18 October 1858 – 24 October 1858

P. M.— To Smith’s chestnut grove and Saw Mill Brook. The large sugar maples on the Common are now at the height of their beauty. One, the earliest to change, is partly bare. This turned so early and so deep a scar- let that some thought that it was surely going to die. Also that one at the head of the Turnpike reveals its character now as far as you can see it. Yet about ten days ago all but one of these was quite green, and I thought they would not acquire any bright tints. A deli- cate but warmer than golden yellow is the prevailing color, with scarlet cheeks.’ They are great regular oval masses of yellow and scarlet. All the sunny warmth of the season seems to be absorbed in their leaves. There is an auction on the Common, but its red flag is hard to be discerned amid this blaze of color. The lowest and inmost leaves next the bole are of the most delicate yel- low and green, as usual, like the complexion of young men brought up in the house. Little did the fathers of the town anticipate this bril- liant success when they caused to be imported from further in the country some straight poles with the tops cut off, which they called sugar maple trees, — and a neighboring merchant’s clerk, as [ remember, by way of jest planted beans about them. Yet these which were then jestingly called bean-poles are these days far the most beautiful objects noticeable in our streets. They are worth all and more than they have cost, — though one of the selectmen did take the cold which occa- sioned his death in setting them out, — if only because they have filled the open eyes of children with their rich color so unstintedly so many autumns. We will not ask them to yield us sugar in the spring, while they yield us so fair a prospect in the autumn. Wealth may be the inheritance of few in the houses, but it is equally distributed on the Common. All children alike can revel in this golden harvest. These trees, throughout the street, are at least equal to an annual festival and holiday, or a week of such, — not requiring any special police to keep the peace, — and poor indeed must be that New England village’s October which has not the maple in its streets. This October festival costs no pow- der nor ringing of bells, but every tree is a liberty-pole on which a thousand bright flags are run up. Hundreds of children’s eyes are steadily drinking in this color, and by these teachers even the truants are caught and educated the moment they step abroad. It is as if some cheap and innocent gala-day were celebrated in our town every autumn, — a week or two of such days. What meant the fathers by establishing this living institution before the church, — this institution which needs no repairing nor repainting, which is continually “enlarged and repaired” by its growth? Surely trees should be set in our streets with a view to their Octo- ber splendor. Do you not think it will make some odds to these children that they were brought up under the maples? Indeed, neither the truant nor the studious are at present taught colors in the schools. These are in- stead of the bright colors in apothecary shops and city windows. It is a pity we have not more red maples and some hickories in the streets as well. Our paint-box is very imperfectly filled. Instead of, or besides, supplying paint-boxes, I would supply these natural colors to the young." I know of one man at least, called an excellent and peculiarly successful farmer, who has thoroughly re- paired his house and built a new barn with a barn cel- lar, such as every farmer seems fated to have, who has not a single tree or shrub of any kind about his house or within a considerable distance of it. No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebra- tion with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery, — flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read. Let us have a good many maples and hickories and scarlet oaks, then, I say. Blaze away! Shall that dirty roll of bunting in the gun- house be all the colors a village can display? A village is not complete unless it has these trees to mark the season in it. They are as important as a town clock. Such a village will not be found to work well. It has a screw loose; an essential part is wanting. Let us have willows for spring, elms for summer, maples and wal- nuts and tupelos for autumn, evergreens for winter, and oaks for all seasons. What is a gallery in a house to a gallery in the streets! I think that there is not a picture- gallery in the country which would be worth so much to us as is the western view under the elms of our main street. They are the frame to a picture, and we are not in the dilemma of the Irishman who, having bought a costly gilt picture-frame at an auction, found himself obliged to buy a picture at private sale to put into it, for our picture is already painted with each sunset behind it. An avenue of elms as large as our largest, and three miles long, would seem to lead to some admirable place, though only Concord were at the end of it. Such a street as I have described would be to the traveller, especially in October, an ever-changing panorama. A village needs these innocent stimulants of bright and cheery prospects to keep off melancholy and superstition. Show me two villages, one embowered in trees and blaz- ing with all the glories of October, the other a merely trivial and treeless waste, and I shall be sure that in the latter will be found the most desperate and hardest drinkers. What if we were to take half as much pains in protecting them as we do in setting them out, — not stupidly tie our horses to our dahlia stems? ‘They are cheap preachers, permanently settled, which preach their half-century, and century, aye, and century and a half sermons, with continually increasing influence and unction, ministering to many generations of men, and the least we can do is to supply them with suitable colleagues as they grow infirm.’ Children are now everywhere playing with the brown and withered leaves of elms and buttonwoods, which strew the streets and are collected into heaps in the sluiceways. In the woods even the little pea-vine turns a delicate yellow and is more conspicuous than ever, and in the now neglected gardens the asparagus-beds, green- ish without, glow yellow within, as if a fire were bursting out there. As I go down the Turnpike past Clintonia Swamp, I am struck by the magical change which has taken place in the red maple swamps, which just a fortnight ago were splendid masses of scarlet and yellow and crimson, rising amid the yet green trees, — pines and oaks, etc., — like immense flower-beds on one side of the town, visible for miles, attracting the eyes of all travellers; now, — though a few late ones are bright as ever in some places, — all their splendor gone, wafted away, as it were, by a puff of wind, and they are the mere ghosts of trees, unnoticed by any, or, if noticed at all, like the smoke that is seen where a blaze is extinguished, or as the red clouds at evening change suddenly to gray and black,— so suddenly their glory departs, — desolate gray twigs. The Salix alba is a light and silvery green. Since the red maples generally fell, the chestnuts have been yel- lowing, and the oaks reddening and yellowing. The chestnuts are now in their prime, though many leaves are fallen. The forest, which showed but little ripeness ten days ago, except about its edges and here and there as you looked down on it from a height, is now seen to be generally of a mellow brownish yellow, like perfectly ripe fruit, which we know to be more perfectly ripe for being a little specked. By the brook, witch-hazel, as an underwood, is in the height of its change, but elsewhere exposed large bushes are bare. Rhus Toxicodendron is fallen. The hornbeam is a greenish yellow, or yellow as it were dusted with green. The maple-leaved viburnum, now at its height, varies, with more or less of shade, from dark crimson through a delicate pale crimson to whitish. The sage willow, a light yellow, in prime, though hardly noticed amid the more conspicuous oaks. Larches have begun to change in water. As I come through Hubbard’s Woods I see the winter- green, conspicuous now above the freshly fallen white pine needles. Their shining green is suddenly revealed above the pale-brown ground. I hail its cool unwither- ing green, one of the humbler allies by whose aid we are to face the winter. Saw, October 14th, a snake at Ball’s Hill, lke a striped snake, but apparently yellow-spotted above and with a flatter head? Noticed a little snake, eight or nine inches long, in the rut in the road in the Lincoln woods. It was brown above with a paler-brown dorsal stripe, which was bounded on each side by a row of dark-brown or blackish dots- one eighth inch apart, the opposite rows alternating thus: . ,. . .¢ beneath, light cream-color or yellow-* “ ° ° ish white. Evidently Storer’s Coluber ordinatus. It ran along in the deep sandy rut and would probably be run over there. | See larks, with their white tail-feathers, fluttering low over the meadows these days. Minott was sitting outside, as usual, and inquired if I saw any game in my walks these days; since, now that he cannot go abroad himself, he likes to hear from the woods. He tried to detain me to listen to some of his hunting-stories, especially about a slut that belonged to a neighbor by the name of Billings, which was excellent for squirrels, rabbits, and partridges, and would al- ways follow him when he went out, though Billings was “plaguy mad about it;”’ however, he had only to go by Billings’s to have the dog accompany him. B. after- ward carried her up country and gave her away, the vews of which almost broke Minott’s heart. He said he o°@ could have cried when he heard of it, for he had dreamed of her several nights. She was a plaguy good dog for squirrels, etc., but her pups were none of them equal to herself. It was not time for squirrels now, because the leaves were not off enough. He used sometimes to take his old king’s-arm on these excursions. It was heavy, but it was sure. His present gun has a flint lock and has often been repaired, and he said he didn’t suppose it would fetch more than a dollar if put up at auction now. But he would n’t take twenty dollars for it. He did n’t want to part with it. He liked to look at it. As leaves fall along the river and in the woods, the squirrels and musquash make haste to shelter and con- ceal themselves by constructing nests and cabins.

