21 April 1856 – 27 April 1856

P. M.— Up Assabet to white cedars. The river risen again, on account of the rain of the last three days, to nearly as high as on the 11th. I can just get over Hosmer’s meadow. The red maple did not shed pollen on the 19th and could not on the 20th, 21st, or 22d, on account of rain; so this must be the first day, -—the 23d,—though I see none quite so forward by the river. ‘The wind is now westerly and pretty strong. No sap to be seen in the bass. The white birch sap flows yet from a stump cut last fall, and a few small bees, flies, etc., are attracted by it. Along the shore by Dove Rock I hear a faint tseep like a fox- colored sparrow, and, looking sharp, detect upon a maple a white-throated sparrow. It soon flies to the ground amid the birches two or three rods distant, a plump-looking bird and, with its bright white and yel- low marks on the head distinctly separated from the slate-color, methinks the most brilliant of the spar- rows. Those bright colors, however, are not commonly observed. The white cedar swamp consists of hummocks, now surrounded by water, where you go jumping from one to another. The fans are now dotted with the minute reddish staminate flowers, ready to open. The skunk- cabbage leaf has expanded in one open place there; so it is at least as early as the hellebore of yesterday. Returning, when near the Dove Rock saw a musquash crossing in front. He dived without noise in the middle of the river, and I saw by a bubble or two where he was crossing my course, a few feet before my boat. He came up quietly amid the alders on my right, and lay still there with his head and back partly out. His back looked reddish-brown with a black grain inmixed. I think that that white root washed up since the ice broke — .,. up, with a stout stem flat on one side « /* and narrow green or yellowish leaf-bud ~§ #7 ; rolled up from each side, with a figure in the middle, is the yellow lily, and probably I have seen no pontederia. The white lily root is thickly clothed with a slate-blue fur or felt, close- fitting, reflecting prismatic colors under the microscope, but generally the slate-color of the fur of most animals, and perhaps it is designed to serve a similar use, viz. for warmth and dryness. The end of the root is abruptly rounded and sends forth leaves, and along the sides of the root are attached oval bulb-like offshoots, one or two inches long, with very narrow necks, ready, apparently, to be separated soon from the parent stock. Hear the yellow redpoll sing on the maples below Dove Rock, —a peculiar though not very ae strain, or jingle. A very handsome little beetle, deep, about a quarter of an inch long, with pale-golden wing-cases, artificially and handsomely marked with burnished dark-green marks and spots, one side answering to the other; front and beneath burnished dark-green; legs brown or cin- namon-color. It was on the side of my boat. Brought it home in aclam’s shells tied up, —a good insect-box.

A rain-threatening April day. Sprinkles a little in the forenoon. P. M. — To mayflower. The yellow willow peels fairly, probably for several days. Its buds are bursting and showing a little green, at end of railroad bridge. On Money-Diggers’ Shore, much large yellow lily root washed up; that white root with white fibres and yellowish leaf-buds. I doubt if I have seen any pontederia this year. I find, on the southeast side of Lupine Hill, nearly four rods from the water and a dozen feet above its level, a young Emys picta, one and five eighths inghes long and one and a half wide. I think it must have been hatched year before last. It was headed up-hill. Its rear above was already covered with some kind of green moss (?) or the like, which probably had adhered or grown to it in its winter quarters.

