1 February 1858 – 7 February 1858

Measured Gowing’s Swamp two and a half rods northeast of the middle of the hole, 7. e. in the andromeda and sphagnum near its edge, where I stand in the summer; also five rods northeast of the middle of the open hole, or in the midst of the andromeda. In both these places the pole went hard at first, but broke through a crust of roots and sphagnum at about three feet beneath the surface, and I then easily pushed the pole down just twenty feet. This being a small pole, I could not push it any further holding it by the small end; it bent then. With a longer and stiffer pole I could probably have fathomed thirty feet. It seems, then, that there is, over this andromeda swamp, a crust about three feet thick, of sphagnum, andromeda (calyculata and Polifolia), and Kalmia glauca, etc., beneath which there is almost clear water, and, under that, an exceedingly thin mud. There can be no soil above that mud, and yet there were three or four larch trees three feet high or more between these holes, or over exactly the same water, and there were small spruces near by. For aught that appears, the swamp is as deep under the andromeda as in the middle. The two andromedas and the Kalmia glauca may be more truly said to grow in water than in soil there. When the surface of a swamp shakes for a rod around you, you may conclude that it is a network of roots two or three feet thick resting on water or a very thin mud. The surface of that swamp, composed in great part of sphagnum, is really floating. It evidently begins with sphagnum, which floats on the surface of clear water, and, accumulating, at length affords a basis for that large-seeded sedge (?), andromedas, etc. The filling up of a swamp, then, in this case at least, is not the result of a deposition of vegetable matter washed ~ into it, settling to the bottom and leaving the surface clear, so filling it up from the bottom to the top; but the vegetation first extends itself over it as a film, which gradually thickens till it supports shrubs and completely conceals the water, and the under part of this crust drops to the bottom, so that it is filled up first at the top and the bottom, and the middle part is the last to be reclaimed from the water. Perhaps this swamp is in the process of becoming peat. ‘T’his swamp has been partially drained by a ditch. I fathomed also two rods within the edge of the blue- berry bushes, in the path, but I could not force a pole down more than eight feet five inches; so it is much more solid there, and the blueberry bushes require a firmer soil than the water andromeda. This is a regular quag, or shaking surface, and in this way, evidently, floating islands are formed. I am not sure but that meadow, with all its bushes in it, would float a man-of-war.

Still rains, after a rainy night with a little snow, forming slosh. As I return from the post-office, I hear the hoarse, robin-like chirp of a song sparrow on Cheney’s ground, and see him perched on the top- most twig of a heap of brush, looking forlorn and drab- bled and solitary in the rain.

P. M. — To Conantum. I notice that the corner posts of the old Conantum house, which is now being pulled down, were all set butt up, and are considerably larger at that end. I do not see this year, and I do not know that I ever have seen, any unseasonable swelling of the buds of indigenous plants in mild winters. I think that herba- ceous plants show less greenness than usual this win- ter, having been more exposed for want of a snowy covering.

P. M.— To C. Miles Swamp. Discover the Ledum latifolium, quite abundant over a space about six rods in diameter just east of the small pond-hole, growing with the Andromeda caly- culata, [A.|] Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, etc. The A. Polifolia is very abundant about the pond-hole, some of it very narrow-leaved and dark, even black, above, as if burnt.

P. M. — To Boaz’s Meadow. There is a plenty of that handsome-seeded grass which I think Tarbell called goose grass! in the meadow south of the roadway, at Boaz’s Meadow, also in the meadows far north in the woods, and some in Minot Pratt’s meadow.

Aunt Louisa has talked with Mrs. Monroe, and I can correct or add to my account of January 23d. She says that she was only three or four years old, and that she went to school, with Aunt Elizabeth and one other child, to a woman named Turner, somewhere in Boston, who kept a spinning-wheel a-going while she taught these three little children. She remembers that one sat on a lignum-vite mortar turned bottom up, another on a box, and the third on a stool; and then repeated the account of Jennie Burns bringing her little daughter to the school, as before. I observed yesterday in that oak stump on the ditch- bank by Trillium Wood (which I counted the rings of once) that between the twentieth and twenty-seventh rings there was only about three sevenths of an inch, though before and after this it grew very fast and seven spaces would make nearly two inches. The tree was growing lustily till twenty years old, and then for seven years it grew only one fourth or one fifth part as fast as before and after. I am curious to know what hap- pened to it. P. M.— To Cliffs through Wheeler’s pasture on the hill. This new pasture, with gray stumps standing thickly in the now sere sward, reminds me of a graveyard. And on these monuments you can read each tree’s name, when it was born (if you know when it died), how it throve, and how long it lived, whether it was cut down in full vigor or after the infirmities of age had attacked it. I am surprised to find the epigeea on this hill, at the northwest corner of C. Hubbard’s (?) lot, 7. e. the large wood. It extends a rod or so and is probably earlier there than where I have found it before. Some of the buds show a very little color. The leaves have lately been much eaten, I suspect by partridges. Little mounds or tufts of yellowish or golden moss in the young woods look like sunlight on the ground. If possible, come upon the top of a hill unexpectedly, perhaps through woods, and then see off from it to the distant earth which lies behind a bluer veil, before you can see directly down it, 7. e. bringing its own near top against the distant landscape. © In the Fair Haven orchard I see the small botrychium still fresh, but quite dark reddish. ‘The bark of the Populus grandidentata there is a green clay-color.