22 October 1855 – 28 October 1855

Another cloudy day without rain. P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard’s Grove. How welcome this still, cloudy day! An inward sunniness more than makes up for the want of an ex- ternal one. As I pass this grove, I see the open ground strewn and colored with yellow leaves, which have been wafted from a large black birch ten rods within the wood. I see at a distance the scattered birch-tops, like yellow flames amid the pines, also, in another direction, the red of oaks in the bosom of a pine wood, and, in sprout-lands on Fair Haven, the deep and uni- form red of young oaks. I sat on a bank at the brook crossing, beyond the grove, to watch a flock of seringos, perhaps Savannah sparrows, which, with some F. hyemalis and other sparrows, were actively flitting about amid the alders and dogwood. At last I saw one resting a moment to prune himself, and in this operation he opened his plumage very thoroughly to me. Distinct yellow eyebrows, extending round beneath the bill; tail black- ish or dusky; primaries bay or chestnut; secondaries (?) edged with white; some white lines on shoulders; pale flesh-colored bill and legs; toward vent beneath, pure white. Suddenly a pigeon hawk’ dashed over the bank very low and within a rod of me, and, strik- ing its wings against the twigs with a clatter close to & sparrow, which escaped, it alighted amid the alders in front, within four rods of me. It was attracted by the same objects which attracted me. It sat a few moments, balancing itself and spreading its tail and wings, —a chubby little fellow. Its back appeared a sort of deep chocolate-brown. Every sparrow at once concealed itself, apparently deep in the bushes next the ground. Once or twice he dashed down there amid the alders and tried to catch one. In a few min- utes he skimmed along the hedge by the path and disappeared westward. But presently, hearing the sound of his wings amid the bushes, I looked up and saw him dashing along through the willows and then out and upward high over the meadow in pur- suit of a sparrow (perhaps a seringo). The sparrow flew pretty high and kept doubling. When it flew direct, the hawk gained, and got within two or three feet of it; but when it doubled, it gained on the hawk; so the latter soon gave up the chase, and the little bird flew off high over my head, with a panting breath and a rippling ricochet flight, toward the high pine grove. When I passed along the path ten minutes after, I found that all those sparrows were still hid under the bushes by the ditch-side, close to the ground, and I saw nothing of them till I scared them out by going within two or three feet. No doubt they warned each other by a peculiar note. What a corsair the hawk is to them! — a little fellow hardly bigger than a quail. Birds certainly are afraid of man. They [allow] all other creatures, — cows and horses, etc., — excepting only one or two kinds, birds or beasts of prey, to come near them, but not man. What does this fact signify? Does it not signify that man, too, is a beast of prey to them? Is he, then, a true lord of creation, whose subjects are afraid of him, and with reason? They know very well that he is not humane, as he pretends to be. . In Potter’s pasture, as you go to Fair Haven Hill, where he had grain in the summer, the great mullein leaves are strewn as thick as turnips that have been sown. ‘This the first year. The next I suppose they will blossom. ‘They have felled and carted off that middling-sized white oak just beyond. I count about one hundred and twenty rings of growth. In Potter’s maple swamp, where the red maple leaves lie in thick beds on the ground, what a strong mustiness, even sourness in some places! Yet I like this scent. With the present associations, sweet to me is the mustiness of the grave itself. I hear a hyla. The swamp pyrus (Amelanchier) is leafing again. One opening leaflet is an inch long, while the reddish- yellow leaves still hold on at the end of the twig above. Its green swollen buds are generally conspic- uous, curving round the stems. There is a twig full of those dead black leaves on one. It is a new spring there. I hear the sound of the first flail from William Wheeler’s barn. I mark the gray diverging stems of the dogwood, which is now bare, topped with the long, recurved, dry panicles like loose barbs. I think that the trees generally have not worn very brilliant colors this month, but I find to-day that many small shrubs which have been protected by the forest are remarkably fair and bright. ‘They, perhaps, have not felt the drought nor been defaced: by insects. They are the best preserved and the most delicately tinted. Isee the maple viburnum leaves a dark, dull spotted crimson toward the edges, like some wild apples. I distinguish it from the red maple at first only by its downy feeling beneath and the simple form of some leaves. ‘These have also a short petiole and not a sharp sinus. Then there is the more or less crimson nudum viburnum, passing from scarlet through crimson to black-spotted and crimson in its decay. ‘The black- ness spreads very fast in one night. The glossy scarlet blueberries and the redder huckleberries; the scarlet choke-berry, or vermilion; some red maples which are yellow with only scarlet eyes. But still, in the shade and