2 August 1858 – 8 August 1858

P. M. — Up Assabet. Landed at the Bath-Place and walked the length of Shad-bush Meadow. I noticed meandering down that meadow, which is now quite dry, a very broad and dis- tinct musquash-trail, where they went and came con- tinually when it was wet or under water in the winter or spring. These trails are often nine or ten inches wide and half a dozen deep, passing under a root and the low- est overhanging shrubs, where they glided along on their bellies underneath everything. I traced one such trail forty rods, till it ended in a large cabin three feet high, with blueberry bushes springing still from the top; and other similar trails led off from it on opposite sides. Near the cabin they had burrowed or worn them out nine or ten inches deep, as if this now deserted castle had been a place of great resort. Their skins used to be worth fifty cents apiece. I see there what I take to be a marsh hawk of this year, hunting by itself. It has not learned to be very shy yet, so that we repeatedly get near it. What a rich brown bird! almost, methinks, with purple reflections. What I have called the Panicum latifolium has now its broad leaves, striped with red, abundant under Turtle Bank, above Bath-Place.

Savory-leaved aster.

Thursday. 9.30 a.m. — Up river to Pan- try Brook.

P. M.— Walk to Boulder Field. The broom is quite out of bloom; probably a week or ten days. It is almost ripe, indeed. I should like to see how rapidly it spreads. ‘The dense roundish masses, side by side, are three or four feet over and fifteen inches high. They have grown from near the ground this year. The whole clump is now about eighteen feet from north to south by twelve wide. Within a foot or two of its edge, 1 detect many slender little plants springing up in the grass, only three inches high, but, on digging, am surprised to find that they are two years old. They have large roots, running down straight as well as branch- ing, much stouter than the part above ground. Thus it appears to spread slowly by the seed falling from its edge, for I detected no runners. It is associated there with indigo, which is still abundantly in bloom. I then looked for the little groves of barberries which some two months ago I saw in the cow-dung thereabouts, but to my surprise I found some only in one spot after a long search. They appear to have generally died, per- haps dried up. These few were some two inches high; the roots yet longer, having penetrated to the soil be- neath. T’hus, no doubt, some of those barberry clumps are formed; but I noticed many more small barberry plants standing single, most commonly protected by a rock. Cut a couple of those low scrub apple bushes, and found that those a foot high and as wide as high, being clipped by the cows, as a hedge with shears, were about twelve years old, but quite sound and thrifty.? If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast. | Emerson is gone to the Adirondack country with a hunting party. Eddy says he has carried a double-bar- relled gun, one side for shot, the other for ball, for Lowell killed a bear there last year. But the story on the Mill-Dam is that he has taken a gun which throws shot from one end and ball from the other! I think that [speak impartially when I say that I have never met with a stream so suitable for boating and botanizing as the Concord, and fortunately nobody knows it. I know of reaches which a single country- seat would spoil beyond remedy, but there has not been any important change here since I can remember. The willows slumber along its shore, piled in light but low masses, even like the cumuli clouds above. We pass hay- makers in every meadow, who may think that we are idlers. But Nature takes care that every nook and crev- ice is explored by some one. While they look after the open meadows, we farm the tract between the river's brinks and behold the shores from that side. We, too, are harvesting an annual crop with our eyes, and think you Nature is not glad to display her beauty to us? Early in the day we see the dewdrops thickly sprin- kled over the broad leaves of the potamogeton. These cover the stream so densely in some places that a web- footed bird can almost walk across on them.

