5 October 1857 – 11 October 1857

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook via Hubbard’s Close. A beautiful bright afternoon, still warmer than yes- terday. I carry my coat on my arm. This weather makes the locust to be heard, — many of them. I go along the hill from the old burying-ground and descend at Minott’s. Everything —all fruits and leaves, the reddish-silvery feathery grass in clumps,’ even the surfaces of stone and stubble — are all ripe in this air. Yes, the hue of maturity has come even to that fine silver-topped feathery grass, two or three feet high, in clumps on dry places. I am riper for thought, too. Of trees which are numerous here and form consider- able masses or groups, those now sufficiently changed in their color to attract the eye generally are red maple (in prime), — N. B., the white maples began in water long ago, but are rare, — white birch (perhaps in prime), young oaks in sprout-lands, etc. (especially young scar- let oaks), white ash, white pines (when near), elms, buttonwoods, and perhaps walnuts. Some others are equally changed, but so rare or distant from the village as to make less impression on me. The shrubs now generally conspicuous from some distance, from their changed color and mass, are huckle- berries and blueberries (high and low), smooth sumach and Rhus venenaia, woodbine, button-bush, and grape perhaps. I observe too that the ferns of a rich brown (being sere), about swamps, etc., are an important feature. A broad belt of rich brown (and crisp) ferns stands about many a bright maple swamp. Some maples are in form and color like hickories, tall and irregular. It, indeed, admits of singular va- riety in form and color. I see one now shaped like a hickory which is a very rich yellow with a tinge of brown, which, when I turn my head slightly, concealing the trunk, looks like a mass of yellow cloud, wreath upon wreath, drifting through the air, stratified by the wind.* The trumpet-weeds are perfectly killed sere brown along the fences. Think what a change, unperceived by many, has within a month come over the landscape! ‘Then the general, the universal, hue was green. Now see those brilliant scarlet and glowing yellow trees in the low- lands a mile off! I see them, too, here and there on the sides of hills, standing out distinct, mere bright [an indecipherable word] and squads perchance, often in long broken lines, and so apparently elevated by their distinct color that they seem arranged like the remnants of a morning mist just retreating in a broken line along the hillsides. Or see that crowd in the swamp half a mile through, all vying with one another, a blaze of glory. See those crimson patches far away on the hill- sides, hike dense flocks of crimson sheep, where the huckleberry reminds of recent excursions. See those patches of rich brown in the low grounds, where the ferns stand shrivelled. See the greenish-yellow pha- lanxes of birches, and the crisped yellowish elm-tops here and there. We are not prepared to believe that the earth is now so parti-colored, and would present to a bird’s eye such distinct masses of bright color. A great painter is at work. The very pumpkins yellow- ing in the fields become a feature in the landscape, and thus they have shone, maybe, for a thousand years here. I have just read Ruskin’s “Modern Painters.” I am disappointed in not finding it a more out-of-door book, for I have heard that such was its character, but its title might have warned me. He does not de- scribe Nature as Nature, but as Turner painted her, and though the work betrays that he has given a close attention to Nature, it appears to have been with an artist’s and critic’s design. How much is written about Nature as somebody has portrayed her, how little about Nature as she is, and chiefly concerns us, 2. e. how much prose, how little poetry! Going through Ebby Hubbard’s woods, I see thou- sands of white pine cones on the ground, fresh light brown, which lately opened and shed their seeds and lie curled up on the ground. The seeds are rather plea- sant or nutritious tasting, taken in quantity, like beech- nuts, methinks. I see a great quantity of hypopitys, now all sere, along the path in the woods beyond. Call it Pine-Sap Path. It seems to have been a favorable season for it. It was evidently withered earlier than the tobacco-pipe, which is still pretty white! Going through the Ministerial sprout-lands, I see the young oaks generally turning scarlet, and chest- nuts, too, the young and also the old. The lower chestnut leaves are among the most in- teresting now when closely inspected, varying from green to yellow, very finely and richly peppered with brown and green spots, at length turning brown with a tinge of crimson; but they, like others, must be seen on the twig, for they fade immediately, or in one night, if plucked. These brilliant leaves are as tender and in- clined to wilt and fade as flowers, indeed are more transitory. The amelanchier is yellowing and reddening a little, and also falling. I see Lobelia inflata leaves in the shade, a peculiar hoary white. I see one or two chestnut burs open on the trees. The squirrels, red and gray, are on all sides throwing them down. You cannot stand long in the woods without hearing one fall. As I came up the Turnpike, I smelt that strong- scented —like carrion, etc. — obscene fungus at the mossy bank, and I saw a dozen of those large flat oval black bugs with light-colored shoulder-pieces, such as, methinks, I see on carrion, feeding on its remnants. . . . The frontier houses * preserve many of the features of the logging-camp. .. . Looking up Trout Stream, it seemed as wild a place for a man to live as we had seen. What a difference between a residence there and within five minutes’ walk of the depot! What different men the two lives must turn out!