A remarkably warm day. I have not been more troubled by the heat this year, being a little more thickly clad than in summer. I walk in the middle of the street for air. The thermometer says 74° at 1 P. M. This must be Indian summer. P. M. — Ride to Sam Barrett’s mill. Am pleased again to see the cobweb drapery of the mill. Each fine line hanging in festoons from the ttm- bers overhead and on the sides, and on the discarded machinery lying about, is covered and greatly enlarged by a coating of meal, by which its curve is revealed, like the twigs under their ridges of snow in winter. It is - like the tassels and tapestry of counterpane and dimity in a lady’s bedchamber, and I pray that the cobwebs may not have been brushed away from the mills which I visit. It is as if I were aboard a man-of-war, and this’ were the fine “rigging” of the mill, the sails being taken in. All things in the mill wear the same livery or dra- pery, down to the miller’s hat and coat. I knew Barrett forty rods off in the cranberry meadow by the meal on his hat. Barrett’s apprentice, it seems, makes trays of black birch and of red maple, in a dark room under the mill. I was pleased to see this work done here, a wooden tray isso handsome. You could count the circles of growth on the end of the tray, and the dark heart of the tree was seen at each end above, producing a semicircular orna- ment. It was a satisfaction to be reminded that we may so easily make our own trenchers as well as fill them. To see the tree reappear on the table, instead of going to the fire or some equally coarse use, is some compen- sation for having it cut down. The wooden tray is still in demand to chop meat in, at least. If taken from the bench to the kitchen, they are pretty sure to crack, being made green. ‘They should be placed to season for three months on the beams in a barn, said the miller. Hosmer says that the nll between him and Simon Brown generally runs all night and in the fore part of the day, but then dries up, or stops, and runs again at night, or it will run all day in cloudy weather. This is perhaps because there is less evaporation then. It would be interesting to study the phenomena of this rill, so slight that it does not commonly run all day at this season, nor quite run across the road. In the scale of rivers it is at the opposite extreme to the Mississippi, which overflows so widely and makes “crevasses,’’ and yet it interests out of proportion to its size, and I have no doubt that I might learn some of the laws of the Mississippi more easily by attending to it. Standing on Hunt’s Bridge at 5 o’clock, the sun just ready to set, I notice that its light on my note-book is quite rosy or purple, though the sun itself and its halo are merely yellow, and there is no purple in the west- ern sky. Perhaps I might have detected a purple tinge already in the eastern sky, had I looked, and I was exactly at that distance this side the sunset where the foremost of the rosy waves of light roll in the wake of the sun, and the white page was the most suitable sur- face to reflect it.’ The lit river, purling and eddying onward, was spotted with recently fallen leaves, some of which were being carried round by eddies. Leaves are now falling all the country over: some in the swamps, concealing the water; some in woods and on hillsides, where perhaps Vulcan may find them in the spring; some by the way- side, gathered into heaps, where children are playing with them; and some are being conveyed silently sea- ward on rivers; concealing the water in swamps, where at length they flat out and sink to the bottom, and we never hear of them again, unless we shall see their impressions on the coal of a future geological period. Some add them to their manure-heaps; others consume them with fire. The trees repay the earth with inter- est for what they have taken from it. The trees are discounting.’ Standing on the east of the maples on the Common I see that their yellow, compared with the pale lemon- yellow of the elms close by, amounts to a scarlet, without noticing the bright-scarlet cheeks.? Some Chenopodium album are purple-stemmed now, like poke long ago; some handsomely striped, purple and green. There is no handsomer shingling and paint than the woodbine at present, covering a whole side of some houses, v2z. the house near the almshouse and the brick house.” I was the more pleased with the sight of the trays because the tools used were so simple, and they were made by hand, not by machinery. They may make equally good pails, and cheaper as well as faster, at the pail-factory with the home-made ones, but that interests me less, because the man is turned partly into a machine there himself. In this case, the workman’s relation to his work is more poetic, he also shows more dexterity and is more of a man. You come away from the great factory saddened, as if the chief end of man were to make pails; but, in the case of the countryman who makes a few by hand, rainy days, the relative importance of human life and of pails is preserved, and you come away thinking of the simple and helpful life of the man, — you do not turn pale at the thought, — and would fain go to making pails yourself. We admire more the man who can use an axe or adze skillfully than him who can merely tend a machine. When labor is reduced to turning a crank it is no longer amusing nor truly profit- able; but let this business become very profitable in a pecuniary sense, and so be “driven,”’ as the phrase is, and carried on on a large scale, and the man is sunk in it, while only the pail or tray floats; we are interested in it only in the same way as the proprietor or company is. Walked along the dam and the broad bank of the canal with Hosmer. He thought this bank proved that there were strong men here a hundred years ago or more, and that probably they used wooden shovels edged with iron, and perchance home-made, to make that bank with, for he remembered and had used them. Thus rapidly we skip back to the implements of the — savage. Some call them “shod shovels.”

