25 July 1859 – 31 July 1859

The Rice boy brings me what he thought a snipe’s egg, recently taken from a nest in the Sudbury meadows. It is of the form of a rail’s egg, but is not whitish like mine, but olive-colored with dark-brown spots. Is it the sora rail? He has also a little egg, as he says taken out of a thrasher’s nest, apparently one third grown. Flagg says that the chimney swallow is sometimes abroad “the greater part of the night;” is informed by Fowler that the rose-breasted grosbeak often sings in the light of the moon. P. M. — Water three and a half inches above sum- mer level. I measure the rapidity of the river’s current. At my boat’s place behind Channing’s, a bottle sunk low in the water floats one hundred feet in five minutes; one hundred feet higher up, in four and a half minutes. (I think the last the most correct.) It came out a rod and a half ahead of two chips.

P. M. — To Great Meadows. I see in Clark’s (?) land, behind Garfield’s, a thick growth of white birches, apparently three years old, blown from the wood on the west and southwest. Looking from Peter’s, the meadows are somewhat glaucous, with a reddish border, or bank, by the river, where the red-top and Agrostis scabra grow, and a greener stream where the pipes are, in the lowest part, by the Holt, and in some places yellowish-green ferns and now brown-topped wool-grass. There is much of what I call Juncus scirpoides now in its prime in the wetter parts, as also the Eleocharis palustris, long done, and Rhyncospora alba lately begun. Also buck-bean by itself in very wet places which have lost their crust. Elodea, how long? Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest land- scape. Dogdayish. Methinks the hardhack leaves always stand up, for now they do, and have as soon as they blossomed at least.

P. M. — Up Assabet. I see what I take to be young purple finches eating mountain-ash berries (ours). The kingbirds eat cur- rants. IT notice that the common greenish rock lichen (Parmelia) grows on the rocks of the Assabet down to within two feet of summer level; 2. e., it is submerged perhaps one fourth part of the year. The black willows are the children of the river. They do not grow far from the water, not on the steep banks which the river is wearing into, not on the unconverted shore, but on the bars and banks which the river has made. A bank may soon get to be too high for it. It grows and thrives on the river-made shores and bauks, and is a servant which the river uses to build up and defend its banks and isles. It is married to the river. Where an eddy is depositing a sand-bar, anon to be elevated into an island or bank, there especially the black willow flourishes. There are certain trees and other plants, as this, the white maple, mikania, etc., which do not grow away from the riverside. The river has not simply to [sic] their base, but they accompany 7, wherever it goes. The season has now arrived when I begin to see further into the water, — see the bottom, the weeds, and fishes more than before. I can see the bottom when it is five and a half feet deep even, see the fishes, especially the perch, scuttling in and out amid the weeds. Has this clarity anything to do with the greater sluggishness of the water when low? Perhaps you can see furthest into the most sluggish water. If a tree is undermined and swept down-stream, it lodges in some shallow place, with its branches down- stream, and its butt on the surface, pointing up. The sweet and plaintive note of the pewee (wood pewee) is now prominent, since most other birds are more hushed. I hear probably young families of them answering each other from a considerable distance, especially about the river. Hear also part of the song of what sounds and looks like a rose-breasted grosbeak. Saw young martins being fed on a bridge-rail yesterday.

P.M. — To Fair Haven Hill shore. Ranunculus Flammula var. reptans out, also impa- tiens, noli-me-tangere. ‘The Cyperus dentatus in bloom on hard sandy parts of meadows now is very interest- ing and handsome on being inspected now, with its ey bright chestnut purple szded flat spikelets, —a plant and color looking toward autumn. Very neat and hand- some on a Close inspection. Vide about Hubbard’s brook pickerel ditches. Also in dry sandy soil the little tufts of Fimbristylis capillaris in bloom are quite brown and withered-looking now, — another yet more autum- nal-suggesting sight. In dry pastures see also the round green heads of the Cyperus filiculmis. The river is very nearly down to summer level now, and I notice there, among other phenomena of low water by the river, the great yellow lily pads flat on bare mud, the Ranunculus Flammula (just begun), a close but thin green matting now bare for five or six feet in width, bream nests bare and dried up, or else bare stones and sand for six or eight feet. The white lilies are generally lifted an inch or two above water by their stems; also the Utricularia vulgaris and purpurea are raised higher above the surface than usual. Rails are lodged amid the potamogetons in midstream and have not moved for ten days. Dog-days and fogs. Rocks unsuspected peep out and are become visible. The water milfoil (the ambi- guum var. natans), otherwise not seen, shows itself. ‘This is observed only at lowest water. I examined some of these bream nests left dry at Car- dinal Shore. ‘These were a foot or two wide and exca- vated five inches deep (as I measured) in hard sand. The fishes must have worked hard to make these holes. Sometimes they are amid or in pebbles, where it is harder yet. There are now left at their bottoms, high and dry, a great many snails (Paludina decisa, also GH? young and old, some very minute. They either wash into them or take refuge there as the water goes down. I suspect they die there. The fishes really work hard at making their nests — these, the stone-heaps, etc. —when we consider what feeble means they possess. Vaccinium vacillans begin to be pretty thick and some huckleberries. See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown. Bartonza tenella, how long?

A. M.— On river to ascertain the rate of the current. This dog-day weather I can see the bottom where five and a half feet deep. At five feet it is strewn clear across with sium, heart-leaf, Ranunculus Purshii, etc. It is quite green and verdurous, especially with the first. I see the fishes moving leisurely about amid the weeds, their affairs revealed, especially perch, — some large ones prowling there; and pickerel, large and small, lie imperturbable. I see more moss(? )-covered rocks on the bottom and some rising quite near the surface,—three or four be- tween my boat’s place and thirty rods above,—and a good many three feet over on the bottom, revealed in the sunny water, and little suspected before. Indeed, the bottom may be considered rocky from above Dodd’s to my boat’s place, though you would suspect it only when looking through this clear water. They are so completely covered with moss-like weeds or tresses that you do not see them, — like the heads of mermaids. A rock there is a nucleus or hard core to a waving mass of weeds, and you must probe it hard with a paddle to detect the hard core. No doubt many a ™! reach is thus rock-strewn which is supposed to have an uninterruptedly muddy bottom. They sleep there con- cealed under these long tresses on the bottom, sug- gesting a new kind of antiquity. There is nothing to wear on and polish them there. They do not bear the paint rubbed off from any boat. Though unsuspected by the oldest fisher, they have eyed Concord for cen- turies through their watery veil without ever parting their tresses to look at her. Perchance the increased stagnancy of the river at this season makes the water more transparent, it being easier to look into stagnant water than when the par- ticles are in rapid motion.

7.80 a.m. — Up river. C. and I, having left our boat at Rice’s Bend last night, walk to it this forenoon on our way to Saxonville. Water three quarters of an inch above summer level. It is emphatically one of the dog-days. A dense fog, not clearing off till we are far on our way, and the clouds (which did not let in any sun all day) were the dog-day fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day. As we go along the Corner road, the dense fog for a background relieves pleasantly the outlines of every tree, though only twenty rods off, so that each is seen as a new object, especially that great oak scrag behind Hubbard’s, once bent into a fence, now like a double- headed eagle, dark on the white ground. We go in the road to Rice’s on account of the heavy dew, yet the fine tops of red-top, drooping with dew over the path, with a bluish hue from the dew, — blue with dew, — wet our shoes through. The roads are strewn with meadow- hay, which the farmers teamed home last evening (Sat- urday).