29 September 1856 – 5 October 1856

P. M. — To Grape Cliff. The pea-vine fruit is partly ripe, little black-dotted beans, about three in a pod. I can hardly clamber along the grape cliff now with- out getting my clothes covered with desmodium ticks, — there especially the rotundifolium and paniculatum. Though you were running for your life, they would have time to catch and cling to your clothes, — often the whole row of pods of the D. paniculatum, like a piece of a saw blade with three teeth. You pause at a convenient place and spend a long time picking them off, which it took so short a time to attach. They will even cling to your hand as you go by. They cling like babes to the mother’s breast, by instinct. Instead of being caught and detained ourselves by birdlime, we are compelled to catch these seeds and carry them with us. These almost invisible nets, as it were, are spread for us, and whole coveys of desmodium and bidens seeds and burs steal transportation out of us. I have found myself often covered, as it were with an imbri- cated scaly coat of the brown desmodium seeds or a bristling chevaux-de-frise of beggar-ticks, and had to spend a quarter of an hour or more picking them off at some convenient place; and so they got just what they wanted, deposited in another place. How surely the desmodium, growing on some rough cliff- side, or the bidens, on the edge of a pool, prophesy the coming of the traveller, brute or human, that will transport their seeds on his coat! I am late for grapes; most have fallen. The fruit of what I have called Vztis estivalis has partly fallen. It is dark-purple, about seven sixteenths of an inch in diam- eter, very acid and commonly hard. Stem and petiole smooth and purplish, but leaf not smooth or green beneath. Should not this be called frost grape, rather than the earlier one I ate at Brattleboro? Grapes are singularly various for a wild fruit, like many culti- vated ones. Dr. Reynolds told me the other day of a Canada lynx (?) killed in Andover, in a swamp, some years ago, when he was teaching school in Tewksbury; thought to be one of a pair, the other being killed or seen in Derry. Its large track was seen in the snow in Tewks- bury and traced to Andover and back. They saw where it had leaped thirty feet! and where it devoured rab- bits. Was on a tree when shot. Skin stuffed some- where.’

Cattle-Show. An overcast, mizzling, and rainy day. Minott tells of a General Hull, who lived some- where in this county, who, he remembers, called out the whole division once or twice to a muster. He sold the army under him to the English in the last war, — though General Miller of Lincoln besought [him] to let him lead them, —and never was happy after it, had no peace of mind. It was said that his life was in danger here in consequence of his treason. Once, at a muster in front of the Hayden house, when there was a sham fight, and an Indian party took a circuit round a piece of wood, some put green grapes into their guns, and he, hearing one whistle by his head, thought some one wished to shoot him and ordered them to disperse, — dismissed them. Speaking of the meadow-hay which is lost this year, Minott said that the little they had got since the last flood before this was good for nothing, would only poison the cattle, being covered with the dried slime and filth of the freshet. When you mowed it there ‘1 Vide September, 1860. ‘| arose a great dust. He spoke of this grass, thus left over winter to next year, as “old fog.’’ Said that Clark (Daniel or Brooks) asked him the other day what made so many young alders and birches and willows spring up in the river meadows of late years; it did n’t use to be so forty or fifty years ago; and he told him that in old times, when they were accustomed to take something strong to drink, they didn’t stand for such shrubs but mowed all clear as they went, but now, not feeling so much energy for want of the stimulant, when they came to a bush, though no bigger than a pipe-stem, they mowed all round it and left it standing.

Very heavy rain in the night; cooler now. P. M. — To Walden. Examined an Asclepias Cornutt pod, already opening by the wall. As they dry, the pods crack and open by the seam along the convex or outer side of the pods, revealing the seeds, with their silky parachutes, closely packed in an imbricated manner, already right side up to the number, in one instance, of one hundred and thirty-four (as I counted) and again two hundred and seventy. As they lie they resemble somewhat a round plump fish with the silk ends exposed at the tail. Chil- dren call them fishes. The silk is divided once or twice by their raised partitions of the spongy core around which they are arranged. At the top of some more open and drier, is already a little cloud of loosened seeds and down, two or three inches in diameter, held by the converging tips of the down like meridians, just ready to float away when the wind rises. It is cooler and windier, and I wear two thin coats. I do not perceive the poetic and dramatic capabilities of an anecdote or story which is told me, its signifi- cance, till some time afterwards. One of the qualities of a pregnant fact is that it does not surprise us, and . we only perceive afterward how interesting it is, and then must know all the particulars. We do not enjoy poetry fully unless we know it to be poetry.