shelter of the woods as fair as anything, the leaves of the wild cherry, so clear of injury from insects, passing from green through yellow or a cherry red to the palest and purest imaginable cherry-color, the palest fawn with a mere tinge of cherry, with their fine overlapping serrations. ‘Those great twisted yellow leaves of hickory sprouts, yellow and green, from which I used to drink. And here is a very handsome orange- red high blackberry leaf, with its five leafets all per- fect; most are dark-red. But all these, like shells and pebbles must be seen on their own seashore. There are two seasons when the leaves are in their glory, their green and perfect youth in June and this their ripe old age. Some of the very young oak leaves have the deepest lustreless or inward scarlet of any. Most of the reddish oak leaves now in the woods are spotted, mildewed as it were, by the drip from above. ‘Brought home the three kinds of lechea, whose pretty whorls of radical shoots or branches are now, methinks, more conspicuous than before. I should distinguish the two lesser by the one having larger pods and being more slender, taller, and more simple every way, the other low, bushy, spreading, the branches making a larger angle with the stems, fine-leaved, small and few pods, and the radical shoots (alone of the three specimens I have) very densely branched and leafed. Those of the other two are simple. All have a part of the radical leafets above recurved. The Plymouth fishermen have just come home from the Banks, except one.

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. The streets are strewn with buttonwood leaves, which rustle under your feet, and the children are busy raking them into heaps, some for bonfires. The large elms are bare; not yet the buttonwoods. The sugar maples on the Common stand dense masses of rich yellow leaves with a deep scarlet blush, — far more than blush. They are remarkably brilliant this year on the exposed surfaces. The last are as handsome as any trees in the street.’ I am struck with the hand- some form and clear, though very pale, say lemon, yellow of the black birch leaves on sprouts in the woods, finely serrate and distinctly plazted from the midrib. I plucked three leaves from the end of a red maple shoot, an underwood, each successively smaller than the last, the brightest and clearest scarlet that I ever saw. ‘These and the birch attracted universal admiration when laid on a sheet of white paper and passed round the supper table, and several inquired particularly where I found them. I never saw such colors painted. They were without spot; ? ripe leaves. The small willows two or three feet high by the road- side in woods have some rich, deep chrome-yellow leaves with a gloss. The sprouts are later to ripen and richer-colored. The pale whitish leaves of horehound in damp grassy paths, with its spicy fruit in the axils, are tinged with purple or lake more or less. Going through what was E. Hosmer’s muck-hole pond, now almost entirely dry, the surface towards the shore is covered with a dry crust more or less cracked, which crackles under my feet. I strip it up like bark in long pieces, three quarters of an inch thick and a foot wide and two long. It appears to be composed of fine mosses and perhaps utricularia and the like, such as grow in water. A litile sphagnum is quite conspicu- ous, erect but dry, in it. Now is the time for chestnuts. A stone cast against the trees shakes them down in showers upon one’s head and shoulders. But I cannot excuse myself for using the stone. It is not innocent, it is not just, so to maltreat the tree that feeds us. I am not disturbed by considering that if I thus shorten its life I shall not enjoy its fruit so long, but am prompted to a more - innocent course by motives purely of humanity. I sympathize with the tree, yet I heaved a big stone against the trunks like a robber, — not too good to commit murder. I trust that I shall never do it again. These gifts should be accepted, not merely with gen- tleness, but with a certain humble gratitude. The tree whose fruit we would obtain should not be too rudely shaken even. It is not a time of distress, when a little haste and violence even might be pardoned. It is worse than boorish, it is criminal, to inflict an un- necessary injury on the tree that feeds or shadows us. Old trees are our parents, and our parents’ parents, perchance. If you would learn the secrets of Nature, you must practice more humanity than others. The thought that I was robbing myself by injuring the tree did not occur to me, but I was affected as if I had cast a rock at a sentient being, — with a duller sense than my own, it is true, but yet a distant relation. Be- hold a man cutting down a tree to come at the fruit! What is the moral of such an act? Faded white ferns now at Saw Mill Brook. They press yellow or straw-color. Ah! we begin old men in crime. Would that we might grow innocent at last as the children of light! A downy woodpecker on an apple tree utters a sharp, shrill, rapid tea te t, t, t, ttt é t. Is that tall weed in Mrs. Brooks’s yard Cacalia suaveolens ?? Yet stem more angled than grooved; four or five feet high. Some time ago. Cousin Charles writes that his horse drew 5286 pounds up the hill from Hale’s factory, at Cattle-Show in Haverhill the other day.