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. Little chincapin oaks are partly turned, dull scarlet or yellow as it may happen, nearly in prime, not fallen. Some of their leaves (as well as of the white oak) are gnawed into lace regularly about the edges. Horn- 1857) THE RED OF A MAPLE SWAMP 71 beam generally green still, but becoming yellowish- brown and falling. Black alder still green. Elder is greenish-yellow. I see some panicled andromeda dark- red or crimson. Swamp-pink a dark reddish purple where exposed. Beach plum begins to turn a clear pale yellow in dry places. Sage willow is fairly yellowing and some even falling. Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butter- flies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there. IT go across Bartonia Meadow direct to Bear Garden Hill-side. Approaching the sand-slide, I see, some fifty rods off, looking toward the sun, the top of the maple swamp just appearing over the sheeny russet edge of the hill, —a strip, apparently twenty rods long and ten feet deep, of the most intensely brilliant scarlet, orange, and yellow, equal to any flowers or fruits or any tints ever painted. As I advance, lowering the edge of the hill, which makes the firm foreground or lower frame to the picture, the depth of this brilliant grove revealed steadily increases, suggesting that the whole of the concealed valley is filled with such color.' As usual, there is one tree-top of an especially brilhant scarlet, with which the others contrast. One wonders that the tithing-men and fathers of the town are not out to see what the trees mean by their high colors and exuberance of spirits, fearing that some mischief is brewing. I do not see what the Puri- tans did at that season when the maples blazed out in scarlet. They certainly could not have worshipped in groves then. Perhaps that is what they built meet- ing-houses and surrounded them with horse-sheds for.? No wonder we must have our annual cattle-show and fall training and perhaps Cornwallis, our Septem- ber courts, etc. Nature holds her annual fair and gala- days in October in every hollow and on every hill- side. Look into that hollow all aglow, where the trees are clothed in their vestures of most dazzling tints. Does it not suggest a thousand gypsies beneath, rows of booths, and that man’s spirits should rise as high, that the routine of his life should be interrupted by an analogous festivity and rejoicing ? ? It is the reign of crickets now. You see them gliding busily about over all sunny surfaces. They sometimes get into my shoes; but oftener I have to empty out the seeds of various shrubs and weeds which I have been compelled to transport. Looking toward the sun from Lupine Bank, I see bloody patches of blackberry vines amid the fine hoary and sheeny grass of the pasture. Since the frosts such pastures are already a hoary russet. Some shrub oaks are yellow, others reddish. When I turn round half-way up Fair Haven Hill, by the orchard wall, and look northwest, I am surprised for the thousandth time at the beauty of the landscape, and I sit down to behold it at my leisure. I think that Concord affords no better view. It is always incred- ibly fair, but ordinarily we are mere objects in it, and not witnesses of it. I see, through the bright October air, a valley extending southwest and northeast and some two miles across, — so far I can see distinctly, — with a broad, yellow meadow tinged with brown at the bottom, and a blue river winding slowly through it northward, with a regular edging of low bushes on the brink, of the same color with the meadow. Skirting the meadow are straggling lines, and occasionally large masses a quarter of a mile wide, of brilliant scarlet and yellow and crimson trees, backed by and mingled with green forests and green and hoary russet fields and hills; and on the hills around shoot up a million scarlet and orange and yellow and crimson fires amid the green; and here and there amid the trees, often beneath the largest and most graceful of those which have brown-yellow dome-like tops, are bright white or gray houses; and beyond stretches a forest, wreath upon wreath, and between each two wreaths I know lies a similar vale; and far beyond all, on the verge of the horizon, are half a dozen dark-blue moun- tain-summits. Large birds of a brilliant blue and white plumage are darting and screaming amid the glowing foliage a quarter of a mile below, while smaller blue birds warble faintly but sweetly around me.? Such is the dwelling-place of man; but go to a cau- cus in the village to-night or to a church to-morrow, and see if there is anything said to suggest that the inhabitants of those houses know what kind of world they live in. But hark! I hear the tolling of a distant funeral bell, and they are conveying a corpse to the churchyard from one of the houses that I see, and its serious sound is more in harmony with this scenery than any ordinary bustle could be. It suggests that a man must die to his