6 September 1858 – 12 September 1858

6 a. m. — To Merrick’s shore. Hear a warbling vireo, sounding very rare and rather imperfect. I think this is what I have mistaken for the young purple finch note. Also hear apparently a yellow-throated vireo. That fine spreading-panicled dark-purple grass, now rising all along the river near the waterside, is Panicum agrostoides; in prime. That finer and narrower-pan- icled, now out of bloom, is red-top, or else white bent; with the former. River risen stil] higher, and weeds covered. P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. Going over Clamshell Plain, I see a very large flock of a hundred or more cowbirds about some cows. They whirl away on some alarm and alight on a neighboring rail fence, close together on the rails, one above another. Then away they whirl and settle on a white oak top near me. Half of them are evidently quite young birds, hav- ing glossy black breasts with a drab line down middle. The heads of all are light-colored, perhaps a slaty drab, and some apparently wholly of this color. On the hillside above Clamshell Ditch, grows that handsome grass of Sept. Ist (vide September 4th), evi- dently Sorghum nutans (Andropogon of Bigelow), chest- nut beard grass, Indian grass, wood grass. It is much larger than what I saw before; is still abundantly in flower; four and a half feet high; leaves, perhaps arundi- naceous, eighteen inches long; panicle, nine inches long. It is a very handsome, wild-looking grass, well enough called Indian grass, and I should have named it with the other andropogons, August 26th. With its narrow one-sided panicle of bright purple and yellow (1 include the yellow anthers) often waving [?], raised high above the leaves, it looks like a narrow banner. It is of more vivid colors than its congeners, and might well have caught an Indian’s eye. These bright banners are now advanced on the distant hillsides, not in large armies, but scattered troops or single file, like the red men them- selves. They stand thus fair and bright in our midst, as it were representative of the race which they are named after, but for the most part unobserved. It stands like an Indian chief taking a last look at his beloved hunting- grounds. ‘The expression of this grass haunted me for a week after I first passed and noticed it, like the glance of an eye.' Aster patens past prime at Money-Diggers’ Hill. Polygonum tenue, how long? Solidago nemoralis is ap- parently in prime on Lupine Hill; some of it past. It is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it. At Ledum Pool edge, I find the Woodwardia Virginica fern, its fruit mostly turned deep reddish-brown. It appears to grow only close to the pool, part of the fruit forming two lines parallel with the midrib. A third part of the neszea there is turned scarlet. Kalmia glauca is again in bloom. The hairy huckleberries are rather scarce and soft. They are in- sipid and leave a hairy skin in the mouth. That swamp is a singularly wild place, without any natural outlet. I hear of a marsh hawk’s nest there this summer. I see great spiders there of an uncommon kind, whose webs — the main supporting line — stretch six feet in the clear from spruce to spruce, as high as my - head, with a dense web of the usual form some fifteen inches in diameter beneath. Stopped and talked with W WwW and ate a watermelon with him on the grass. Once his senseless democracy appeared. He spoke with an ignorant pride of Buchanan’s telegraphic message, of which most of us were ashamed; said he supposed he had more learning than Victoria! But the less said about them the better. Seeing a stake-driver flying up the river, he observed that when you saw that bird flying about it was a never- failing sign of a storm approaching. How many of these sayings like this arise not from a close and frequent ob- servation of the phenomena of nature, but from a distant and casual one! I find very common in prime by roadsides, in dry ground, etc., Vilfa vagineflora, rush grass, hidden-flow- ered vilfa; also by Corner roadside, beyond brooks, Panicum fiiforme with and like P. sanguinale, appar- ently in prime, and with last fills the old mullein-field in front of Bear Garden Hill. Is that narrowly-linear-leaved potamogeton, all im- mersed and now forming dense beds in the Assabet, a distinct species, or only the immersed leaves of one? Vide pressed. A year ago last spring I gave to Edith Emerson and to Sophia some clasping hound’s-tongue seeds, it being very rare hereabouts, wishing to spread it. Now and for a long time it has been a pest in the garden (it does not bloom till the second year), by its seeds clinging to our clothes. Mrs. E. has carried it to Boston thus, and I have spent twenty minutes at once in clearing myself of it. So it is in a fair way to be dispersed.