Rained last night and all this day for the most part, bringing down the leaves, buttonwoods and sugar maples, in the street. The rich yellow and scarlet leaves of the sugar maple on the Common, which now thickly cover the grass in great circles about the trees, half having fallen, look like the re- flection of the trees in water, and light up the Common, reflecting light even to the surrounding houses. The gentle touch of the rain brings down more leaves than the wind. Looked at the old picture of Concord at Mrs. Brooks’s, — she says by a Minott, an uncle (or grand- uncle?) of hers. There are the British marching into town in front of the meeting-house and facing about in front of where the tavern now stands, scattered Britons going up Main Street and about the town, and two officers on the Burying Hill looking west with a spy-glass. The meeting-house stands as I remember it, but with three stories of windows, door in front toward Common, and no porches or spire; horse-sheds and noon (?) house behind and one side. The Jarvis house; then Wright’s Tavern very plain; a bevel- roofed house endwise to the road where the Middle- sex House is, which Mrs. B. calls Dr. Minott’s house; ! then a little hut; then the old court-house about where the brick schoolhouse is (this the extreme right). Left of the bevel-roofed house is a small house where the stable and sheds are, — some say Betty Hartshorne’s; then a small building on the Mill-Dam; then the old mill; the Vose house, plain, three stories; another house just beyond and apparently in front of it; E. Hubbard’s plain, and a small house back and towards the Vose house, and a dozen or fifteen provincials there; then some houses, probably Peter Wheeler’s three or four storehouses, whence redcoats are rolling barrels into the pond,—and maybe partly from E. Hubbard’s; and perhaps that is the Timothy, and after Peter, Wheeler house seen a little further east, where N. Stow’s house is now. A large house apparently where the brick house is, and a row seen behind it up the street; Dr. Hurd’s house, and four small buildings far behind it; and others seen up street behind Hurd house. But we see no further up in the street than where N. Brooks now lives. Beyond, the town appears well wooded. Lee’s Hill also on this side. Great and Little Wachusett are seen in the horizon, and Nob- scot.

Quite cold it has cleared up after the rain. P. M. —I row up the river, which has risen eight or nine inches After these pleasant and warm days it is suddenly cold and windy, and the risen waters have an angry look. It is uncomfortable rowing with wet hands in this wind. The muskrats must now prepare for winter in earnest. I see many places where they have left clamshells recently. Now gather all your apples, if you have not before, or the frost will have them. The willows along the river now begin to look faded and somewhat bare and wintry. The dead wool-grass, etc., characterizes the shore. The meadows look sere and straw-colored.