present life before he can appre- ciate his opportunities and the beauty of the abode that is appointed him. I do not know how to entertain one who can’t take long walks. The first thing that suggests itself is to get a horse to draw them, and that brings us at once into contact with stablers and dirty harness, and I do not get over my ride for a long time. I give up my fore- noon to them and get along pretty well, the very elas- ticity of the air and promise of the day abetting me, but they are as heavy as dumplings by mid-afternoon. If they can’t walk, why won’t they take an honest nap and let me go in the afternoon? But, come two o'clock, they alarm me by an evident disposition to sit. In the midst of the most glorious Indian-summer after- noon, there they sit, breaking your chairs and wear- ing out the house, with their backs to the light, taking no note of the lapse of time. As Isat on the high bank at the east end of Walden this afternoon, at five o’clock, I saw, by a peculiar in- tention or dividing of the eye, a very striking subaque- ous rainbow-like phenomenon. A passer-by might, perhaps would, have noticed that the bright-tinted shrubs about the high shore on the sunny side were reflected from the water; but, unless on the alert for such effects, he would have failed to perceive the full beauty of the phenomenon. Unless you look for re- flections, you commonly will not find them. Those brilliant shrubs, which were from three to a dozen feet in height, were all reflected, dimly so far as the details of leaves, etc., were concerned, but brightly as to color, and, of course, in the order in which they stood, — scarlet, yellow, green, etc.; but, there being a slight ripple on the surface, these reflections were not true to their height though true to their breadth, but were extended downward with mathematical perpendicu- larity, three or four times too far, forming sharp pyra- mids of the several colors, gradually reduced to mere dusky points. The effect of this prolongation of the reflection was a very pleasing softening and blending of the colors, especially when a small bush of one bright tint stood directly before another of a contrary and equally bright tint. It was just as if you were to brush firmly aside with your hand or a brush a fresh line of paint of various colors, or so many lumps of friable colored powders. ‘There was, accordingly, a sort of belt, as wide as the whole height of the hill, extending downward along the whole north or sunny side of the pond, composed of exceedingly short and narrow in- verted pyramids of the most brilliant colors intermixed. I have seen, indeed, similar inverted pyramids in the old drawings of tattooing about the waists of the abo- rigines of this country. Walden, too, like an Indian maiden, wears this broad rainbow-like belt of brilliant- colored points or cones round her waist in October. The color seems to be reflected and re-reflected from ripple to ripple, losing brightness each time by the softest possible gradation, and tapering toward the beholder, since he occupies a mere point of view. This is one of the prettiest effects of the autumnal change. The harvest of leaves is at hand in some valleys, and generally the young deciduous trees on hillsides have the brilliant tint of ripe fruits. Already many windfalls strew the ground under the maples and elms, etc. I see one or two maple shrubs quite bare, while many large maples are still quite green. In that rainbow belt we have color, which is com- monly so rare and precious and confined to precious stones, in the utmost profusion. The ripples convey the reflection toward us, till all the color is winnowed out and spilled between them and only the dusky points reach near to this side where we stand. It is as if a broad belt (or waist-cloth) of sharp and narrow inverted cones or pyramids of bright colors, softly blended like fairy worsted work, their bases rising to a line mathematically level about the waist of the pond. That fall river Indian, like the Almouchicois generally, wore a belt of hollow tubes. It was strange that only the funeral bell was in har- mony with that scene, while other sounds were too frivolous and trivial, as if only through the gate of death would man come to appreciate his opportuni- ties and the beauty of the world he has abused. In proportion as death is more earnest than life, it is bet- ter than life. The sun set just before I reached the railroad cause- way on my return, but then there was not a cloud to be seen in the horizon. Coming through the Irish [sic] field, the mountains were purple, much redder than a grapem. . That simple and mild nasal chant ' affected me like the dawn of civilization to the wilderness. I thought of “Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutored mind,” etc. There is always a slight haze or mist on the brow of the Indian. The white man’s brow is clear and distinct. It is eleven o’clock in the forenoon with him. It is four o’clock in the morning with the Indian.