Minott tells me of David Wheeler of the Virginia Road, who used to keep an account of the comings and goings, etc., of animals. He was one of the few who knew [how] to set a trap for a fox so that he would get into it; scented it in a peculiar way, perhaps. Brought one home once on his shoulder, feigning death, which came to life suddenly in his entry and ran off with the trap. Minott says that he could hardly raise cucumbers in his garden by the brook, the tortoises (painted, I judge, from his description) used to eat them so, both small and large, eating out the insides of the last. He some- times found three or four there at once, and they lay all day hid among the vines. Saw wasps about his dooryard. P. M. — To Hill by boat. Sweet-gale is out in some parts of the Island birch meadow, next the Indian field, probably several days, at least in some places. Larch not yet sheds pollen. The toads have begun fairly to ring at noonday in earnest. I rest awhile on my oars in this meadow amid the birches [?] to hear them. The wind is pretty strong and easterly. ‘There are many, probably squatted about the edge of the falling water, in Merrick’s pasture. (The river began to fall again, I think, day before yesterday.) It is a low, terrene sound, the undertone of the breeze. Now it sounds low and indefinitely far, now rises, as if by general consent, to a higher key, as if in another and nearer quarter, — a singular alterna- tion. The now universal hard metallic ring of toads blended and partially drowned by the rippling wind. The voice of the toad, the herald of warmer weather. The cinquefoil well out. I see two or three on the hemlock dry plain, — probably a day or two. I observe | a male grackle with a brownish head and the small female on one tree, red-wings on another. Return over the top of the hill against the [wind]. The Great Meadows now, at 3.30 p. M., agitated by the strong easterly wind this clear day, when I look against the wind with the sun behind me, look particularly dark blue. Aspen bark peels; how long? I landed on Merrick’s pasture near the rock, and when I stepped out of the boat and drew it up, a snipe flew up, and lit again seven or eight rods off. After trying in vain for several minutes to see it on the ground there, I advanced a step and, to my surprise, scared up two more, which had squatted on the bare meadow all the while within a rod, while I drew up my boat and made a good deal of noise. In short, I scared up twelve, one or two at a time, within a few rods, which were feeding on the edge of the meadow just laid bare, each rising with a sound like squeak squeak, hoarsely. That part of the meadow seemed all alive with them. It is almost impossible to see one on the meadow, they squat and run so low, and are so completely the color of the ground. They rise from within a rod, fly half a dozen rods, and then drop down on the bare open meadow before your eyes, where there seems not stubble enough to conceal [them], and are at once lost as completely as if they had sunk into the earth. I observed that some, when finally scared from this island, flew off rising quite high, one a few rods behind the other, in their peculiar zigzag manner, rambling about high over the meadow, making it uncertain where they would settle, till at length I lost sight of one and saw the other drop down almost perpendicularly into the meadow, as it appeared. 5 p. M.— Went to see Tommy Wheeler’s bounds. Warren Miles had caught three more snapping turtles since yesterday, at his mill, one middling-sized one and two smaller. He said they could come down through his mill without hurt. Were they all bound down the brook to the river? + I brought home one of the small ones. It was seven and one eighth inches long. Put it in a firkin for the night, but it got out without upsetting it. It had four points on each side behind, and when I put it in the river I noticed half a dozen points or pro- jections on as many of its rear plates, in keeping with the crest of its tail. It buried itself in the grassy bottom within a few feet of the shore. Moves off very flat on + They all came down from the pond through the mill, and another one the 7th of May, q. v. the bottom. These turtles have been disturbed or re- vealed by his operations. Anne Karney, our neighbor, looking over her garden yesterday with my father, saw what she said was sham- rock, which the Irish wear on their caps on St. Patrick’s Day, the first she had ever seen in this country. My father pointed it out in his own garden to the Irish- man who was working for him, and he was glad to see it, for he had had a dispute with another Irishman as to whether it grew in this country and now he could con- vince him, and he put it in his pocket. I saw it after- ward and pronounced it common white clover, and, looking into Webster’s Dictionary, I read, under Sham- rock: “The Irish name for a three-leafed plant, the Oxalis Acetosella, or common wood-sorrel. It has been often supposed to be the Trzfoliwm repens, white trefoil or white clover.” This was very satisfactory, though perhaps Webster’s last sentence should have been, The Trifolium repens has often been mistaken for it. At evening see a spearer’s light.

Worm-piles about the door-step this morn- ing; how long? The white cedar gathered the 23d does not shed pollen in house till to-day, and I doubt if it will in swamp before to-morrow.’ Monroe’s larch will, appar- ently, by day after to-morrow. The white birch at Clamshell, which I tapped long ago, still runs and is partly covered with a pink froth. Is not this the only birch which shows this colored froth, as its sap is the most tinged and most inclined to ferment ? —a sort of mother which is left on the bark and in the hole. Looked over hastily the first two hundred lines of Lucretius, but was struck only with the lines referring to Prometheus, whose vivida vis animi “* extra Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi. “But the custom of our ancestors also permitted these things on holidays: to pound wheat, cut torches, make candles, cultivate a hired vineyard, clear out and purge fish-ponds, ponds, and old ditches, mow grass ground a second time, spread dung, store up hay on scaffolds, gather the fruit of a hired olive yard, spread apples, pears, and figs, make cheese, bring home trees for the sake of planting on our shoulders or on a pack- mule, but not with one harnessed to a cart, nor to plant them when brought home, nor to open the ground, nor prune a tree, not even to attend to sowing seed, unless you have first sacrificed a puppy.” ! This reminds me of my bringing home an apple tree on my shoulder one Sunday and meeting the stream of meeting-goers, who seemed greatly outraged; but they did not know whether I set it out or not that day, or but that I sacrificed a puppy if I did.

P. M.— Up Assabet. I find none of Monroe’s larch buds shedding pollen, but the anthers look crimson and yellow, and the female flowers are now fully expanded and very pretty, but small. I think it will first scatter pollen to-morrow. Apparently a small bullfrog by riverside, though it looks somewhat like a Rana fontinalis; also two or three (apparently) R. palustris in that well of Monroe’s, which have jumped in over the curb, perhaps. I see quite a number of tortoises out sunning, just on the edge of the Hosmer meadow, which is rapidly becoming bare. Their backs shine from afar in the sun. Also one Emys insculpta out higher up. From close by I hear a red-wing’s clear, loud whistle, — not squeak (which I think may be confined to the grackle). It is like pte'-a pte!-a, or perhaps without the p. The tapping of a woodpecker is made a more re- markable and emphatic sound by the hollowness of the trunk, the expanse of water which conducts the sound, and the morning hour at which I commonly hear it. I think that the pigeon woodpeckers must be building, they frequent the old aspen now so much. At the Hemlocks I see a rock which has been moved since last fall seven or eight feet into the river, though the ground is but little descending. The rock is about five and a half feet by three by one. I see [a] rather large . devil’s-needle coursing over the low osiers in Pinxter Swamp. Is it not early for one? The white birch which I tapped in V. palmata Swamp still runs; and the holes are full of, and the base of the tree covered with, a singular sour-tasted, rather hard-crusted white (not pink) froth, and a great many of those flat beetles (?), lightning-bug-like, and flies, etc., are sucking it.