17 May 1858 – 23 May 1858

Louring and more or less rainy. P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. Near Beomyces Bank, I see the Salix humilis show- ing its down or cotton, and also the S. tristis.?, Probably the last is wholly out of bloom some time. These, then, have ripe seed before the white maple. It rains gently from time to time as I walk, but I see a farmer with his boys, John Hosmer, still working in the rain, bent on finishing his planting. He is slowly getting a soaking, quietly dropping manure in the furrows. This rain is good for thought. It is especially agreeable to me as I enter the wood and hear the soothing dripping on the leaves. It domiciliates me in nature. The woods are the more like a house for the rain; the few slight noises sound more hollow in them; the birds hop nearer; the very trees seem still and pensive. The clouds are but a higher roof. The clouds and rain confine me to near objects, the surface of the earth and the trees. On the first holdings up in the intervals of the rain, the chewink is heard again, and the huckleberry-bird, and the ever- green-forest note, etc. I am coming in sight of the Charles Miles house. What a pleasant sandy road, soaking up the rain, that from the woods to the Miles house! The house becomes a controlling feature in the landscape when there is but one or two in sight. The red maple tops ten days ago looked like red paint scaling off, when seen against houses. Now they have acquired a browner red. The Populus grandidentata now shows large, silvery, downy, but still folded, leafets. You are more than paid for a wet coat and feet, not only by the exhilaration that the fertile moist air imparts, but by the increased fragrance and more gem-like char- acter of expanding buds and leafets in the rain. All vegetation is now fuller of life and expression, some- what like lichens in wet weather, and the grass. Buds are set in syrup or amber. Measured the large apple tree in front of the Charles Miles house. It is nine feet and ten inches in circum- ference at two and a half feet from the ground, the smallest place below the branches, which are now four, — once five, one being cut, — starting at about five feet from the ground, and each as big as a good-sized modern tree. The top is large. The trunk looks healthy and is scarcely larger at the ground than where measured. It is large for an oak, a sturdy-looking tree, reminding one of the portly bodies of some of our grandfathers. It is not grafted. Once stood by the fence. 1858 A TALK WITH PUFFER 429 While I was measuring the tree, Puffer came along, and I had a long talk with him, standing under the tree in the cool sprinkling rain till we shivered. He said that he had seen pout-spawn attached to the under side of the white lily pads!! He thought he knew it from having seen it in their bodies. He thought that the pickerel- spawn was dropped in deep water and was devoured by pouts and eels. Wondered where eels bred, and how, for he never detected any spawn in them. Had been told (like Witherell) that they gendered into, 7. e. copulated with, the clam. Told of a winter some fifteen years ago when there was a freshet in February, and the snapping turtles thought it was spring and came up with it on to the meadows; but it froze, and the ice settled on them and killed them when the water went down, and they were found dead in great numbers in the spring, — one that must have weighed one hundred pounds. Had seen pickerel that had been frozen four or five hours brought to life in water. Said that the black snake laid eight or ten eggs in a field. Once killed a very large water adder, and counted over sixty little snakes in it an inch or two long, and that was not all. Once he was going along, saw a water adder and heard a low sound which it made with its mouth, and he saw as many as twenty-five little snakes run into its mouth. Says the foxes eat the Emys picta, which I believe he called grass turtles. He had seen where they had opened them. But they could not get at the box turtle. Found some young stake-drivers as he was mowing. When the hummingbird flew about the room yester- day, his body and tail hung in a singular manner be- tween the wings, swinging back and forth with a sort of oscillating motion, not hanging directly down, but yet pulsating or teetering up and down. I see a chewink flit low across the rodd with its peculiar flirting, undulating motion. I thought yesterday that the view of the mountains from the bare hill on the Lincoln side of Flint’s Pond was very grand. Surely they do not look so grand any- where within twenty miles of them. And I reflected what kind of life it must be that is lived always in sight of them. I looked round at some windows in the middle of Lincoln and considered that such was the privilege of the inhabitants of these chambers; but their blinds were closed, and I have but little doubt that they are blind to the beauty and sublimity of this prospect. I doubt if in the landscape there can be anything finer than a distant mountain-range. They are a constant elevating influ- ence. Ranunculus acris, apparently in a day or two. Rho- dora at Clamshell well out. Just after hearing my night-warbler I see two birds on a tree. The one which I examined —as well as I could without a glass — had a white throat with a white spot on his wings, was dark above and moved from time to time like a creeper, and it was about the creeper’s size.* The other bird, which I did not examine particularly, was a little larger and more tawny.? It is remarkable how little way most men get in their account of the mysteries of nature. Puffer, after de- scribing the habits of a snake or turtle, — some pecu- harity which struck him in its behavior, — would say with a remarkable air as if he were communicating or suggesting something, possibly explaining something, “Now I take it that is Nature; Nature did that.”’

Set an arbor-vite hedge fifteen inches east of our line; about twenty inches high.

A. M. — Surveying (by the eye) for War- ner the meadow surveyed for John Hosmer in June, ’56. The black currant near southwest corner of his Saw Mill field (Ribes floridum) perfectly out; how long? P. M. — To Everett Spring. There appears to be quite a variety in the colors of the Viola cucullata. Some dark-blue, if not lilac (? ), some with a very dark blue centre and whitish circum- ference, others dark-blue within and dark without, others all very pale blue. Stellaria borealis well out, apparently several days. What I called the Ranun- culus bulbosus there May 3d proves to be the R. repens. It would appear then to be the earliest ranunculus. It is a dense bed of yellow now. I am struck by the light spot in the sinuses of the leaves. The Equisetum sylvaticum there is now of a reddish cast. R. W. E. says that Pratt found yesterday out the trientalis, Trillium cernuum, and Smilacina bifolia. Four rods plus south of the cross-fence over Everett’s hill, on the west slope, I find the Ranunculus aborti- vus, two plants open only; but will not shed pollen till to-morrow. A rod or two further the Equisetum hyemale, apparently a little past bloom, or effete, all the heads open. Looking with my glass into the Gourgas pond-hole, I see three or four buck-bean blossoms. ‘Two birds about the size and of the appearance of a pigeon or turtle dove start up with a loud alarm note from the shallow muddy flat there, — with a harsh shrill cry, phil phil phil or the like. At first I could not guess what they were, but since concluded that they were the larger yellow-legs. Could this bird have made the sound heard on the 15th? ‘There remained feeding on the mud along the water’s edge two peetweet-like birds, but apparently larger and less teetering. I thought they were T. solitarius. Heard the night-warbler begin his strain just like an oven-bird! I have noticed that when it drops down into the woods it darts suddenly one side to a perch when low.