P. M.— Up Assabet. Hemlock leaves are copiously falling. ‘They cover the hillside like some wild grain. The changing red maples along the river are past their prime now, ear- lier than generally elsewhere. They are much faded, and many leaves are floating on the water. Those white maples that were so early to change in the water have more than half lost their leaves. Walking through the Lee farm swamp, a dozen or more rods from the river, I found a large box trap closed. I opened it and found in it the remains of a gray rabbit, —skin, bones, and mould, — closely fitting the mght-angled corner of one side. It was wholly inoffensive, as so much vegetable mould, and must have been dead some years. None of the furniture of the trap remained, but the box itself, with a lid which just moved on two rusty nails; the stick which held the bait, the string, etc., etc., were all gone. The box had the appearance of having been floated off in an upright position by a freshet. It had been a rabbit’s living tomb. He had gradually starved to death in it. What a tragedy to have occurred within a box in one of our quiet swamps! ‘The trapper lost his box, the rabbit its life. The box had not been gnawed. After days and nights of moaning and struggle, heard for a few rods through the swamp, increasing weakness and emaciation and delirium, the rabbit breathes its last. They tell you of opening the tomb and finding by the contortions of the body that it was buried alive. This was such a case. Let the trapping boy dream of the dead rabbit in its ark, as it sailed, like a small meeting-house with its rude spire, slowly, with a grand and solemn motion, far amid the alders. Four dark-colored ducks (white beneath), maybe summer, or teal (??), with a loud creaking note of alarm, flew away from near the shore and followed the bend of the river upward. I see and hear white-throated sparrows on the swamp white oaks by the river’s edge, uttering a faint sharp cheep. The chipmunk,’ the wall-going squirrel, that will cross a broad pasture on the wall, now this side, now that, now on top, and lives under it, —as if it were a track laid for him expressly.

P. M.— To Dugan Desert and Ministerial Swamp. The elms are now at the height of their change. As I look down our street, which is lined with them, now clothed in their very rich brownish-yellow dress, they ? An allied one is called the wall-mouse in the West. remind me of yellowing sheaves of grain, as if the har- vest had come to the village itself, and we might ex- pect to find some maturity and flavor in the thoughts of the villagers at last. Under those light-rustling yellow piles, just ready to fall on the heads of the walker, how can any crudity or greenness of thought or act prevail? The street is a great harvest-home. It would be worth the while to set out these trees, if only for their autumnal value. Think of these great yellow canopies or parasols held over our heads and houses by the mile together, making the village all one and compact, an ulmarium. And then how gently and un- observed they drop their burdens and let in the sun when it is wanted, their leaves not heard when they fall on our roofs and in our streets. IT see the traveller driving into the village under its canopy of elm-tops, with his crop, as into a great granary or barn-yard. I am tempted to go thither as to a husking of thoughts, now dry and ripe and ready to be separated from their integuments, but I foresee that it will be chiefly husks and little thought, blasted pig-corn, fit only for cob-meal.’ Is there, then, indeed, no thought under this ample husk of conversation and manners? ‘There is the sermon husk, the lecture husk, and the book husk, and are they all only good to make mats of and tread under foot ? Looking from railroad bridge, birches are perhaps at the height of their change now; hickories are about the color of elms or a little browner; balm-of-Gileads, about as birches; many ash trees are a mere finely divided dull-reddish color; swamp white oaks are green, yellow, and brown, much less ripe than elms, not much yellowed yet. Under the pines by the Clamshell, that fine purple grass is now withered and faded to a very light brown which reflects the autumnal light. Patches of rabbit’s clover amid the blackberry vines are now quite hoary if not silvery. I thought it a mass of Aster Tradescanti at first, but they are not so common. Many plants, like them, remind you by their color of the frosts. Sprout-lands, with their oaks, chestnuts, etc., etc., are now at their height of color. From Lupine Hill, not only the maples, etc., have acquired brighter tints at this season, but the pines, by contrast, appear to have acquired a new and more liquid green, and to some extent this is true, — where their old leaves have chiefly fallen, which is not yet generally the case, however. I see now that, near the river and low on the mead- ows, the maple stands with paled fires, burned out, thin-leaved, a salmon or faint cherry tint, ready to surrender to the first smart frost. It has come to this, — that the lover of art is one, and the lover of nature another, though true art is but the expression of our love of nature. It is monstrous when one cares but little about trees but much about Corinthian columns, and yet this is exceedingly com- mon. Scarlet oaks have fairly begun to blaze, — espe- cially their lower limbs, —in low places which have most felt the frost. Hazels at their height, varying from green through dull crimson to dull scarlet. Going along the mill road, the common shrub oaks make a dull-red or salmon impression in the mass at a little distance, from which brighter scarlet oaks stand out. On F. Wheeler’s clearing, over the swamp, many shrub oak leaves fallen, laying bare the acorns, which are browned. Many leaves already thickly strew the dry, sandy ground. In the swamp, some twenty-foot maples are already bare, and some white pines are as yellow as birches. The spruces appear unchanged, even close at hand, though many leaves have fallen and are falling. The Viburnum nudum in the swamp is a clear handsome crimson. The young cherry yellow, with a faint cherry tinge. The mulberry is browned and falling, though it is but slightly tinged with yellow. I see an Irishman digging mud at Harrington’s mud-hole. He digs it out rapidly, —a hole four feet wide by eight long, — leaving a water-tight partition, eighteen or twenty inches wide, on two sides next the water. At three feet it is clear white sand, whiter than common sand-hills. Why? Why is there no stain of vegetation in it? It requires some skill to save much of the partition at last. This man first pares off the top nearly to the level of the water, then, standing on it, digs it away as the water rushes in, — though it fills it before he has got a foot, — and he thus saves about half its depth. No doubt his work is the more amusing for requiring this exercise of thought. Saw a jay stealing corn from a stack in a field.

