13 July 1857 – 19 July 1857

Very hot weather. P. M. — To Rattlesnake Fern Swamp. I hear before I start the distant mutterings of thun- der in the northwest, though I see no cloud. The hay- makers are busy raking their hay, to be ready for a shower. They would rather have their grass wet a lit- tle than not have the rain. I keep on, regardless of the prospect. See the indigo-bird still, chirping anxiously on the bushes in that sprout-land beyond the red huckle- berry. Vaccintum Pennsylvanicum berries pretty thick there, and one lass is picking them with a dipper tied to her girdle. The first thought is, What a good school this lass goes to! Rattlesnake fern just done. I make haste home, expecting a thunder-shower, which we need, but it goes by. The grass by the road- side is burnt yellow and is quite dusty. This, with the sultry air, the parched fields, and the languid inhab- itants, marks the season. Already the elms with denser foliage begin to hang dark against the glaucous mist.

P. M.—Up Assabet with Loomis and Wilde. Set fire to the carburetted hydrogen from the saw- dust shoal with matches, and heard it flash. It must be an interesting sight by night.

Tephrosia is generally considerably past its prime. Vaccinium vacillans berries. Scare up a snipe (?) by riverside, which goes off with a dry crack, and afterward two woodcocks in the shady alder marsh at Well Meadow, which go off with a whistling flight. thus glabra under Cliffs, not yet.

Thursday. P. M. — To Hemlocks. Geum album, apparently well out. As I walked through the pasture side of the hill, saw a mouse or two glance before me in faint galleries in the grass. ‘They are seldom seen, for these small deer, like the larger, disappear suddenly, as if they had exploded before your eyes. Lechea thymifolia of Gray is the large-podded one according to plate in his “Genera.”’ G., in same, shows five petals to Portulaca and says it “has from early times been naturalized around gardens almost every- where . . . is said to be truly wild in Arkansas and Texas.” I hear of the first early blueberries brought to market. What a variety of rich blues their berries present, 2. e. the earliest kind! Some are quite black and without bloom. What innocent flavors!

P. M. — To Lee’s Chiff. The young leaves of the slippery elm are a yellow- ish green and large, and the branches recurved or drooping. Hypericum corymboswum. Am caught in the rain and take shelter under the thick white pine by Lee’s Cliff. I see thereunder an abundance of chi- maphila in bloom. It is a beautiful flower, with its naked umbel of crystalline purplish-white flowers, their disks at an angle with the horizon. On its lower side a ring of-purple (or crimson) scales at the base of its concave petals, around the large, green, sticky ovary. The Sagina procumbens continues to flower sparingly. It agrees with Gray’s plate. I found yesterday, at and above the Hemlocks on the Assabet, the dicksonia, apparently in prime; As- pidium Noveboracense ; Aspidium marginale, apparently In prime; Osmunda Claytoniana and cinnamomea, done. I find to-day, at Bittern Chiff and at Lee’s, Asple- nium ebeneum (the larger), apparently nearly in prime, and A. Trichomanes, apparently just begun. This very commonly occurs in tufts at the base of the last, hke radical leaves to it. At Lee’s Cliff, Polypodium vul- gare, not yet brown fruit. Aspidiwm Noveboracense at Corner Spring, not yet brown; also Aspidium Filiz- femina (?), with lunar-shaped fruit, not yet brown; also apparently a chaffy-stemmed dicksonia, densely brown-fruited; also an almost thrice pinnate fern with a very chaffy stipe, in prime, already yellowish above, somewhat A. cristatum-like, some of the dots conflu- ent. Ampelopsis out of bloom at Lee’s. Aralia racemosa, not in bloom, at Corner Spring.

Minott says that old Sam Nutting used to pinch off the first leaves of his melon vines as soon as they had three or four leaves, because they only at- tracted the bugs, and he was quite successful. | George Bradford says he finds in Salem striped maple and Sambucus pubens. He (and Tuckerman ?) found the Utricularia resupinata once in Plymouth, and it seems to correspond with mine at Well Meadow.

Smooth sumach out since the 16th.