Indian summer this and the 19th. I hear of apple trees in bloom again in Waltham or Cam- bridge. P. M. — To White Pond. Another remarkably warm and pleasant day, if not too hot for walking; 74° at 2 p.m. Thought I would like to see the glassy gleaming surface of White Pond. I think that this is the acme of the fall generally,’ — not quite of sugar maples perhaps, — and it is this remark- able heat which this time, more than anything, methinks, has caused the leaves to fall.’ It has suddenly perfectly ripened and wilted them, and now, with a puff of wind, they come showering down on land and water, making a sound like rain. They are thickly strewn under their respective trees in the Corner road, and wagons roll over them as a shadow. Rain and frost and unusual heat, succeeded by wind, all have to do with the fall of the leaf. No doubt the leaves suddenly ripen to their fall in intense heat, such as this, Just as peaches, etc., over softened and ripened, fall... As I go through Hub- bard’s fields, I see that the cows have got into the shade of trees as in July. The black birch in this grove is in the midst of its fall, perfectly yellow.? But these deli- cately tinted leaves will wilt and fade even in your hat on your way home. Their colors are very fugacious. They must be seen on the tree or under it. You cannot easily carry this splendor home. The tupelos appear to fall early. I have not seen one with leaves since the 16th. It is so warm that even the tipulide appear to prefer the shade. There they continue their dance, balancing to partners, as it seems, and by a fine hum remind me of summer still, when now the air generally is rather empty of insect sounds. Also I see yellow butterflies chasing one another, taking no thought for the morrow, but confiding in the sunny day as if it were to be per- petual. There is a haze between me and the nearest woods, as thick as the thickest in summer. My black clothes are white with the gossamer they have caught in coming through the fields, for it streams from every stubble, though it is not remarkably abundant. Flocks of this gossamer, like tangled skeins, float gently through 2 22d, 1855. As I pass this grove, I see the open ground strewn and colored with the yellow leaves which have been wafted from a large black birch. the quiet air as high as my head, like white parachutes to unseen balloons. From the higher ground west of the stump-fence field. The stagnant river gleams like liquid gossamer in the sun, and I can hardly distinguish the sparkle occasioned by an insect from the white breast of a duck. Methinks the jay, panting with heat, is silenced for a time. Green leaves are doubtless handsome in their season, but now that we behold these ripe ones, we are Inclined to think that the former are handsome somewhat as green fruits are, as green apples and melons. It would give our eyes the dysentery to look only on green leaves always. At this season each leaf becomes a laboratory in which the fairest and brightest colors are compounded. There is one advantage in walking eastward these afternoons, at least, that in returning you may have the western sky before you. Hickories, and some oaks even, are now overdone. They remind me of a loaf of brown bread perfectly baked in the oven, in whose cracks I see the yellowish inside contrasting with the brown crust. Some small red maples still stand yellow within the woods. As I look over the smooth gleaming surface of White Pond, I am attracted by the sun-sparkles on it, as if fiery serpents were crossing to and fro. Yet if you were there you would find only insignificant insects. As I come up from the pond, I am grateful for the fresh easterly breeze at last thickening the haze on that side and driving it in on us, for Nature must preserve her equilibrium. However, it is not much cooler. As I approached the pond, I saw a hind in a potato- field (digging potatoes), who stood stock-still for ten minutes to gaze at me in mute astonishment, till I had sunk into the woods amid the hills about the pond, and when I emerged again, there he was, motionless still, on the same spot, with his eye on me, resting on his idle hoe, as one might watch at the mouth of a fox’s hole to see him come out. Perchance he may have thought nihil humanum, etc., or else he was transfixed with thought, — which is worth a bushel or two of potatoes, whatever his employer may say, — contrasting his con- dition with my own, and though he stood so still, civili- zation made some progress. But I must hasten away or he ’ll lose his day. I was as indifferent to his eyeshot as a tree walking, for I am used to such things. Perchance he will relate his adventure when he gets home at night, and what he has seen, though he did not have to light a candle this time. Iam in a fair way to become a valu- able citizen to him, as he istome. He raises potatoes in the field for me; I raise curiosity in him. He stirs the earth; [stir him. What a power am I! I cause the potatoes to rot in the ground. I affect distant markets surely. But he shall not spoil my day; I will get in my harvest nevertheless. This will be nuts to him when the winter evenings come; he will tell his dream then. Talk of reaping-machines! I did not go into that field at all. I did not meddle with the potatoes. He was the only crop I gathered at a glance. Perchance he thought, “T harvest potatoes; he harvests me!”