Saturday. P. M.— Up Assabet. The most luxuriant groves of black willow, as I recall them, are on the inside curves, or on sandy capes between the river and a bay, or sandy banks parallel with the firmer shore, e.g. between Lee’s and Fair Haven on north side, point of Fair Haven Island, opposite Clam- shell and above, just below stone bridge, Lee Meadow or opposite house, below Nathan Barrett’s at Bay, sandy bank below Dove Rock. They also grow on both sides sometimes, where the river runs straight through stagnant meadows or swamps, —e. g. above Hollowell Bridge, — or on one side, though straight, along the edge of a swamp, — as above Assabet Spring, — but rarely ever against a firm bank or hillside, the positive male shore, e. g. east shore of Fair Haven Pond, east side above railroad bridge, etc.! Measured the two largest of three below Dove Rock. The southernmost is three feet nine inches in circumference at ground, and it branches there. The westernmost is four feet two inches in circumference at ground and three feet two inches at three feet above ground. Or the largest is one foot and four inches in diameter at ground. They all branch at the ground, dividing within four or five feet into three or four main stems. The three here have the effect of one tree, seen from the water, and are twenty-five feet high or more, and, all together, broader than high. They are none of them upright, but in this case, close under a higher wood of maples and swamp white oak, slant over the stream, and, taken separately or viewed from the land side, are very imperfect trees. If you stand at their base and look upward or outward, you see a great proportion of naked trunk but thinly invested with foliage even at the summit, and they are among the most unsightly trees. ‘The lower branches slant down- ward from the main divisions so as commonly to rest on the water. But seen from the water side no tree of its height, methinks, so completely conceals its trunk. They meet with many hard rubs from the ice and from driftwood in freshets in the course of their lives, and whole trees are bent aside or half broken off by these causes, but they soon conceal their injuries. The Sternotherus odoratus knows them well, for it climbs highest up their stems, three or four feet or more nowadays, sometimes seven or eight along the slanting branches, and is frequently caught and hung by the neck in its forks. ‘They do not so much jump as tumble off when disturbed by a passer. ‘The small black mud tor- toise, with its muddy shell, eyes you motionless from its resting-place in a fork of the black willow. ‘They will climb four feet up a stem not more than two inches in diameter, and yet undo all their work in an instant by tumbling off when your boat goes by. ‘The trunk is cov- ered with coarse, long, and thick upraised scales. It is this turtle’s castle and path to heaven. He is on the upward road along the stem of the willow, and by its dark stem it is partially concealed. Yes, the musquash and the mud tortoise and the bittern know it well. But not these sights alone are now seen on our river, but the sprightly kingbird glances and twitters above the glossy leaves of the swamp white oak. Perchance this tree, with its leaves glossy above and whitish be- neath, best expresses the life of the kingbird and is its own tree. | How long will it be after we have passed before the mud tortoise has climbed to its perch again ? ‘The author of the Chinese novel ‘‘ Ju-Kiao-Li,” some eight hundred years ago, appears to have appreciated the beauty of willows. Pe, his principal character, moved out of the city late in life, to a stream bordered with willows, about twenty miles distant, in order to spend the rest of his days drinking wine and writing verses there. He describes the eyebrow of his heroine as like a willow leaf floating on the surface of the water. In the upper part of J. Farmer’s lane I find huckle- berries which are distinctly pear-shaped, all of them. These and also other roundish ones near by, and appar- ently huckleberries generally, are dotted or apparently dusted over with a yellow dust or meal, which looks as if it could be rubbed off. Through a glass ‘it looks like a resin which has exuded, and on the small green fruit is of a bright orange or lemon-color, like small specks of yellow lichens. It is apparently the same as that on the ~ leaves. Monarda fistula is now apparently in prime, four and more, eight or ten rods behind red oak on Emerson’s Assabet field.

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. T see at Clamshell Hill a yellow-browed sparrow sit- ting quite near on a haycock, pluming itself. Observe it a long time in all positions with my glass, within two rods. It is probably a this year’s bird. I think it must be the F'ringilla passerina, for its breast and beneath is the clear pale ochreous white which Wilson speaks of, and its wing-shoulder is distinctly yellow when not con- cealed in the feathers of the side. Its legs and bill, ex- cept the upper side of the upper mandible, are quite a reddish flesh-color. The yellow on its temple is quite bright, and the pale-brownish cheeks. The crown is blackish with a distinct white line along the midst. I see what I call chestnut with the black and whitish on the back and wings. It stands very upright, so that I can see all beneath. It utters no note, 2. e. song, only a faint, short, somewhat cricket-like or trilled chip. I see that handsome fine purple grass now, on Hos- mer’s hillside, above where he has mowed; not yet in perfection. You see now in the meadows where the mower’s scythe has cut in two the great oval and already black fruit of the skunk-cabbage, rough as a nutmeg-grater, exposing its numerous nuts. I had quite forgotten the promise of this earliest spring flower, which, deep in the grass which has sprung up around it, its own leaves for the most part decayed, unremembered by us, has been steadily maturing its fruit. How far we have wandered, in our thoughts at least, since we heard the bee humming in its spathe! I can hardly recall or believe now that for every such black and rather unsightly (? ) capsule there was a pretty freckled horn which attracted our atten- tion in the spring. However, most of them lie so low that they escape or are not touched by the scythe. Saw yesterday a this year’s (?) marsh hawk, female, flying low across the road near Hildreth’s. I took it te be a young bird, it came so near and looked so fresh. It is a fine rich-brown, full-breasted bird, with a long tail. Some hens in the grass beneath were greatly alarmed and began to run and fly with a cackling to the shelter of a corn-field. They which did not see the hawk and were the last to stir expressed the most alarm. Mean- while, the hawk sails low and steadily over the field away, not thinking of disturbing them. I find at Ledum Swamp, near the pool, the white fringed orchis, quite abundant but past prime, only a few, yet quite fresh. It seems to belong to this sphag- nous swamp and is some fifteen to twenty inches high, quite conspicuous, its white spike, amid the prevailing green. The leaves are narrow, half folded, and almost insignificant. It loves, then, these cold bogs. The rusty wool-grass is in bloom there with very short wool. Is it ever long? The Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella is the prevailing low shrub, perhaps. I see one ripe berry. This is the only inedible species of Vacciniee that I know in this town.