3 May 1858 – 9 May 1858

P. M. — Ride to Flint’s Pond to look for Uvularia perfoliata. Salix purpurea in Monroe’s gar- den effete. Apparently blooms with our early willows; say 10th of April? At Hosmer’s medicinal (? ) spring, Everett’s farm, Ra- nunculus repens, abundantly out, apparently several days. Hear of a peach out in Lincoln. Probably I heard the black and white creeper Apmil 25th. I hear it and see it well to-day. Comptonia well out, how long? Vola cucullata, how long? Hear of robins’ nests with four eggs. See no signs of the Uvularia perfoliata yet; apparently will not bloom within ten days. E. Hoar brings me a twig of a willow plucked in Newton, which was killed some weeks ago, when it had just begun to bloom. The catkins look peculiarly woolly, and the scales peculiarly rounded or blunt. Is it the eriocephala? Our earliest gooseberry not yet, perhaps because there will be but few blossoms on it this year. Partridges have been heard drumming. In the woods near the Uvularia perfoliata, see and hear a new bird to me. At first it was silent, and I took it for the common pewee, but, bringing my glass to bear on it, found it to be pure white throat and be- neath, yellow on sides of body or wings, greenish-yellow back and shoulders, a white or whitish ring about eyes, and a light mark along side of head, two white bars on wings, apparently black bill and dark or per- haps slate-colored (?) wings and above tail. It sur- prised me by singing in a novel and powerful and rich strain. Yet it may be the white-eyed vireo (which I do not know), if it comes so early.!' Nuttall says it comes to Cambridge about the middle of April.

The Salix pedicellaris by railroad, appar- ently not for two or three days. ‘—The Missouri currant, probably to-day. : P. M. — By boat to Holden Swamp. To go among the willows now and hear the bees hum is equal to going some hundreds of miles southward toward summer. I see along the sides of the river, 2. e., where the bottom is permanently covered, what I have heretofore called the oat spawn, attached to old pontederia stems, etc.,? now some foot or eighteen inches under the surface. It 1s not black and white, like that of the Rana halecina, sylva- tica, and palustris, which I cannot distinguish from one another, but a pale brown or fawn-color. Some is pretty fresh or recently laid, others already flatted out. Hence, from comparison with my earlier sylvatica and halecina spawn, I judge that it may have been laid ten days.° At Clamshell Shore, I see a clam lying up with open valves. Salix pedicellaris at Holden’s Swamp, staminate, out apparently two days. It is still warmer than May Ist, yet I hear the ster- torous tut tut tut of hardly so many frogs (R. palus- tris chiefly, I suppose) as then. As with the halecina, it is the first sudden heats that excite them most, me- thinks. I find hopping in the meadow a Rana halecina, much brighter than any I have seen this year. There is not only a vivid green halo about each spot, but the back is vivid light-green between the spots. I think this was not the case with any of the hundreds I saw amonth ago!! Why?? The brassy lines along the sides of the back are narrower (only about one sixteenth of an inch) and more prominent than the more fawn-colored lines of the R. palustris. In this one, which I carry home and compare with the palustris, there is a large spot on each orbit, but none on the top of the head in front. It is all white beneath, except a tinge of greenish yellow on the abdomen. Witherell speaks of the R. palustris as the yellow- legged frog, very properly. See several bullfrogs along the river, but silent. I go into Holden Swamp to hear warblers. See a little blue butterfly (or moth) — saw one yesterday — fluttering about over the dry brown leaves in a warm place by the swamp-side, making a pleasant contrast. From time to time have seen the large Vanessa Antiopa resting on the black willows, like a leaf still adhering. As I sit there by the swamp-side this warm summery afternoon, I hear the crows cawing hoarsely, and from time to time see one flying toward the .