Cooler to-day, yet pleasant. 6 a. m. — Up Assabet. Most leaves now on the water. They fell yesterday, — white and red maple, swamp white oak, white birch, black and red oak, hemlock (which has begun to fall), hop-hornbeam, etc., etc. They cover the water thickly, concealing all along the south side for half a rod to a rod in width, and at the rocks, where they are met and stopped by the easterly breeze, form a broad and dense crescent quite across the river. On the hilltop, the sun having just risen, I see on my note-book that same rosy or purple light, when con- trasted with the shade of another leaf, which I saw on the evening of the 19th, though perhaps I can detect a little purple in the eastern horizon. The Populus grandidentata is quite yellow and leafy yet, — the most showy tree thereabouts. P. M. — Up Assabet, for a new mast, the old being broken in passing under a bridge. Talked with the lame Haynes, the fisherman. He feels sure that they were not “suckers” which I saw rise to the shad-flies, but chivin, and that suckers do not rise to a fly nor leap out. He has seen a great many little lamprey eels come down the rivers, about as long as his finger, attached to shad. But never knew the old to come down. Thinks they die attached to roots. Has seen them half dead thus. Says the spawn is quite at the bottom of the heap. Like Witherell, he wonders how the eels increase, since he could never find any spawn in them. The large sugar maples on the Common are in the midst of their fall to-day.

P. M. — To Cliffs and Walden. A thickly overcast yet thick and hazy day. I see a Lombardy poplar or two yellowing at last; many leaves clear and handsome yellow. They thus, like the balm-of-Gilead and aspens, show their relation to the willows. Horse-chestnuts are yellow and appar- ently in prime. I see locusts are generally yellow but thinly leaved, and those at extremities. Going by Farrar’s field bought of John Reynolds, I examined those singular barren spots produced by put- ting on too much meadow mud of a certain quality. In some places the sod was entirely gone; there was no grass and only a small sandy desert with the yellowish Fimbristylis capillaris and sorrel on it. In most places this sand was quite thickly covered with sarothra, now withered and making a dark show at a distance, and sorrel, which had not risen from the surface. These are both sour-juiced plants. It was surprising how com- pletely the grass had been killed. I see the small narrow leaves of the Aster dumosus and also the yet finer ones of the Diplopappus linariijfolius in wood-paths, turned a clear light-yellow. The sagittate leaves of the Vola ovata, too, now flat in the path, and the prettily divided leaves or fingers of the V. pedata, with purple petioles (also fallen flatter than usual ?), are both turned a clear handsome light-yellow. Also the V. cucul- lata is turned yellow. These are far more conspicuous now than ever before, contrasted with the green grass; so that you do not recognize them at first on account of their very conspicuousness or brightness of color. Many other small plants have changed now, whose color we do not notice in the midst of the general chan- ging. Even the Lycopodium complanatum (evergreen) 1s turned a light yellow (a part of it) in its season, like the pines (or evergreen trees). I go up the hill from the spring. Oaks (except the scarlet), especially the small oaks, are generally with- ered or withering, yet most would not suspect it at a little distance, they have so much color yet. Yet, this year at least, they must have been withered more by heat than frost, for we have had very hot weather and little if any frost since the oaks generally changed. Many of the small scarlet ones are withered too, but the larger scarlet appear to be in their prime now. Some large white, black, and red are still pretty fresh. It is very agreeable to observe now from an eminence the different tints of red and brown in an oak sprout- land or young woodland, the brownish predominating. The chocolate is one. Some will tell you that they pre- fer these more sober colors which the landscape wears at present to the bright ones it exhibited a few days ago, as some prefer the sweet brown crust to the yellow inside. It is interesting to observe how gradually but steadily the woods advance through deeper and deeper shades of brown to their fall. You can tell the young white oak in the midst of the sprout-land by its light- brown color, almost like that of the russet fields seen beyond, also the scarlet by its brighter red,’ but the