5 September 1859 – 11 September 1859

Spent a part of the forenoon in the woods in the northwest part of Acton, searching for a stone suitable for a millstone for my lead-mill.

Hear the sounds nowadays — the lowing, tramp, and calls of the drivers — of cows coming down from up-country. Staghorn sumach berries probably some time, but ours are injured by worms. The fever-bush leaves —\ are remarkably round and entire yet, as if by their odor defended from insects.* The feverwort berries are apparently nearly in their prime, of a clear “corn yellow” and as large as a small cranberry, in whorls at the axils of the leaves of the half- prostrate plants. IT hear occasionally a half-warbled strain from a warbling vireo in the elm-tops, as I go down the street nowadays. There is about as much life in their notes now as in the enfeebled and yellowing elm tree leaves at present. The liatris is, perhaps, a little past prime. It is a very rich purple in favorable lights and makes a great show where it grows. Any one to whom it is new will be surprised to learn that it is a wild plant. For prevalence and effect it may be put with the vernonia, and it has a general resemblance to thistles and knapweed, but is a handsomer plant than any of them.

The 7th, 8th, and 9th, the State muster is held here. The only observation I have to make is that [Concord] is fuller of dust and more uninhabitable than I ever knew it to be before. Not only the walls, fences, and houses are thickly covered with dust, but the fields and meadows and bushes; and the pads in the river for half a mile from the village are white with it. From a mile or two distant you see a cloud of dust over the town and extending thence to the muster-field. I went to the store the other day to buy a bolt for our front door, for, as I told the storekeeper, the Governor was coming here. “Aye,” said he, “and the Legisla- ture too.” “Then I will take two bolts,” said I. He said that there had been a steady demand for bolts and locks of late, for our protectors were coming. The sur- face of the roads for three to six inches in depth is a light and dry powder like ashes. P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond. Grapes are turning purple, but are not ripe. I see the black head and neck of a little dipper in mid- stream, a few rods before my boat. It disappears, and though I search carefully, I cannot detect it again. It is undoubtedly hidden mid the weeds — pads, flags, and pontederia, etc. — along the shore. Ducks more com- mon.

I start many pigeons now in a sprout-land. I have noticed for a week or more some swarms of light-colored and very small fuzzy gnats in the air, yet not in such concentrated swarms as I shall see by and by. Now for hazelnuts, — where the squirrels have not got them. Within a week I think I have heard screech owls at evening from over the river once or twice.

See wasps, collected in the sun on a wall, at 9 A. M.

P. M. — To Conantum-end. The prinos berries are now seen, red (or scarlet), clustered along the stems, amid the as yet green leaves. A cool red. By the pool in Hubbard’s Grove, I see tall tupelos, all dotted with the now ripe (apparently in prime) small oval purple berries, two or three together on the end of slender peduncles, amid the reddening leaves. This fruit is very acid and has a large stone, but I see several robins on the trees, which appear to have been attracted by it. Neither tree nor fruit is generally known, and many liken the former when small to a pear. The trees are quite full of fruit. The wax-like fruit of Cornus paniculata still holds on abundantly. This being a cloudy and somewhat rainy day, the autumnal dandelion is open in the afternoon. The Rhus Toxicodendron berries are now ripe and greenish-yellow, and some already shrivelled, over bare rocks. September is the month when various small, and commonly inedible, berries in cymes and clusters hang over the roadsides and along the walls and fences, or spot the forest floor. The clusters of the Viburnum Lentago berries, now in their prime, are exceedingly and peculiarly handsome, and edible withal. These are drooping, like the Cornus sericea cymes. Each berry in the cyme is now a fine, clear red on the exposed side and a distinct and clear green on the opposite side. Many are already purple, and they turn in your hat, but they are handsomest when. thus red and green. The large clusters of the Smilacina racemosa berries, four or five inches long, of whitish berries a little smaller than a pea, finely marked and dotted with vermilion or bright red, are very conspicuous. I do not chance to see any ripe. No fruit is handsomer than the acorn. I see but few fallen yet, and they are all wormy. Very pretty, espe- cially, are the white oak acorns, three raying from one centre. I see dill and saffron still, commonly out at R. W. E.’s.