-- top of a tall white pine. At length I dis- ah tinguish a hen-hawk perched on the top. “aS “ The crow repeatedly stoops toward him, ; now from this side, now from that, pass- —\ : ing near his head each time, but he pays not the least attention to it. I hear the weese wese wese of the creeper continually from the swamp. It is the prevailing note there. And methought I heard a redstart’s note (?), but oftener than the lastI heard the tweezer note, or screeper note, of the parti-colored warbler, bluish above, yellow or orange throat and breast, white vent, and white on wings, neck above yellowish, going restlessly over the trees — maples, etc. — by the swamp, in creeper fash- ion, and as you may hear at the same time the true creeper’s note without seeing it, you might think it uttered the creeper’s note also. The red-wings, though here and there in flocks, are apparently beginning to build. I judge by their shy- ness and alarm in the bushes along the river and their richer, solitary warbling. Coming back, I talk with Witherell at William Wheeler’s landing. He comes pushing Wheeler’s square- ended boat down-stream with a fish-spear. Says he caught a snapping turtle in the river May Ist. He sits on the side of my boat by the shore a little while, talk- ing with me. There is a hole in the knee of his pants as big as your hand, and he keeps passing his hand over this slowly, to hide his bare skin, which is sun- burnt and the color of his face, though the latter is reddened by rum, of which his breath smells. But how intimate he is with mud and its inhabitants. He says he caught a large pickerel the other night with spawn in it yet; that Henry Bigelow put many little trout into that round pond (Green Pond he calls it) on the Marlborough road, which Elbridge Haynes caught a few years after, weighing two or three pounds apiece. A man told him that he saw a trout weighing about a pound and a half darting at a pickerel, and every time he darted he took a bit off a fin, and at last the man walked in and caught the pickerel, and it weighed five pounds. This was in Spectacle Pond in Littleton. A fisherman told him once that the common eel “gen- dered” into the river clam, and the young fed on the clam till they were big enough to get other food, and hence you found so many dead clams in the river. I asked him if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel. He saw one making one last spring about this time, as he was going across the fields by the river near Tarbell’s to get seed corn. It was a single lamprey piling up the stones. He used to see thousands of them where he lived a boy, where the lead pipe factory was. Agassiz says in his Introduction (page 175), “I have known it [the Chelonara serpentina] snapping in the same fierce manner [which somebody else had described at a later period when it was very young] as it does when full grown, at a time it was still a pale almost colorless embryo, wrapped up in its foetal envelopes, with a yolk larger than itself hanging from its sternum, three months before hatching.”

‘The two Rana palustris which I caught May ist have been coupled ever since in a firkin in my chamber. They were not coupled when I caught them. Last night I heard them hopping about, for the first time, as if trying to get out. Perhaps the female was trying to find a good place to deposit her spawn. As soon as I get up I find that she has dropped her spawn, a globular mass, wrong or white side up, about two inches in diameter, which still adheres to her posterior, and the male still lies on her back. A few moments later they are separate. The female moves about rest- lessly from time to time, the spawn still attached, but soon it is detached from her posterior, still adhering to her night leg, as if merely sticking to it. In the course of the forenoon it becomes quite detached. At night they are coupled again. The spawn was not dropped at 10 p. mM. the evening before, but apparently in the night. The female now looked long and lank. This is the first spawn I have known to be dropped by the fh. palustris. I should not know it by its appear- ance from that of the sylvatica and halecina. The only frogs hereabouts whose spawn I do not know are the bullfrogs, R. fontinalis, and hylodes. The first have not begun to trump, and I conclude are not yet breeding; the last, I think, must be nearly done breed- ing, and probably do not put their spawn in the river proper; possibly, therefore, the oat spawn of yester- day may be that of the R. fontinalis.' Saw and heard the small pewee yesterday. The aspen leaves at Island to-day appear as big as a nine- pence suddenly.