P. M. — To Assabet Bath. I turn Anthony’s corner. It is an early September afternoon, melting warm and sunny; the thousands of grasshoppers leaping before you reflect gleams of light; a little distance off the field is yellowed with a Xerxean army of Solidago nemoralis between me and the sun; the earth-song of the cricket comes up through all; and ever and anon the hot z-ing of the locust is heard. (Poultry is now fattening on grasshoppers.) The dry deserted fields are one mass of yellow, like a color shoved to one side on Nature’s palette. You literally wade in yellow flowers knee-deep, and now the moist banks and low hollows are beginning to be abundantly sugared with Aster Tradescanti.' J. Farmer calls those Rubus sempervirens berries, now abundant, “snake blackberries.” Looking for my Maryland yellow-throat’s nest, I find that apparently a snake has made it the portico to his dwelling, there being a hole descending into the earth through it! In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses (not sedges) now are the slender Panicum clandestinum, whose seeds are generally dropped now, Panicum virga- tum, in large tufts, and blue-joint, the last, of course, long since done. These are all the grasses that I notice there. What a contrast to sink your head so as to cover your ears with water, and hear only the confused noise of the rushing river, and then to raise your ears above water and hear the steady creaking of crickets in the aerial uni- verse! While dressing, I see two small hawks, probably par- tridge hawks, soaring and circling about one hundred feet above the river. Suddenly one drops down from that height almost perfectly perpendicularly after some prey, till it is lost behind the bushes. Near the little bridge at the foot of Turtle Bank, Era- grostis capillarts in smal] but dense patches, apparently in prime (the Poa capillaris of Bigelow). What I have thus called in press is E. pectinacea (P. hirsuta of Bige- low). On the flat hill south of Abel Hosmer, Agrostis scabra, hair grass, flyaway grass, tickle grass, out of bloom; branches purplish. That of September 5th was the A. perennans, in lower ground. On the railroad between tracks above Red House, 151 Aristida dichotoma, half a dozen inches high, hardly yet out; forked aristida, or poverty W grass. Storrow Higginson brings from Deerfield this evening some eggs to show me, — among others apparently that of the Virginian rail. It agrees in color, size, etc., ac- cording to Wilson, and is like (except, perhaps, in form) to one which E. Bartlett brought me a week or ten days ago, which dropped from a load of hay carried to Stow’s barn! So perhaps it breeds here.’ Also a smaller egg of same form, but dull white with very pale dusky spots, which may be that of the Carolina rail. He had also what I think the egg of the Falco jus- catus, it agreeing with MacGillivray’s sparrow hawk’s egg.

6 a. m. — On river. It flows with a full tide. When it is thus deep its cur- rent is swift, and then its surface (commonly smooth and dark) is freckled with ripples, or rather I should say that swifter currents are here and there bursting up from be- low and spreading out on every side, as if the river were breaking over a thousand concealed rocks. The surface is broken and dimpled with upswelling currents. Red oak acorns, yet green, are abundantly cut off by the squirrels. The yellow-legs is nodding its head along the edge of the meadow. I hear also its creaking te te te.? 1859.