P. M. — To Cliffs via Hubbard’s meadow. Succory still, with its cool blue, here and there, and Hveracium Canadense still quite fresh, with its very pretty broad strap-shaped rays, broadest at the end, alternately long and short, with five very regular sharp teeth in the end of each. The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did, with its bristly leaves. Its seed-vessels are perfect little cream-pitchers of graceful form. The mountain sumach now a dark scarlet quite gen- erally. The prinos berries are in their prime, seven six- teenths of an inch in diameter. They are scarlet, some- what hghter than the arum berries. They are now very fresh and bright, and what adds to their effect is the perfect freshness and greenness of the leaves amid which they are seen. Gerardia purpurea still. Brakes in Hubbard’s Swamp Wood are withered, quite dry. Soli- dago speciosa completely out, though not a flower was out September 27th, or five days ago; say three or four days. The river is still higher, owing to the rain of Septem- ber 30th, partly covering the meadows; yet they are endeavoring to rake cranberries. After all, I perceive that in some places the greatest injury done by the water to these berries has probably been that it pre- vented their ripening, but generally it has been by softening them. ‘They carry them home, spread, and dry them, and pick out the spoilt ones. One gets only fifty bushels where he would have had two hundred. Eupatorium purpureum is generally done. Now and then I see a Hypericum Canadense flower still. The leaves, etc., of this and the angulosum are turned crimson. I am amused to see four little Irish boys only five or six years old getting a horse in a pasture, for their father apparently, who is at work in a neighboring field. They have all in a row got hold of a very long halter and are leading him. All wish to have a hand init. It is surprising that he obeys such small speci- mens of humanity, but he seems to be very docile, a real family horse. At length, by dint of pulling and shout- ing, they get him into a run down a hill, and though he moves very deliberately, scarcely faster than a walk, all but the one at the end of the line soon cut and run to right and left, without having looked be- hind, expecting him to be upon them. They haul up at last at the bars, which are down, and then the family puppy, a brown pointer (?), about two-thirds grown, comes bounding to join them and assist. He is as youthful and about as knowing as any of them. The horse marches gravely behind, obeying the faint tug at the halter, or honestly stands still from time to time, as if not aware that they are pulling at all, though they are all together straining every nerve to start him. It is interesting to behold this faithful beast, the oldest and wisest of the company, thus implicitly obeying the lead of the youngest and: weakest. The second lechea radical shoots are one inch long. Solidago bicolor considerably past prime. Corydalis still fresh. Saw apparently two phcebes on the tops of the dry mulleins. Why so rarely seen for so many months?

The white pines are now getting to be pretty generally parti-colored, the lower yellowing needles. ready to fall. The sumachs are generally crimson (darker than scarlet), and young trees and bushes by the water and meadows are generally beginning to glow red and yellow. Especially the hillsides about Walden begin to wear these autumnal tints in the cooler air. These lit leaves, this glowing, bright-tinted shrubbery, is in singular harmony with the dry, stony shore of this cool and deep well. The frost keeps off remarkably. I have seen none, though I hear that there was some two or three morn- ings ago. I detect the crotalaria behind the Wyman site, by hearing the now rattling seeds in its pods as I go through the grass, like the trinkets about an Indian’s leggins, or a rattlesnake.

Helianthus tuberosus, apparently several days, in Reynolds’s yard (the butcher’s). | P. M. — Down river. Wind from northeast. Some water milkweed flying. Its pods small, slender, straight, and pointed per- fectly upright; seeds large with much wing. The hibiscus gone to seed, and pods opened showing the seed, opposite Ostrya Island * or Rock below Battle- Ground. In an article on the alligator in Harper’s Magazine for December, 1854, it is said that mosquitoes “sur- round its head in clouds; and we have heard the negroes assert that the reptile opened its mouth until its interior was fully lined, and suddenly closing it up, would swallow the accumulated marauders, and then set its huge jaws as a trap for more.” This reminds me of the swarms of mosquitoes about frogs and, I think, turtles. In another article, of May, 1855, on “The Lion and his Kind,” the animals are placed in this order: the domestic cat, wildcat, the ocelot or tiger-cat of Peru and Mexico, the caracal of Asia and Africa, the lynx of North America, the chetah of India and Africa, the ounce of India (perhaps a rough variety of the leopard), the leopard, the jaguar, the cougar, the tiger, the lion. “The Cougar is the American lion — at least it bears a closer resemblance to that noble brute than any other of the feline family, for it is destitute of the stripes of the tiger, the spots of the leopard, and the rosettes of the jaguar; but when full-grown possesses a tawny-red color, almost uniform over the whole body, and hence the inference that it is like the lion.” “Cougar is a corruption of the Mexi- can name.” Ranges between Paraguay and the Great Lakes of North America. “In form it is less attrac- tive than the generality of its species, there being an apparent want of symmetry; for it is observable that its back is hollow, its legs short and thick, and its tail does not gracefully taper; yet nature has invested the cougar with other qualities as a compensation, the most remarkable of which is an apparent power to render itself quite invisible; for so cunningly tinged is its fur, that it perfectly mingles with the bark of trees — in fact, with all subdued tints — and stretched upon a limb, or even extended upon the floor of its dimly lighted cage, you must prepare your eye by consider- able mental resolution to be assured of its positive presence.” Its flesh is eaten by some. Mrs. Jane Swisshelm kept one which grew to be nine feet long, and, according to her, in this writer’s words, “If in ex- ceeding good-humor he would purr; but if he wished to intimidate, he would raise his back, erect his hair, and spit like a cat. In the twilight of the evening the animal was accustomed to pace back and forth to the full extent of his limits, ever and anon uttering a short, piercing shriek, which made the valley rever- berate for half a mile or more in every direction. Mrs. Swisshelm says these sounds were the shrillest, and at the same time the most mournful she ever heard. They might, perhaps, be likened to the scream of a woman in an agony of terror.”” He once sprang at her, but was brought up by his chain. When prepar- ing to spring, his eyes were “green and blazing, and the tip of his tail moving from side to side.” This paper describes “a full-grown royal tiger, measuring four feet seven inches from the nose to the insertion of the tail. . . . Unlike the miserable wretches we see in our menageries, etc.” ‘The Brattleboro paper makes the panther four feet eleven inches, so mea- sured! ! I hear that a Captain Hurd, of Wayland or Sud- bury, estimates the loss of river meadow-hay this season in those two towns on account of the freshet at twelve hundred tons.