I heard from time to time a new note from my fana palustris in the firkin in my chamber. It was that strong vibratory purr or prr-r-r-a-a-a, as if it began with a p, lasting two or three seconds - and sometimes longer. In the firkin near my bed, it * sounded just like a vibrating sliver which struck hard and rapidly against the rail [it] belonged to, — dry, like a fine and steady watchman’s rattle sounding but [a] little while. I recognized it as a sound I hear along the riverside. It was like the tut tut tut more sharply and very rapidly or closely sounded perchance; per- haps even like the tapping of a woodpecker. Yes, quite like it thus close by. This morning that spawn laid night before last has expanded to three and a half inches in diameter. P. M. — To Trillium Wood. \t is a muggy and louring afternoon, and I go look- ing for toad spawn and for frogs. In all cases in which I have noticed frogs coupled this year, — the sylva- tica, halecina, and palustris, —the female has been considerably the largest. The most common frog that I get sight of along the brooks and ditches this after- noon, and indeed for some weeks in similar localities . and even in some parts of the river shore, is what I have called the young R. pipiens, with commonly a dull-green head and sides of head, sometimes bright green, and back dusky-spotted. Can this be the bull- frog? Is it not the fontinalis with less bright green and a white throat? Sometimes it is yellow-throated. I saw lately in the river a full-grown bullfrog, with, I think, a white throat. I see a Rana sylvatica by a ditch in Stow’s meadow, fifteen rods from the (Trillium) Wood. The Salix rostrata staminate flowers are of very peculiar yellow, — a bright, what you might call yellow yellow. A boy brings me to-day an Attacus Cecropra moth which has come out of a cocoon in his trunk. It is, I think, the male, a dark brown above, and considerably larger than mine. It must be about seven inches in alar extent. Minott remembers the Rana palustris, or yellow- legged one, as “the one that stinks so,” as if that scent were peculiar to it. I suppose it is. He says that the white-legged one (the halecina) was preferred for in- valids, 2. e. their legs, as being sweeter. He says that there used to be a great many more bullfrogs than there are now, and what has got them he does not know. About 9 p. mM. I went to the edge of the river to hear the frogs. It was a warm and moist, rather foggy evening, and the air full of the ring of the toad, the peep of the hylodes, and the low growling croak or stertoration of the Rana palustris. Just there, how- ever, I did not hear much of the toad, but rather from the road, but I heard the steady peeping of innumer- able hylodes for a background to the palustris snoring, further over the meadow. There was a universal snor- ing of the R. palustris all up and down the river on each side, the very sounds that mine made in my chamber last night, and probably it began in earnest last evening on the river. It is a hard, dry, unmu- sical, fine watchman’s-rattle-like stertoration, swelling to a speedy conclusion, lasting say some four or five seconds usually. The rhythm of it is like that of the toads’ ring, but not the sound. This is considerably like that of the tree-toad, when you think of it criti- cally, after all, but is not so musical or sonorous as that even. There is an occasional more articulate, querulous, or rather quivering, alarm note such as I have described (May 2d). Each shore of the river now for its whole length is all alive with this sterto- rous purring. It is such a sound as I make in my throat when I imitate the growling of wild animals. I have heard a little of it at intervals for a week, in the warmest days, but now at night it [is] universal all along the river. If the note of the R. halecina, April 3d, was the first awakening of the river meadows, this is the second, — considering the hylodes and toads less (?) pecul- larly of the river meadows. Yet how few distinguished this sound at all, and I know not one who can tell what frog makes it, though it is almost as universal as the breeze itself. The sounds of those three reptiles now fill the air, especially at night. The toads are most regardless of the light, and regard less a cold day than the R. palustris does. In the mornings now, I hear no R. palustris and no hylodes, but a few toads still, but now, at night, all ring together, the toads ring- ing through the day, the hylodes beginning in earnest toward night and the palustris at evening. I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of reptiles. They express, as it were, the very feelings of the earth or nature. They are perfect thermometers, hygrome- ters, and barometers. One of our cherries opens. I heard a myrtle-bird’s’ tull-lull yesterday, and that somebody else heard it four or five days ago. Many are catching pouts this louring afternoon, in the little meadow by Walden. The thinker, he who is serene and self-possessed, is the brave, not the desperate soldier. He who can deal with his thoughts as a material, building them into poems in which future generations will delight, he is the man of the greatest and rarest vigor, not sturdy diggers and lusty polygamists. He is the man of energy, in whom subtle and poetic thoughts are bred. Common men can enjoy partially; they can go a-fishing rainy days; they can read poems perchance, but they have not the vigor to beget poems. They can enjoy feebly, but they cannot create. Men talk of freedom! How many are free to think? free from fear, from perturba- tion, from prejudice? Nine hundred and ninety-nine in a thousand are perfect slaves. How many can exer- cise the highest human faculties ? He is the man truly — courageous, wise, ingenious — who can use his thoughts and ecstasies as the material of fair and durable creations. One man shall derive from the fisherman’s story more than the fisher has got who tells it. The mass of men do not know how to cultivate the fields they traverse. The mass glean only a scanty pittance where the thinker reaps an abundant harvest. What is all your building, if you do not build with thoughts? No exercise implies more real manhood and vigor than joining thought to thought. How few men can tell what they have thought! I hardly know half a dozen who are not too lazy for this. They cannot get over some difficulty, and therefore they are on the long way round. You conquer fate by thought. If you think the fatal thought of men and institutions, you need never pull the trigger. The consequences of thinking inevitably follow. ‘There is no more Herculean task than to think a thought about this life and then get it expressed. Horticulturalists think that they make flower-gardens, though in their thoughts they are barren and flower- less, but to the poet the earth is a flower-garden wher- ever he goes, or thinks. Most men can keep a horse or keep up a certain fashionable style of living, but few indeed can keep up great expectations. They justly think very meanly of themselves. May. Plant melons. Hear young bluebirds in the box. Did I not see a bank swallow fly by? Cousin Charles says that he drove Grandmother over to Weston the 2d of May; on the 3d it snowed and he rode about there in a sleigh; on the 4th and the 5th, when he returned in a chaise to Concord, it was considered dangerous on account of the drifts. P. M. — To Assabet by Tarbell’s. I see the second amelanchier well out by railroad.