pines are now the brightest of them all. Apple orchards throughout the village, or on lower and rich ground, are quite green, but on this drier Fair Haven Hill all the apple trees are yellow, with a sprink- ling of green and occasionally a tinge of scarlet, 7. ¢. are russet. T can see the red of young oaks as far as the horizon on some sides. I think that the yellows, as birches, etc., are the most distinct this very thick and cloudy day in which there is no sun, but when the sun shines the reds are lit up more and glow. The oaks stand browned and crisped (amid the pines), their bright colors for the most part burnt out, like a loaf that is baked, and suggest an equal wholesomeness. The whole tree is now not only ripe but, as it were, a fruit perfectly cooked by the sun. That same sun which called forth its leaves in the spring has now, aided by the frost, sealed up their fountains for the year and withered them. The order has gone forth for them to rest. As each tree casts its leaves it stands careless and free, like a horse freed from his harness, or like one who has done his year’s work and now stands unnoticed, but with concentrated strength and contentment, ready to brave the blasts of winter without a murmur. You get very near wood ducks with a boat nowadays. I see, from the Cliffs, that color has run through the shrub oak plain like a fire or a wave, not omitting a sin- gle tree, though I had not expected it, — large oaks do not turn so completely, — and now is for the most part burnt out for want of fuel, 2. e. excepting the scarlet ones. The brown and chocolate colors prevail there. That birch swamp under the Cliff is very interesting. The birches are now but thinly clad and that at top, its flame- shaped top more like flames than ever now. At this distance their bare slender stems are very distinct, dense, and parallel, apparently on a somewhat smoky ground (caused by the bare twigs), and this pretty thicket of dense parallel stems is crowned or surmounted by little cones or crescents of golden spangles. Hear a cuckoo and grackles. The birches have been steadily changing and falling for a long, long time. ‘The lowermost leaves turn golden and fall first; so their autumn change is like a fire which has steadily burned up higher and higher, consuming the fuel below, till now it has nearly reached their tops. These are quite distinct from vant aad the reddish misty maze below, if they are young trees (vide vi Wilh ips sketch), or the fine and close parallel white stems if they are larger. Nevertheless the topmost leaves at the ex- tremities of the leaves [szc] are still green.' I am surprised to find on the top of the Cliff, near the dead white pine, some small staghorn sumachs. (Mother says she found them on the hill behind Charles Davis’s!) These are now at the height (?) of their change,’ as is ours inthe yard, turned an orange scar- let, not so dark as the smooth, which is now apparently fallen.” But ours, being in a shady and cool place, is probably later than the average, for I see that one at Flood’s cottage has fallen. I guess that they may have been at height generally some ten days ago. Near by, the Aralia hispida, turned a very clear dark red. I see Heavy Haynes fishing in his old gray boat, sinking the stern deep. It is remarkable that, of the four fishermen who most frequent this river, — Melvin, Goodwin, and the two Hayneses, — the last three have all been fishermen of the sea, have visited the Grand Banks, and are well acquainted with Cape Cod. These fishermen who sit thus alone from morning till night must be greater philosophers than the shoemakers. You can still pluck a variegated and handsome nose- gay on the top of the Cliff. I see a mullein freshly out, very handsome Aster undulatus, and an abundance of the little blue snapdragon, and some Polygonum Persi- carva, etc., ete. The black shrub oak on the hillside below the bear- berry fast falling and some quite bare. Some chinqua- pin there not fallen. Notice a chestnut quite bare. The leaves of the hickory are a very rich yellow, though they may be quite withered and fallen, but they become brown. Looking to Conantum, the huckleberries are apparently fallen. . The fields are now perhaps truly and most generally russet, especially where the blackberry and other small reddish plants are seen through the fine bleached grass and stubble, —like a golden russet apple. This occurs to me, going along the side of the Well Meadow Field. Apparently the scarlet oak, large and small (not shrubby), is in prime now, after other oaks are generally