P. M. — To Conantum. Another clear cold day, though not so cold as yes- terday. The light and sun come to us directly and freely, as if some obstruction had been removed, —the win- dows of heaven had been washed. The old house on Conantum is fast falling down. Its chimney, laid in clay, measures, on the lower floor, twelve and a half feet in breadth across the hearth, oven, and a small fireplace, parallel with the end of the house. On a level with the chamber floor it measures on the front side eight feet. The mantel-tree of a small fireplace in a chamber is an oak joist with the inside corner sloped off thus: QJ That of the great kitchen fireplace is a pine timber, ten inches by yi thirteen, also with a great sloped surface within, showing traces of fire. The small girders (?) of the roof overlap a foot or more on the rafters (?). I see some farmers now cutting up their corn. The sweet viburnum leaves hang thinly on the bushes and are a dull crimsonish red. What apples are left out now, I presume that the farmers do not mean to gather. The witch-hazel is still freshly in flower, and near it I see a houstonia in bloom. The hillside is slippery with new-fallen white pine leaves. The leaves of the oaks and hickories have begun to be browned, — lost their brilliancy. I examine some frostweed there near the hazel. It is still quite alive, — the leaves now a purplish brown, — indeed just out of bloom, and its bark at the ground is quite tight and entire. Pulling it up, I find bright- pink shoots to have put forth half an inch long and starting even at the surface of the sod. Is not this, as well as its second blossoming, somewhat peculiar to this plant? And may it not be that, when at last the cold is severe, the sap is frozen and bursts the bark and the breath of the dying plant is frozen about it? I return by way of the mocker-nut trees. The squir- rels have already begun on them, though the trees are still covered with yellow and brown leaves, and the nuts do not fall. It is surprising to see how they have gnawed in two and made wrecks of the great, hard nuts, not stopping to take any advantage. A little this side I see a red squirrel dash out from the wall, snatch an apple from amid many on the ground, and, running swiftly up the tree with it, proceed to eat it, sitting on a smooth dead limb, with its back to the wind and its tail curled close over its back. It allows me to approach within eight feet. It holds the apple between its two fore paws and scoops out the pulp, mainly with its lower incisors, making a saucer- like cavity, high and thin at the edge, where it bites off the skin and lets it drop. It keeps its jaws a-going very fast, from time to time turning the apple round and round with its paws (as it eats), like a wheel in a plane at right angles to its body. It holds it up and twirls it with ease. Suddenly it pauses, having taken alarm at something, then drops the remainder of the apple in [the hollow] of the bough and glides off by short snatches, uttering a faint, sharp bird-like note. The song sparrow still sings on a button-bush. A columbine leaf curiously marked by the eating of an insect, —a broad white trail, corresponding mainly to the lobes of the leaf. That little grayish- green and rigid moss-like plant on top of Lee’s Cliff, now dropping fine orange-colored pellets or spores (?), seems to be the Selaginella rupestris ? T sometimes think that I must go off to some wilder- ness where I can have a better opportunity to play life, — can find more suitable materials to build my house with, and enjoy the pleasure of collecting my fuel in the forest. I have more taste for the wild sports of hunting, fishing, wigwam-building, making garments of skins, and collecting wood wherever you find it, than for butchering, farming, carpentry, working in a factory, or going to a wood market.

P. M. — A-chestnutting down the Turn- pike. There are many fringed gentians, now considerably frost-bitten, in what was E. Hosmer’s meadow between his dam and the road. It is high time we came a-nut- ting, for the nuts have nearly all fallen, and you must depend on what you can find on the ground, left by the squirrels, and cannot shake down any more to speak of. The trees are nearly all bare of leaves as well as burs. The wind comes cold from the northwest, as if there were snow on the earth in that direction. Larches are yellowing. I try one of the wild apples in my desk. It is remark- able that the wild apples which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields and woods, when brought into the house have a harsh and crabbed taste. As shells and pebbles must be bebeld on the sea- shore, so these October fruits must be tasted in a bra- cing walk amid the somewhat bracing airs of late October. To appreciate their wild and sharp flavors, it seems necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The outdoor air and ex- ercise which the walker gets give a different tone to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call harsh and crabbed even. The palate re- jects a wild apple eaten in the house — so of haws and acorns — and demands a tamed one, for here you miss that October air which is the wine it is eaten with. I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from them, but when I have brought home my pockets full, and taste them in the house, they are unexpectedly harsh, crude things. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system is all aglow with exercise,- the frosty weather nips your fingers (in November), the wind rattles the bare boughs and rustles the leaves, and the jay is heard screaming around. So there is one thought for the field, another for the house. I would have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will not warrant them to be palatable if tasted in the house. To appreciate the flavor of those wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses, papille firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily tamed and flat- tened. Some of those apples might be labelled, “To be eaten in the wind.” !

