. He says that their “salt grass cuts about the same with our fresh meadow.” Saw a chewink. Mrs. Mowatt, the actress, describes a fancy ball in Paris, given by an American millionaire, at which “one lady . . . wore so many diamonds (said to be valued at two hundred thousand dollars) that she was escorted in her carriage by gendarmes, for fear of robbery.” This illustrates the close connection between luxury and robbery, but commonly the gendarmes are further off.

Sophia and mother returned from Wa- chusett. S. saw much bayberry in Princeton. P. M.— To Fringed Gentian Meadow over Assa- bet and to Dugan Desert. I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now ? One man thinks there are not so many pigeons as last week, that it is too cold for them. There have been a few slight frosts in some places. The clematis is feathered. One Asclepias Cornutt begun to discount. I see many hardhacks in the lichen pasture by ‘Tommy Wheeler’s which are leafing out again conspicuously. I see little flocks of chip-birds along the roadside and on the apple trees, showing their light under sides when they rise.