9 August 1858 – 15 August 1858

P. M. — To yew, etc.

When I came down-stairs this morning, it raining hard and steadily, I found an Irishman sitting with his coat on his arm in the kitchen, waiting to see me. He wanted to inquire what I thought the weather would be to-day! I sometimes ask my aunt, and she consults the almanac. So we shirk the responsibility. P. M. — To the Miles blueberry swamp and White Pond. It clears up before noon and is now very warm and clear. When I look at the sparrows on the fences, yellow-browed and bay-wings, they all have their bills open and are panting with heat. Apparently the end of the very wet weather we have had about a fortnight. At Clamshell I see more of, I think, the same clear- breasted, yellow-browed sparrows which I saw there the other day and thought the F'ringilla passerina, and now I hear, from some thereabouts, the seringo note. As I stand on the bank there, I find suddenly that I hear, low and steady, under all other sounds, the creak of the mole cricket by the riverside. It has a peculiarly late sound, suggestive of the progress of the year. It is the voice which comes up steadily at this season from that narrow sandy strip between the meadow and the water’s edge. You might think it issued from that small frog, the only living thing you see, which sits so motion- less on the sand. But the singer 1s wholly out of sight in his gallery under the surface. Creak creak, creak creak, creak creak, creak creak. It is a sound associated with the declining year and recalls the moods of that season. It is so unobtrusive yet universal a sound, so underlying the other sounds which fill the air, — the song of birds, rustling of leaves, dry hopping sound of grasshoppers, etc., — that now, in my chamber, I can hardly be sure whether I hear it still, or remember it, it so rings in my ears.

This month thus far has been quite rainy. It has rained more or less at least half the days. You have had to consider each afternoon whether you must not take an umbrella. It has about half the time either been dogdayish or mizzling or decided rain. It would rain five minutes and be fair the next five, and so on, alternately, a whole afternoon. The farmers have not been able to get much of their hay. On the whole it has been rather cool. It has been still decidedly summer, with some reminiscences of autumn. The last week has been the heart of the huckleberry season. P. M. — Up Assabet. The dullish-blue or lead-colored Viburnum dentatum berries are now seen, not long, overhanging the side of the river, amid cornels and willows and button-bushes. They make a dull impression, yet held close in some lights they are glossy. The umbelled fruits — vibur- nums and cornels, aralias, etc. — have begun. As I am paddling up the north side above the Hem- locks, I am attracted by the singular shadows of the white lily pads on the rich-brown muddy bottom. It is remarkable how light tends to prevail over shadow there. It steals in under the densest curtain of pads and illustrates the bottom. The shadows of these pads, seen (now at 3 P.M.) a little one side, where the water is eighteen inches or two feet deep, are rarely orbi- cular or entire-edged or resembling the leaf, but are more or less perfect rosettes, generally of an oval form, with five to fifteen or more regularly rounded petals, open half-way to the centre: ~f); or jy: You cannot commonly refer — : 4 the shadow to its substance Up ; but by touching the leaf with ™ "your paddle. Light knows a thousand tricks by which it prevails. Light is the rule, shadow the exception. The leaf fails to cast a shadow equal in area to itself. While it is a regular and almost solid disk, the shadow is a rosette or palmate, as if the sun, in its haste [to] illustrate every nook, shone round the shortest corner. Often if you con- nect the extremities of the petals, you have the general outline and size of the leaf, and the shadow is less than the substance by the amount of the openings. ‘These petals seem to depend for their existence on the some- what scalloped, waved, or undulating edge of the pad, and the manner in which the light is reflected from it. Generally the two sharp angles of the pad are almost entirely eroded in the shadow. The shadows, too, have a slight halo about them. Such endless and varied play of light and shadow is on the river bottom! It is pro- tean and somewhat weird even. The shadow of the leaf might be mistaken for that of the flower. The sun playing with a lily leaf draws the outline of a lily on the bottom with its shadow.

P.M. — To the one-arched bridge. Hardhacks are probably a little past prime. Stopped by the culvert opposite the centaurea, to look at the sagittaria leaves. Perhaps this plant is in its prime (?). Its leaves vary remarkably in form. I see, in a thick patch six or eight feet in di- ameter, leaves nearly a foot long of this form: and others, as long or longer, of /\\ this form: with all the various in- termediate ones. The very narrow ones, per- haps, around the edge of the patch, 7 being also of a darker green, are not distin- guished at first, but mistaken for grass. / Suggest- ing to C. an Indian name for one of our locali- ties, he thought it had too many syllables for a place so near the middle of the town, — as if the more distant and less frequented place might have a longer name, less understood and less alive in its syllables. The Canada thistle down is now begun to fly, and I see the goldfinch upon it. Carduelis. Often when I watch one go off, he flies at first one way, rising and falling, as if skimming close over unseen billows, but directly makes a great circuit as if he had changed his mind, and disappears in the opposite direction, or is seen to be joined there by his mate. We walked a little way down the bank this side the Assabet bridge. The broad-leaved panic grass, with its hairy sheaths or collars, attracts the eye now there by its perfectly fresh broad leaf. We see from time to time . many bubbles rising from the sandy bottom, where it is two or more feet deep, which I suspect to come from clams there letting off air. I think I see the clams, and it is often noticed there.

P. M. — Down river to Abner Buttrick’s. Rain in the night and dog-day weather again, after two clear days. I do not like the name “‘dog-days.”” Can we not have a new name for this season? It is the sea- son of mould and mildew, and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather. The front-rank polygonum is apparently in prime, or perhaps not quite. Wild oats, apparently in prime. This is quite interesting and handsome, so ( tall and loose. The lower, spreading and loosely } drooping, dangling or blown one side like a flag, | staminate branches of its ample panicle are of a | lively yellowish green, contrasting with the very Mer distant upright pistillate branches, suggesting a ~” spear with a small flag at the base of its head. It is our wild grain, unharvested. The black willows are already being imbrowned. It must be the effect of the water, for we have had no drought. The smaller white maples are very generally turned a dull red, and their long row, seen against the fresh green of Ball’s Hill, is very surprising. The leaves evidently come to maturity or die sooner in water and wet weather. They are redder now than in autumn, and set off the landscape wonderfully. The Great Meadows are not a quarter shorn yet. The swamp white oaks, ash trees, etc., which stand along the shore have horizontal lines and furrows at different heights on their trunks, where the ice of past winters has rubbed against them. Might not the potamogeton be called waving weed ?