30 April 1860 – 6 May 1860

Cattle begin to go up-country, and every week day, especially Mondays, to this time [szc] May 7th,’ at least, the greatest droves to-day. Methinks they will find slender picking up there for a while. Now thany a farmer’s boy makes his first journey, and sees something to tell of, — makes acquaintance with those hills which are mere blue warts in his horizon, finds them solid and terra firma, after all, and inhabited by herdsmen, par- tially befenced and measurable by the acre, with cool springs where you may quench your thirst after a dusty day’s walk. Surveying Emerson’s wood-lot to see how much was burned near the end of March, I find that what I antici- pated is exactly true, — that the fire did not burn hard on the northern slopes, there being then frost in the ground, and where the bank was very steep, say at angle of forty-five degrees, which was the case with more than a quarter of an acre, it did not run down at all, ‘though no man hindered it. ~ That fire in the woods in Groton on the 27th, which was seen so far, so very dun and extensive the smoke, so that you looked to see the flames too, proves what slight burnings it is, comparatively, that we com- monly see making these cloud-like or bluish smokes in the horizon, and also how very far off they may often be. Those whitish columns of smoke which we see from the hills, and count so many of at once, are probably often fifty or sixty miles off or more. I can now believe what I have read of a traveller making such a signal on the slope of the Rocky Mountains a hundred miles off, to save coming back to his party. Yet, strange to say, I did not see the smoke of the still larger fire between Concord and Acton in March at all, I being in Lincoln and outdoors all the time. This Groton fire did not seem much further off than a fire in Walden Woods, and, as I believe and hear, in each town the inhabit- ants supposed it to be in the outskirts of their own township.

Plant potatoes; the very midst of early potato planting. I now, as usual, turn up numerous yellow dor-bugs, which are as yet a very pale yellow, not having been exposed to the light. Also those great white potato- Worms. The sugar maple keys (or buds?) hang down one inch, quite.

River three and five sixteenths below summer level. I observed on the 29th that the clams had not only been moving much, furrowing the sandy bottom near - the shore, but generally, or almost invariably, had moved toward the middle of the river. Perhaps it had something to do with the low stage of the water. I saw one making his way — or perhaps it had rested since | | . morning — over that sawdust bar just below Turtle. