24 May 1858 – 30 May 1858

Monday. To New York by railroad. All through Connecticut and New York the white involucres of the cornel (C. Florida), recently expanded, some of them reddish or rosaceous, are now conspicu- ous. It is not quite expanded in Concord. It is the most showy indigenous tree now open. (One plant at Staten Island on the 25th had but just begun to flower, 2. e. the true flowers to open.) Afterentering the State of New York I observed, now fully in bloom, what I call the Viburnum prunifolium, looking very like our V. Lentago in flower at a little distance. It is thorny, as they told me at Staten Island, and the same I dealt with at Perth Amboy, and is insufficiently described. It grows on higher and drier ground than our V. nudum, but its fruit, which is called “nanny berries,’ resembles that rather than the V. Lentago. It shows now rich, dense, rounded masses of white flowers; 7. e., the surface of the bushes makes the impression of regular curves or convex masses of bloom, bearing a large proportion to the green leaves. The pink azalea, too, not yet out at home, 1S generally out, with the cornel. (I see it also next day at Staten Island. ) I saw a musquash swimming across a pool, I think after entering upon Manhattan Island! In the evening, looked at the aquarium at Barnum’s. The glass boxes with nothing but water (labelled fresh or salt) and pebbles seemed sufficiently interesting. There were breams only two inches long, probably hatched only last year. The sea-anemones were new and interesting to me. The ferns, etc., under glass a fine parlor ornament.

Visited the Egyptian Museum. The chariot wheel might have been picked out of a ditch in Carlisle, and the infant’s shoe have been found with it. P. M.— To Staten Island. See an abundance of Ranunculus abortiwus in the wood-path behind Mr. E.’s house, going to seed and in bloom. The branches are fine and spreading, about eight or ten inches high. (Vide pressed plants.) Also some R. recurvatus ; and, well out, what appears to be Thaspium trifoliatum (?) in flower, in path to house. (Vide pressed.) Potatoes just hoed; ours not fairly up.

3 p. M. — Return to Boston.

At Boston, Cambridge, and Concord. De. Kay describes the Esox fasciatus, which is appar- ently mine of May 11th. As I count, the rays are the same in number, wiz. “ P. 13, V. 9, D. 14, A. 13, C. 20.” He says it is from six to eight inches long and abundant in New York; among other things is distinguished by ‘‘a muddy tinge of the roundish pectoral, abdominal, and ventral fins; and by a broad concave or lunated tail.” I do not observe the peculiarity in the tail in mine, now it is in spirits. Ed. Emerson shows me an egg of a bittern (Ardea minor) from a nest in the midst of the Great Meadows, which four boys found, scaring up the bird, last Mon- day, the 24th. It was about a foot wide on the top of a tussock, where the water around was about one foot deep. I will measure the egg.’ They were a little de- veloped. Also an egg of a turtle dove, one of two in a nest in a pitch pine, about six feet from the ground, in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, by the side of a frequented walk, on a fork on a nearly horizontal limb. The egg is milk-white, elliptical, one and three sixteenths inches long by seven eighths wide.

I get the nest of the turtle dove above named, it being deserted and no egg left. It appears to have been built on the foundation of an old robin’s nest and consists of a loose wisp of straw and pinweed, the seedy ends projecting, ten inches long, laid across the mud foundation of the robin’s nest, with a very slight depression. Very loose and coarse material is artificially disposed, without any lining or architecture. It was close to a frequented path of the cemetery and within reach of the hand. A Turtle Dove’s Nest wf: | gant eae? iy i Se) Py. a = Hear the wood pewee. P. M. — By boat to Great Meadows to look for the bittern’s nest. The Cornus florida involucres are partly expanded, but not yet very showy. Salia nigra apparently one day in one place. The Salix pedicellaris, which abounds in the Great Meadows, is a peculiar and rather interesting willow, some fifteen inches high and scarcely rising above the grass even now. With its expanded reddish ovaries, it looks like the choke-berry in bud at a little distance. The Ranunculus Purshit is now abundant and conspicuous in river. I see common in these meadows what appears to be that coarse grass growing in circles, light or yellowish green, with dense wool-grass-like heads and almost black involucres, just begun to bloom. Is it the Scorpus sylvaticus var. atrovirens ? (Vide pressed.) As I look far over the meadow, which is very wet, — often a foot of water amid the grass, —I see this yellowish green interspersed with irregular dark-green patches where it is wettest, just like the shadow of a cloud, — and mistook it for that at first. That was a dark-green and fine kind of sedge. These various shades of grass remind me of June, now close at hand. From time to time I hear the sound of the bittern, concealed in the grass, indefinitely far or near, and can only guess at the direction, not the distance. I fail to find the nest. I come, in the midst of the meadow, on two of the Emys meleagris, much larger than I have found before. Perhaps they are male and female, the one’s sternum being decidedly depressed an eighth of an inch, the other’s not at all. They are just out of the water, partly concealed by some withered grass, and hiss loudly and run out their long necks very far and struggle a good deal when caught. They continue to scratch my hand in their efforts to escape as I carry them, more than other turtles do. The dorsal shield of each is just seven inches long; the sternum of what appears to be the female is about an eighth inch shorter, of the male near a quarter of an inch longer, yet in both the projection of the sternum is chiefly forward. Breadth of shell in the male four and seven eighths, of female four and a half, in middle, but the female widens a little behind. Height of each about two and three quarters inches. ‘The smoothish dark-brown shells, high, regularly rounded, are very thickly but not conspicuously spotted (unless in water) with small oval or elongated yellow spots, as many as fifty or sixty to a scale, and more or less raying from the origin of the scale, becoming larger and horn-colored on the marginal scales especially of one. ‘The thickly and evenly distributed yellow marks of the head and neck correspond to those of the shell pretty well. They are high-backed turtles. ‘The sternum is horn-color, with a large dark or blackish spot occupying a third or more of the rear outer angle of each scale. ‘The throat is clear light-yellow and much and frequently exposed. Tail, tapering and sharp. The claws are quite sharp and perfect. One closes its forward valve to within an eighth of an inch, but the posterior not so much, and evidently they are not inclined to shut up close, if indeed they can at this season, or at all. The sternum of the male, notwithstanding the depression, curves upward at each extremity much more than the female’s. They run out their heads remarkably far and have quite a harmless and helpless expression, yet, from the visible length of neck, the more snake-like. About the size of the wood tortoise. Very regularly and smoothly rounded shells. © Voided many fragments of common snail-shells and some insect ex- uvie. Hear for a long time, as I sit under a willow, a summer yellowbird sing, without knowing what it is. It is a rich and varied singer with but few notes to remind me of its common one, continually hopping about. See already one or two (?) white maple keys on the water. Saw the mouse-ear going to seed in Worcester the 23d. The red actza is fully expanded and prob- ably has been open two or three days, but there will be no pollen till to-morrow. What kind of cherry tree is that, now rather past prime, wild-red-cherry-like, if not it, between the actza and river near wall? Some ten inches in diameter. Hear the night{hawk?] and see a bat to-night. The earliest cinnamon fern, apparently not long. E. Hoar finds the Eriophorum vaginatum at Ledum Swamp, with lead-colored scales; how long?

P. M.— To Bateman’s Pond wa Pratt’s. Buttonwood, one tree, not for two or three days. Rubus triflorus, well out, at Calla Swamp, how long? Calla apparently in two or three, or three or four days, the very earliest. Arethusa bulbosa, well out. Cornus Canadensis blooms apparently with C. florida; not quite yet. I mistook dense groves of little barberries in the droppings of cows in the Boulder Field for apple trees at first. So the cows eat barberries, and help disperse or disseminate them exactly as they do the apple! That helps account for the spread of the bar- berry, then. See the genista, winter-killed at top, some seven or eight rods north of the southernmost large boulder in the Boulder Field. Cannot find any large corydalis plants where it has been very plenty. A few of the Cornus florida buds by the pond have escaped after all. Farmer describes an animal which he saw lately near Bateman’s Pond, which he thought would weigh fifty or sixty pounds, color of a she fox at this season, low but very long, and ran somewhat like a woodchuck. I think it must have been an otter, though they are described as dark glossy-brown.

Hear of lady’s-slipper seen the 23d; how long? I saw the Nuphar advena above water and yellow in Shrewsbury the 23d. P. M. — To hen-harrier’s nest and to Ledum Swamp. Edward Emerson shows me the nest which he and another discovered. It is in the midst of the low wood, sometimes inundated, just southwest of Hubbard’s Bath, the island of wood in the meadow. The hawk rises when we approach and circles about over the wood, uttering a note singularly like the common one of the flicker. The nest is in a more bushy or open place in this low wood, and consists of a large mass of sedge and stubble with a very few small twigs, as it were accidentally intermingled. It is about twenty inches in diameter and remarkably flat, the slight de- pression in the middle not exceeding three quarters of an inch. The whole opening amid the low bushes is not more than two feet in diameter. The thickness of it raises the surface about four inches above the ‘ground. The inner and upper part is uniformly rather fine and pale-brown sedge. There are two dirty, or rather dirtied, white eggs left (of four that were), one of them one and seven tenths inches long, and not “spherical,” as Brewer says, but broad in proportion to length.' Ledum, one flower out, but perhaps if Pratt had not plucked some last Sunday it might have bloomed here yesterday? It is decidedly leafing also. Andromeda Polvfolia by the ditch well out, how long? I perceive the turpentine scent of the ledum in the air as I walk through it. As I stand by the riverside some time after sundown, I see a light white mist rising here and there in wisps from the meadow, far and near, — less visible within a foot of me, — to the height of three or four or ten feet. It does not rise generally and evenly from every part of the meadow, but, as yet, over certain spots only, where there is some warm breath of the meadow turned into cloud.