withered or withering. The clumps of Salix tristis, half yellow, spotted with dark-brown or blackish and half withered and turned dark ash-colored, are rather inter- esting. The S. humilis has similar dark spots. Hornets’ nests are now being exposed, deserted by the hornets; and little wasp (?) nests, one and a half inches wide, on huckleberry (? ) and sweet-fern (?). White pines have for the most part fallen. All the underwood is hung with their brown fallen needles, giving to the woods an untidy appearance. C. tells of hearing after dark the other night frequent raucous notes which were new to him, on the ammannia meadow, in the grass. Were they not meadow-hens? Rice says he saw one within a week. Have they not lin- gered to feed in our meadows the late warm and pleasant nights ? The haze is still very thick, though it is comparatively cool weather, and if there were no moon to-night, I think it would be very dark. Do not the darkest nights occur about this time, when there is a haze produced by the Indian-summer days, succeeded by a moonless night ? These bright leaves are not the exception but the rule, for I believe that all leaves, even grasses, etc., etc., — Panicum clandestinum,— and mosses, as sphagnum, under favorable circumstances acquire brighter colors just before their fall. When you come to observe faith- fully the changes of each humblest plant, you find, it may be unexpectedly, that each has sooner or later its peculiar autumnal tint or tints, though it may be rare and unobserved, as many a plant is at all seasons. And if you undertake to make a complete list of the bright tints, your list will be as long as a catalogue of the plants in your vicinity.’ Think how much the eyes of painters, both artisans and artists, and of the manufacturers of cloth and paper, and the paper-stainers, etc., are to be educated by these autumnal colors. The stationer’s envelopes may be of very various tints, yet not so various as those of the leaves of a single tree sometimes. If you want a different shade or tint of a particular color, you have only to look further within or without the tree, or the wood.’ The eye might thus be taught to distinguish color and appre- ciate a difference of tint or shade.

P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. One tells me that he saw geese go over Wayland the 17th. Large wild cherries are half fallen or more, the few remaining leaves yellowish. Choke-cherries are bare; how long? Amelanchier bare. Viburnum nudum half fallen or more; when wet and in shade, a light crimson. Hardhack, in low ground, where it has not withered too soon, inclines to a very light scarlet. Sweet-gale is not fallen, but a very dull yellowish and scarlet. You see in woods many black (?) oak sprouts, forming low bushes or clumps of green and dark crimson. (C. says they are handsome, like a mahonia.) The meadow-sweet is yel- lowish and yellow-scarlet. In Ledum Swamp the white azalea is a dirty brown scarlet, half fallen, or more. Pan- icled andromeda reddish-brown and half fallen. Some young high blueberry, or sprouts, never are a deeper or brighter crimson-scarlet than now. Wild holly fallen. Even the sphagnum has turned brownish-red on the exposed surfaces, in the swamp, looking like the at length blushing pellicle of the ripe globe there. The ledum is in (the midst of?) its change, rather con- spicuous, yellow and light-scarlet and falling. I detect but few Andromeda Poltfolia and Kalmia glauca leaves turned a light red or scarlet. The spruce is changed and falling, but is brown and inconspicuous. A man at work on the Ledum Pool, draining it, says that, when they had ditched about six feet deep, or to the bottom, near the edge of this swamp, they came to old flags, and he thought that the whole swamp was once a pond and the flags grew by the edge of it. Thought the mud was twenty feet deep near the pool, | and that he had found three growths of spruce, one . above another, there. He had dug up a hard-pan with iron in it (as he thought) under a part of this swamp, and in what he cast out sorrel came up and grew, very rankly indeed. I notice some late rue turned a very clear light yellow. I see some rose leaves (the early smooth) turned a hand- some clear yellow, — and some (the Ff. Carolina) equally clear and handsome scarlet or dark red. This is the rule with it. Elder is a dirty greenish yellow and apparently mostly fallen. Beach plum is still green with some dull- red leaves, but apparently hardly any fallen. Butternuts are bare. Mountain-ash of both kinds either withered or bare.