P. M. — To Waban Chiff. A very hot day, — 90°, as I hear. Yesterday was hot, too. Now it is about time to gather elder-berries. Many Viola cucullata have opened again. What is that short squeaking note heard from time to time from amid the weeds on the west side the river at Hubbard’s Bath? There are broad patches, sometimes of several acres, on the edge of the meadow, where it is wettest and weediest, which the farmers do not mow. There especially stands the brown-headed wool-grass. There are small tracts still, as it were, in their primitive condition, — wild tracts where the bittern rises and where, no doubt, the meadow-hen lurks. (Was it the note of the last I heard ?) . Heard a short plover-like note from a bird flying high across the river. Watched a little dipper * some ten rods off with my glass, but I could see no white on the breast. It was all black and brownish, and head not enlarged. Who knows how many little dippers are sailing and sedulously diving now along the edge of the pickerel-weed and the button-bushes on our river, unsuspected by most? This hot September afternoon all may be quiet amid the weeds, but the dipper, and the bittern, and the yellow- legs, and the blue heron, and the rail are silently feeding there. At length the walker who sits meditating on a dis- tant bank sees the little dipper sail out from amid the weeds and busily dive for its food along their edge. Yet ordinary eyes might range up and down the river all day and never detect its small black head above the water. It requires a different intention of the eye in the same locality to see different plants, as, for example, Juncacee and Graminee even; 12. e., I find that when I am look- ing for the former, I do not see the latter in their midst. How much more, then, it requires different intentions of the eye and of the mind to attend to different de- . partments of knowledge! How differently the poet and the naturalist look at objects! A man sees only what concerns him. A botanist absorbed in the pursuit of grasses does not distinguish the grandest pasture oaks. He as it were tramples down oaks unwittingly in his walk. Bidens cernua, how long? 1 ?? Vide 30th.

‘Tower-mustard in bloom again. A mus- quash-house begun.

Sunday. P.M. — To Cliffs. The handsome crimson-tipped hazelnut burs now and for some time have reminded us that it was time to gather these nuts. They are worth gathering, if only to see the rich color of the fruit brought together in a quantity. Lycopodium complanatum, how long? Have seen the pigeon’s-egg fungus in pastures some time. Yew berries still hold on. The cinnamon fern has begun to yellow and wither. How rich in its decay! Sie transit gloria mundi! Die like the leaves, which are most beautiful in their decay. Thus gradually and successively each plant lends its richest color to the general effect, and in the fit- test place, and passes away. Amid the October woods we hear no funereal bell, but the scream of the jay. Coming to some shady meadow’s edge, you find that the cinnamon fern has suddenly turned this rich yellow. Thus each plant surely acts its part, and lends its effect to the general impression. See petty morel berries ripe. W oodsia Ilvensis under the cave at Cliffs in fruit. Very heavy rain all yesterday afternoon, and to-day it is somewhat cooler and clearer and the wind more northwesterly, and I see the unusual sight of ripples a . or waves curving up-stream off gos “-,, ° Cardinal Shore, so that the river f . i f a J might seem to be flowing that Be i \ way. ‘The mountains are of a VS NO. “ss, darker blue. The spring on the west side of Fair Haven Hill 1s nearly dry; there is no stream flowing from it. What a disappointment to a herd of cows to find their accus- tomed spring dry! Even in that little hollow on the hill- side, commonly moistened by the spring, grow the soft rush, rhyncospora, etc. What an effect a little moisture on a hillside produces, though only a rod square! The Juncacee and Cyperacee soon find it out and establish themselves there. The Panicum filiforme is very abundant in that old mullein-field of Potter’s, by the Corner road. Its slender culms are purple, and, seen in the right light, where they stand thick, they give a purple gleam to the field. More purple far than the P. sanguinale. Some small red maples by water begun to redden. In Hubbard’s ditched meadow, this side his grove, I see a great many large spider’s webs stretched across the ditches, about two feet from bank to bank, though the thick woven part is ten or twelve inches. ‘hey are parallel, a few inches or a foot or more apart, and more or less vertical, and attached to a main cable stretched from bank to bank. ‘They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. 1 count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward. This is enough, methinks, to establish the rule. They are not afraid of turning their brains then. Many insects must be wing- ing their way over this small river. It reminds me of the Indians catching ducks at Green Bay with nets in old times.