P. M. — By boat to Leaning Hemlocks. I think it was the 18th that I first noticed snow-fleas on the surface of the river amid the weeds at its edge. Green leaves are now so scarce that the polypody at the Island rock is more conspicuous, and the termi- nal shield fern (?) further up. As I paddle under the Hemlock bank this cloudy afternoon, about 3 o’clock, I see a screech owl sit- ting on the edge of a hollow hemlock stump about three feet high, at the base of a large hemlock. It sits with its head drawn in, eying me, with its eyes partly open, about twenty feet off. When it hears me move, it turns its head toward me, perhaps one eye only open, with its great glaring golden iris. You see two whitish triangular lines above the eyes meeting at the bill, with a sharp reddish-brown triangle between and a narrow curved line of black under each eye. At this distance and in this light, you see only a black spot where the eye is, and the question is whether the eyes are open or not. It sits on the lee side of the tree this raw and windy day. You would say that this was a bird without a neck. Its short bill, which rests upon its breast, scarcely projects at all, but in a state of rest the whole upper part of the bird from the wings is rounded off smoothly, excepting the horns, which stand up con- spicuously or are slanted back. After watching it ten minutes from the boat, I landed two rods above, and, stealing quietly up behind the hemlock, though from the windward, I looked carefully around it, and, to my surprise, saw the owl still sitting there. So I sprang round quickly, with my arm outstretched, and caught it in my hand. It was so surprised that it offered no resistance at first, only glared at me in mute astonish- ment with eyes as big as saucers. But ere long it began to snap its bill, making quite a noise, and, as I rolled it up in my handkerchief and put it in my pocket, it bit my finger slightly. I soon took it out of my pocket and, tying the handkerchief, left it on the bottom of the boat. So I carried it home and made a small cage in which to keep it, for a night. When I took it up, it clung so tightly to my hand as to sink its claws into my fingers and bring blood. When alarmed or provoked most, it snaps its bill and hisses. It puffs up its feathers to nearly twice its usual size, stretches out its neck, and, with wide-open eyes, stares this way and that, moving its head slowly and undulatingly from side to side with a curious motion. While I write this evening, I see that there is ground for much superstition in it. It looks out on me from a dusky corner of its box with its great solemn eyes, so perfectly still itself. I was surprised to find that I could imitate its note as I remember it, by a guttural whinnering. A remarkably squat figure, being very broad in pro- portion to its length, with a short tail, and very cat- like in the face with its horns and great eyes. Re- markably large feet and talons, legs thickly clothed with whitish down, down to the talons. It brought blood from my fingers by clinging to them. It would lower its head, stretch out its neck, and, bending it from side to side, peer at you with laughable circum- spection; from side to side, as if to catch or absorb into its eyes every ray of light, strain at you with com- placent yet earnest scrutiny. Raising and lowering its head and moving it from side to side in a slow and regular manner, at the same time snapping its bill smartly perhaps, and faintly hissing, and puffing it- self up more and more, — cat-like, turtle-like, both in hissing and swelling. The slowness and gravity, not to say solemnity, of this motion are striking. There plainly is no jesting in this case. I saw yesterday at Saw Mill Brook a common sala- mander on a rock close to the water, not long dead, with a wound in the top of its head. General color of the owl] a rather pale and perhaps slightly reddish brown, the feathers centred with black. Perches with two claws above and two below the perch. It is a slight body, covered with a mass of soft and light-lying feathers. Its head muffled in a great hood. It must be quite comfortable in winter. Dropped a pellet of fur and bones (?) in his cage. He sat, not really moping but trying to sleep, in a corner of his box all day, yet with one or both eyes slightly open all the while. I never once caught him with his eyes shut. Ordinarily stood rather than sat on his perch.