P. M. — To Walden over Fair Haven Hill. Some Prinos verticillatus yellowing and browning at once, and in low ground just falling and leaving the bright berries bare. From the upper side of Wheeler’s clearing on Fair Haven Hill, I see five smokes, now at 3.30 P. m., — one toward Lexington, one over Bedford, one over Billerica, one, very copious, as much further north, and one over Carlisle. These are all dark, seen against the sky and from the sun, and, except the first, appar- ently beyond the respective towns. Going over to the southwest side of the hill, I see one large wide- spread smoke toward Wachusett and rising against it, apparently beyond the height of land between the Concord and Nashua, and another much nearer, toward Stow. These two are light, or smoke-colored, because seen more toward the sun, perhaps; or is it solely because seen against the mountain and woods? There is another, the eighth, a little south of west, nearly under the sun, but this, being very distant and seen against the sky, is dusky. I could not see south and southwest. I think that these smokes are the most distant sign of the presence of man on the globe that I detect with my unarmed eye, —of man’s cohabitancy. I see the | evidence that so many farmers with their hired men and boys are at work in their clearings from five to fifteen miles off. I see this smoky telegraph for hours marking the locality and occupation of some farmer and suggesting peaceful rural enterprises and improve- ments which I may yet see described in the agricul- tural reports, though I may never have seen, and per- haps never shall see, that farm or farmer. Considering the slight evidence I have of their existence, they are as far away as if in another quarter of the globe. Some- times the smoke is seen beyond a distant range of hills, spreading along, low and bluish, seen against a more distant hill or mountain; at others it is a column faintly and dimly seen against the horizon, but more distinctly revealed by a dusky but cloud-like expansion above. It may be a dusky almost level bar, slanting upward a little, like a narrow banner. ‘The smokes from a dozen clearings far and wide, from a portion of the earth thirty miles or more in diameter, reveal the em- ployment of many husbandmen at this season. Thus I see the woods burned up from year to year. The telltale smokes reveal it. ‘The smokes will become rarer and thinner year by year, till I shall detect only a mere feathery film and there is no more brush to be burned. Generally speaking, the autumnal tints affect the color of the landscape for only two or three miles, but I distinguish maples by their color half a mile north of Brooks Clark’s, or some three miles distant, from this hill, — one further east very bright. Also I see them in the northeast, or on or near, apparently, a road between Bedford and Billerica, at least four or five miles distant!! This is the furthest I can see them. Descend from Fair Haven Hill through Stow’s sprout-land to railroad. See chincapin oaks in frosty places sere brown and ready to fall, while in others they are still green, in woods. ‘They turn of various colors, some quite handsome clear scarlet or red. Many young white oaks in similar frosty places are all withered and shrivelled. I see in the woods some Smilacina racemosa leaves, —— which are usually a uniform pale-brown, — very wildly and remarkably marked, — weirdly. They are pale-brown, almost white, and somewhat curled, varied with rectilinear broad black (brown, seen close to) marks along the veins, say one inch, more or less, long by one tenth inch wide, with square corners. (Suppose you were to have a neckerchief after this pattern!) The whole plant gracefully bent almost horizontally with the weight of its dense raceme of bright cherry-red berries at the end. Generally speaking, chestnuts, hickories, aspens, and some other trees attain a fair clear yellow only in small specimens in the woods or sprout-lands, or in their lower leaves. You see now in sprout-lands young scarlet oaks of every degree of brightness from green to dark scarlet. It is a beautifully formed leaf, with its broad, free, open sinuses, — worthy to be copied in sculpture. A very agreeable form, a bold, deep scallop, as if the ’ material were cheap. Like tracery. The color is more mingled with light than in the less deeply scalloped oak leaves. It is a less simple form. Though the connected outline is a broad oval, it is much improved by deep bays of light, as a simple oval pond would be im- proved by four or five broad, rounded promontories extending far into it on different sides, while the watery bays, instead of being rounded at bottom, extended far inland in sharp friths. The leaf suggests a lavish expense in the creation of those deep scallops, as if so much material had been cut out and thrown away.’ This is the end of the sixth day of glorious weather, which I am tempted to call the finest in the year, so bright and serene the air and such a sheen from the earth, so brilliant the foliage, so pleasantly warm (except, perhaps, this day, which is cooler), too warm for a thick coat, — yet not sultry nor oppressive, — so ripe the season and our thoughts. Certainly these are the most brilliant days in the year, ushered in, perhaps, by a frosty morning, as this. As a dewy morn- ing in the summer compared with a parched and sultry, languid one, so a frosty morning at this season com- pared with a merely dry or foggy one. ‘These days you may say the year is ripened like a fruit by frost, and puts on brilliant tints of maturity but not yet of decay. It is not sere and withered as in November. See the heaps of apples in the fields and at the cider- mill, of pumpkins in the fields, and the stacks of corn- stalks and the standing corn. Such is the season. The morning frosts have left a silvery hue on the fine pasture grasses. ‘They have faded to a kindred color.

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. River lower than before since winter at least; very low. Another frost last night, although with fog, and this afternoon the maple and other leaves strew the water, and it is almost a leaf harvest. I see some fine clear yellows from the Rhus Toxicodendron on the bank by the hemlocks and beyond. The osmunda ferns are generally withered and brown except where very much protected from frost. The O. regalis is the least generally withered of them. The onoclea is much later and still generally green along the bank, or faded white here and there. Looking at the reflection of the bank by the Hem- locks, the reflected sun dazzles me, and I approach nearer to the bank in order to shut it out (of course it disappears sooner in the reflection than the sub- stance, because every head is raised above the level of the water), and I see in the reflection the fine, slender grasses on the sharp or well-defined edge of the bank all glowing with silvery light, a singularly silvery light to be seen in the water [?], and whose substance I can- not see to advantage with my head thus high, since the sun is in the way. This is the seventh day of glorious weather. Per- haps these might be called Harvest Days. Within the week most of the apples have been gathered; po- tatoes are being dug; corn is still left in the fields, though the stalks are being carried in. Others are ditching and getting out mud and cutting up bushes along fences, — what is called “brushing up,’”’ — burn- ing brush, etc. | These are cricket days. The river is so low that I run against several rocks, which I must have floated over three or four days ago, and I see many snags and water-logged trunks on the bottom or partly exposed, which were then invisible. It is remarkable how many trees— maple and swamp white [oak], ete. — which stand on the bank of the river, being undermined by the water or broken off by the ice or other cause, fall into the stream and finally sink to the bottom and are half buried there for many years. A great deal of wood, especially of the kinds named, is thus lost. They last longer there probably than in favorable localities out of water. I see still the timber foundation of an old dam just above Spencer Brook, extending across the river on the bot- tom, though there has been nothing above water within my recollection. The large black oaks in front of Prescott Barrett’s are one by one falling into the river, and there are none to succeed them. They were probably left to skirt the stream when the other wood was cut, and now, when they are undermined, there are none behind to supply their places. Mr. Conant of Acton tells me that there was a grist- mill built over the river there by Sam Barrett’s grand- father, and that he remembers going to it when he was fourteen. He went in at the Lee house and crossed the river by a bridge at the mill. He says that it is as much as sixty years since the mill was standing. Minott thinks it is not quite so long since. He remembers the bridge there, not a town one, nor strong enough for a horse and cart. Thinks the mill was discontinued because Dr. Lee complained of its flowing his wood- land. They used to stop with their carts this side and carry their bags back and forth over the bridge on their shoulders. Used a small and poor road across to Lee’s farm.