Sunday. P. M.—To Hill and over the pastures westward. Sally Cummings and Mike Murray are out on the Hill collecting apples and nuts. Do they not rather belong to such children of nature than to those who have merely bought them with their money? There are few apples for them this year, however, and it is too early for walnuts (too late for hazelnuts). The grapes are generally gone, and their vines partly bare and yellowed, though without frost. I amuse myself on the hilltop with pulling to pieces and letting fly the now withered and dry pasture thistle tops. They have a much coarser pappus than the milkweeds. I am surprised, amid these perfectly withered and bleached thistles, to see one just freshly in flower. The autumnal dandelion is now comparatively scarce there. In the huckleberry pasture, by the fence of old barn boards, I notice many little pale-brown dome- shaped (puckered to a centre beneath) puff- Gd balls, which emit their dust. When you pinch them, a smoke-like brown dust (snuff- colored) issues from the orifice at their top, just like smoke from a chimney. It is so fine and light that it rises into the air and is wafted away like smoke. They are low Oriental domes or LJ mosques. Sometimes crowded a DE net together in nests, like a col- - + cy wily! “( lection of humble cottages on the moor, in the coal- pit or Numidian style; for there is suggested some humble hearth beneath, from which this smoke comes up, as it were the homes of slugs and crickets. They please me not a little by their resemblance to rude dome-shaped, turf-built cottages on the plain, wherein some humble but everlasting life is lived. Amid the low and withering grass or the stubble there they are gathered, and their smoke ascends between the legs of the herds and the traveller. I imagine a hearth and pot, and some snug but humble family passing its Sunday evening beneath each one. Some, when you press them harder, emit clear water — the relics of rain or dew — along with the dust, which last, how- ever, has no affinity for it, but is quite dry and smoke- like. I locate there at once all that is simple and ad- mirable in human life. There is no virtue which their roofs exclude. I imagine with what contentment and faith I could come home to them at even- ing.! I see some not yet ripe, still entire ( Dy \ Nv and rounded at top. When I break them =~” open, they are found to be quite soggy, of a stringy white consistency, almost cream-like, riper and yellow- ish at top, where they will burst by and by. Many have holes eaten into them. On one I find a slug feed- ing, with a little hole beneath him,’ and a cricket has eaten out the whole inside of another in which he is housed. This before they are turned to dust. Large chocolate-colored ones have long since burst and are spread out wide like a shallow dish. Crickets are seen now moving slowly about in the paths, often with their heads only concealed in a bur- row, as if looking out for winter quarters. I saw, on my return, a dozen crickets of various sizes gathered on an apple paring which I had dropped in the path when I came along. | The sweet-briar rose hips are very handsome now, but these hips do not deserve to be coupled with haws as articles of food, even in extremities. They are very dry, hard, seedy, and unpalatable. I see some fresh- grown callitriche in some clear well-filled leafy pools which are commonly dry at this season. The singular long pointed reddish bulbs in the axils of the Eysima- chia stricta are one of the signs of the season, cool and late. It is well to find your employment and amusement in simple and homely things. These wear best and yield most. I think I would rather watch the. motions of these cows in their pasture for a day, which [ now see all headed one way and slowly advancing, — watch them and project their course carefully on a chart, and report all their behavior faithfully, — than wander to Europe or Asia and watch other motions there; for it is only ourselves that we report in either case, and perchance we shall report a more restless and worthless self in the latter case than in the first.