P. M. — Up Assabet. A cloudy afternoon, with a cool east wind, producing a mist. Hundreds of swallows are now skimming close over the river, at its broadest part, where it is shallow and runs the swiftest, just below the Island, for a distance of twenty rods. There are bank, barn, cliff, and chimney swallows, all mingled together and continually scaling back and forth,—a very lively sight. They keep descending or stooping to within a few inches of the water on a curving wing, without quite touching it, and I suppose are attracted by some small insects which hover close over it. They also stoop low about me as I stand on the flat island there, but I do not perceive the insects. They rarely rise more than five fect above the surface, and a gen- eral twittering adds to the impression of sociability. The principal note is the low grating sound of the bank swallow, and I hear the vit vit of the barn swallow. The cliff swallow, then, is here. Are the insects in any measure confined to that part of the river? Or are they congregated for the sake of society? I have also in other years noticed them over another swift place, at Hubbard’s Bath, and also, when they first come, in smaller numbers, over the still and smooth water under the lee of the Island wood. They are thick as the gnats which perhaps they catch. Swallows are more con- fident and fly nearer to man than most birds. It may be because they are more protected by the sentiment and superstitions of men. The season is more backward on account of the cloudy and rainy weather of the last four or five days and some preceding. The Polygonatum pubescens, not quite. The red oak is not out. Hear a quail whistle. I notice that the sugar maple opposite Barrett’s does not bloom this year, nor does the canoe birch by the Hemlocks bear sterile catkins. Perhaps they more or less respect the alternate years. 3.30 vp. M. — To Brister’s Hill. Going along the deep valley in the woods, just be- fore entering the part called Laurel Glen, I heard a noise, and saw a fox running off along the shrubby side-hill. It looked like a rather small dirty-brown fox, and very clumsy, running much like a wood- chuck. It had a dirty or dark brown tail, with very little white to the tip. A few steps further I came upon the remains of a woodchuck, yet warm, which it had been eating. Head, legs, and tail, all remained, united by the skin, but the bowels and a good part of the flesh were eaten. This was evidently a young fox, say three quarters grown, or perhaps less, and appeared as full as a tick. There was a fox-hole within three rods, with a very large sand-heap, several cartloads, before it, much trodden. Hearing a bird of which I was in search, I turned to examine it, when I heard a bark behind me, and, looking round, saw an old fox on the brow of the hill on the west side of the valley, amid the bushes, about ten rods off, looking down at me. At first it was a short, puppy-like bark, but afterward it began to bark on a higher key and more prolonged, very unlike a dog, a very ragged half-screaming bur- ar-r-r. I proceeded along the valley half a dozen rods after a little delay (the fox being gone), and then looked round to see if it returned to the woodchuck. I then saw a full-grown fox, perhaps the same as the last, cross the valley through the thin low wood fifteen or twenty rods behind me, but from east to west, pausing and looking at me anxiously from time to time. It was rather light tawny (not fox-colored) with dusky-brown bars, and looked very large, wolf-like. The full-grown fox stood much higher on its legs and was longer, but the body was apparently not much heavier than that of the young. Going a little further, I came to another hole, and ten feet off was a space of a dozen square feet amid some little oaks, worn quite bare and smooth, apparently by the playing of the foxes, and the ground close around a large stump about a rod from the hole was worn bare and hard, and all the bark and much of the rotten wood was pawed or gnawed off lately. They had pawed a deep channel about one and in between the roots, perhaps for insects. There lay the remains of another woodchuck, now dry, the head, skin, and legs being left, and also part of the skin of a third, and the bones of another animal, and some partridge feathers. The old foxes had kept their larder well supplied. Within a rod was another hole, appar- ently a back door, having no heap of sand, and five or six rods off another in the side of the hill with a small sand-heap, and, as far down the valley, another with a large sand-heap and a back door with none. There was a well-beaten path from the one on the side- hill five or six rods long to one in the valley, and there was much blackish dung about the holes and stump and the path. By the hole furthest down the valley was another stump, which had been gnawed (? ) very much and trampled and pawed about like the other: I suppose the young foxes play there. There were half a dozen holes or more, and what with the skulls and feathers and skin and bones about, I was reminded of Golgotha. These holes were some of them very large and conspicuous, a foot wide vertically, by eight or ten inches, going into the side-hill with a curving stoop, and there was commonly a very large heap of sand before them, trodden smooth. It was a sprout-land valley, cut off but a year or two since. As I stood by the last hole, I heard the old fox bark, and saw her (? ) near the brow of the hill on the north- west, amid the bushes, restless and anxious, overlook- ing me a dozen or fourteen rods off. I was, on doubt, by the hole in which the young were. She uttered at very short intervals a prolonged, shrill, screeching kind of bark, beginning lower and rising to a very high key, lasting two seconds; a very broken and ragged sound, more like the scream of a large and angry bird than the bark of a dog, trilled like a piece of vibrating metal at the end. It moved restlessly back and forth, or approached nearer, and stood or sat on its haunches like a dog with its tail laid out in a curve on one side, and when it barked it laid its ears flat back and stretched its nose forward. Sometimes it uttered a short, puppy- like, snappish bark. It was not fox-colored now, but a very light tawny or wolf-color, dark-brown or dusky beneath in a broad line from its throat; its legs the same, with a broad dusky perpendicular band on its haunches and similar ones on its tail, and a small whitish spot on each side of its mouth. There it sat like a chief- tain on his hills, looking, methought, as big as a prairie wolf, and shaggy like it, anxious and even fierce, as IT peered through my glass. I noticed, when it with- drew, — I too withdrawing in the opposite direction, — that as it had descended the hill a little way and wanted to go off over the pinnacle without my seeing which way it went, it ran one side about ten feet, till it was behind a small white pine, then turned at a right angle and ascended the hill directly, with the pine between us. The sight of it suggested that two or three might at- tack a man. The note was a shrill, vibrating scream or cry; could easily be heard a quarter of a mile. How many woodchucks, rabbits, partridges, etc., etc., they must kill, and yet how few of them are seen! A very wolfish color. It must have been a large fox, and, if it is true that the old are white on the sides of the face, an old one. They evidently used more than a half dozen holes within fifteen rods. I withdrew the sooner for fear by his barking he would be betrayed to some dog or gunner. It was a very wild sight to see the wolf-like parent circling about me in the thin wood, from time to time pausing to look and bark at me. This appears to be nearest to the cross fox of Audubon, and is considered a variety of the red by him and most others, not white beneath as the red fox of Harlan. Emmons says of the red fox, “In the spring the color appears to fade,” and that some are “pale yellow,” but does not de- scribe minutely. This was probably a female, for Bell says of the English fox that the female “loses all her timidity and shyness when suckling her young;” also that they are a year and a half in attaining their full size." Hear the pepe. See tanagers, male and female, in ' I find afterward three or four more fox-holes near by, and see where they have sat on a large upturned stump, which had heaved up earth with it. Many large pieces of woodchuck’s skin about these holes. ‘They leave the head and feet. A scent of carrion about the holes. the top of a pine, one red, other yellow, from below. We have got to these high colors among birds. Saw in the street a young cat owl, one of two which Skinner killed in Walden Woods yesterday. It was almost ready to fly, at least two and a half feet in alar extent; tawny with many black bars, and darker on wings. Holmes, in Patent Office Report, says they “pair early in February.” So I visited the nest. It was in a large white pine close on the north side of the path, some ten rods west of the old Stratton cellar in the woods. This is the largest pine thereabouts, and the nest is some thirty-five feet high on two limbs close to the main stem, and, according to Skinner, was not much more than a foot across, made of small sticks, nearly flat, “without fine stuff!” There were but two young. This is a path which somebody travels every half-day, at least, and only a stone’s throw from the great road. ‘There were many white droppings about and large rejected pellets containing the vertebrze and hair of a skunk. As I stood there, I heard the crows making a great noise some thirty or forty rods off, and immediately suspected that they were pestering one of the old owls, which Skinner had not seen. It proved so, for, as I approached, the owl sailed away from amidst a white pine top, with the crows in full pursuit, and he looked very large, stately, and heavy, like a seventy-four among schooners. I soon knew by the loud cawing of the crows that he had alighted again some forty rods off, and there again I found him perched high on a white pine, the large tawny fellow with black dashes and large erect horns. Away he goes again, and the crows after him.