P. M. — To stone-heaps. Mr. Wright of the factory village, with whom I talked yesterday, an old fisherman, remembers the lamprey eels well, which he used to see in the Assabet there, but thinks that there have been none in the river for a dozen years and that the stone-heaps are not made by them. I saw one apparently just formed yesterday. Could find none April 15th. This after- noon I overhaul two new ones in the river opposite Prescott Barrett’s, and get up more than a peck of stones. The nests are quite large and very high, rising to within a foot of the surface where the water is some three feet deep. I cannot detect any ova or young fishes or eels in the heap, but a great many insects, pashas with two tails, and, I think, some little leeches only. The larger stones are a little larger than a hen’s egg, but the greater part of the heap is merely a coarse gravel. I see a great deal of the oat spawn, generally just flatted out, in that long pokelogan by the Assabet Bath-Place. It is over the coarse, weedy (pontederia and yellow lily stubble), and not the grassy bottom, commonly where there is more or less water all sum- mer. The herb-of-St.-Barbara. Broke off a twig of Prich- ard’s Canada plum in the evening, from which I judge that it may have opened to-day.

P. M. — To Holden and to Ledum Swamp. See two Rana halecina. They have the green halo, but are plain brown between the spots on the back and not vivid light-green like the one of May 4th. See in Ludwigia palustris ditch on Hubbard’s, land evidently toad-spawn already hatched, or flatted out. I distinguish the long strings, now straighter than usual and floating thin on the surface. It is less obvious than frog-spawn, and might easily be overlooked on a slimy surface. I can distinguish the little pollywog while yet in the ova by their being quite small and very black. This makes the fifth kind of frog or toad spawn that I have detected this year. See, in the Holden Swamp wood, the bird of May 3d. It has sly and inquisitive ways, holding down its head and looking at me at some distance off. It has a distinct white line along the bill and about the eyes, and no yellow there, as is said of the white-eyed vireo, and I am now inclined to think it the solitary vireo (?), whose song is not described, and which is considered rare. I should say it had a blue-slate head, and, I note, a distinct yellowish vent, which none of the vireos are allowed to have!! The sides of the body are distinctly yellow, but there is none at all on the throat or breast. Vaccinvum Pennsylvanicum, — how long ? — by owl- nest tree. The parti-colored warbler is very common and musical there, — my tweezer-bird, — making the screep screep screep note. It is an alrhost incessant singer and a very handsomely marked bird. It fre- quents the spruce trees, at regular intervals pausing as it flits, hops, and creeps about from limb to limb or up the main stem, and holding up its head, utters its humble notes, like ah twze twze twze, or ah twze twze twze twze. I notice very large clams, apparently the Unio com- planatus (vide two specimens in drawer), or common, in West Meadow Brook near the road, one more than four and a half inches long. I have before seen them very large in brooks. A dandelion perfectly gone to seed, a complete globe, a system in itself. My Rana palustris spawn, laid in house May 5th, in the sun this afternoon swells and rises to the sur- face in the jar, so that the uppermost ova project slightly above it.