A northeast storm, though not much rain falls to-day, but a fine driving mizzle or “drisk.” This, as usual, brings the geese, and at 2.30 p. m. I see two flocks go over. I hear that some were seen two or three weeks ago (? ?), faintly honking. A great many must go over to-day and also alight in this neighbor- hood. This weather warns them of the approach of winter, and this wind speeds them on their way. Surely, then, while geese fly overhead we can live here as con- tentedly as they do at York Factory on Hudson’s Bay. We shall perchance be as well provisioned and have as good society as they. Let us be of good cheer, then, and expect the annual vessel which brings the spring to us without fail.’ P. M. — To Woodis Park over Hill. The celtis has just fallen. Its leaves were apparently a yellow green. The sassafras trees are bare, — how long? — and the white ash apparently just bared. ‘The locusts are bare except the tops, and in this respect those on the hills, at least, are as peculiar as birches. Some trees lose their lower leaves first, as birches and locusts; some the upper, as apples (though a few green leaves may remain on the very tips of the twigs) and generally maples, though the last fall fast. Hickories are two thirds fallen, at least.’ This rain and wind too bring down the leaves very fast. The yard is strewn with the yellow leaves of the peach and the orange and scarlet ones of the cherry. You could not spread a cloth but it would soon be strewn with them. Thorns and balm-of-Gilead and red mulberries bare. The brilliant autumnal colors are red and yellow and the various tints, hues, and shades of these. Blue is re- served to be the color of the sky, but yellow and red are the colors of the earth flower. Every fruit, on ripen- ing, and just before its fall, acquires a bright tint. So do the leaves; so the sky before the end of the day, and the year near its setting. October is the red sunset sky, November the later twilight. Color stands for all ripeness and success. We have dreamed that the hero should carry his color aloft, as a symbol of the ripeness of his virtue. The noblest feature, the eye, is the fairest- colored, the jewel of the body. The warrior’s flag is the flower which precedes his fruit. He unfurls his flag to the breeze with such confidence and brag as the flower its petals. Now we shall see what kind of fruit will succeed. The very forest and herbage, the pellicle of the earth as it were, must acquire a bright color, an evidence of its ripeness, as if the globe itself were a fruit on its stem, with ever one cheek toward the sun. Our appetites have commonly confined our views of ripeness and its phenomena — color and mellowness and perfectness — to the fruits which we eat, and we are wont to forget that an immense harvest which we do not eat, hardly use at all, is annually ripened by nature. At our annual cattle-shows and horticultural exhibitions we make, as we think, a great show of fair fruits, destined, however, to a rather ignoble fate, fruits not worshipped for this chiefly; but round about and within our towns there is annually another show of fruits, on an infinitely grander scale, fruits which address our taste for beauty alone. The scarlet oak, which was quite green the 12th, is now completely scarlet and apparently has been so a few days. This alone of our indigenous deciduous trees (the pitch pine is with it) is now in its glory. (I have not seen the beech, but suppose it past.’ The Populus grandidentata ? and sugar maple come nearest to it, but they have lost the greater part of their leaves.) Look at one, completely changed from green to bright dark-scar- let, every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was not this worth waiting for? Little did you think ten days ago that that cold green tree could assume such color as this. Its leaves still firmly attached while those of other trees are fall- ing around it. I am the last to blush, but I blush deeper than any of ye. I bring up the rear in my red coat. The scarlet oaks, alone of oaks, have not given up the fight. Perchance their leaves, so finely cut, are longer preserved partly because they present less surface to the elements, and for a long time, if I remember rightly, some scarlet oak leaves will “hold out to burn.” | Now in huckleberry pastures you see only here and there a few bright scarlet or crimson (for they vary) leaves amid or above the bare reddish stems, burning as if with condensed brightness, — as if the few that remained burned with the condensed brightness of all that have fallen. In sheltered woods you [see] some dicksonia still straw-color or pale-yellow. Some thor- oughwort the same color. In the shade generally you find paler and more delicate tints, fading to straw-color and white. The deep reds and scarlets and purples show exposure to the sun. I see an intensely scarlet high blueberry — but where one leaf has overlapped another it is yellow — with a regular outline. That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.