P. M. — To Boulder Field. Horse-chestnut in bloom. Actea spicata var. rubra will bloom, apparently, in four or five days. It is now fifteen inches high. Lilac in bloom. Pratt shows me what I take to be Genista tinctoria (not budded) from the Boulder Field. It has leafed; when? Also a ranun- culus from his land, — which has been out how long ? — which is very near to R. repens, but has small flowers, petals less than the calyx, and leaves, methinks, more divided, but I did not see it open. It may be a variety of repens." His daughter has found in bloom: huckleberry on the 19th; Viola pubescens, 16th; Geranium maculatum, 18th. I notice that the old indigo-bird path behind Pratt’s is for some distance distinctly defined by young birches, three or four feet high, which are now clothed with tender leaves before the young oaks, etc., on each side. They are especially thick in the ruts, while there are but few here and there in the sprout-land generally. I suspect that the seed was blown and lodged there in the winter. E. Hoar saw Silene Pennsylvanica out in Lincoln to- day, in a warm cleft of a rock; also Cerasus pumila between here and Newton.

Saturday. Ed. Emerson brings me the egg of a hawk, dirty bluish-white,? just found, with three other eggs not much developed, in a nest on the ground. Probably a hen-harrier’s. P. M. — By cars to Worcester, on way to New York. We have had much rainy weather for about a week, and it has just cleared up. I notice, as I glide along, that the sun coming out shines brightly on smooth waters, ponds, and flooded meadows raised by the rain, and is reflected from the new lily pads, which most now first generally notice, spread out on the surface, the foul weather having prevented our observing their growth. Something like this annually occurs. After this May storm the sun bursts forth and is reflected brightly in some placid hour from the new leaves of the lily spread out on the surface in the ponds and pools raised [by] the rain, and we seem to have taken a long stride into sum- mer. So was it also in a former geological age, when water and water-plants prevailed and before man was here to behold them. The sun was then reflected from the lily pad after the May storm as brightly as now.

In Worcester. 5 a. M.— Walk with Blake, Brown, and Rogers to Quinsigamond Pond, carrying our breakfast. Paddled up the pond northerly three quarters of a mile from the bridge, and lunched in Shrewsbury on the east side. See some quite fresh frog-spawn of the dark kind, like the Rana palustris, for instance. Cross and ascend Wigwam Hill. Krigia and comandra out there. Brown thrasher’s nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs. Found in the water, eight or ten inches deep, just behind the Lake House, a nasturtium not quite open, which I think must be a variety of the horse-radish (N. Armoracia). Yet such a variety is not described by Gray, for the immersed stem leaves were all narrowly dissected and pinnate (vide pressed specimen), and I saw similar ones in the streets in Worcester in dry ground. The lowest portion — for I had not the root — had the true horse-radish taste. It seemed to be the result of its growing at some time in water. Has the N. lacustre the common horse-radish taste ? A little south of the Boston and Worcester turnpike, and six rods from the west side of the pond, I saw a chestnut about eighteen inches in diameter which was struck by lightning in the night some ten days ago. There was left standing only a splinter of the stump, some seven feet high, with the main limbs fallen upon and around it. The bark and thin slivers or strips of the wood had been cast to a dozen rods around in all direc- tions, the ground being strewn with them, and some rested on the top of an adjacent wood[-pile}]. Also one or two large limbs were thrown to a distance. But what was most remarkable and peculiar, there was a trench somewhat more than two rods long, five feet wide at top, and more than two feet deep, leading perfectly straight from the foot of the tree toward the pond, large old roots being burst through, in the gravelly soil, and masses of the earth cast a rod each way, yet most of the dirt formed a bank to the trench. It would have taken an Irishman at least three hours to have dug this. Then, after an interval of three or four rods, where the ground was a little higher, the trench reappeared at the water’s edge, though quite short there, exactly in the line of the first ditch continued, and there some two cartloads of grav- elly soil were thrown out, and the water stood in it.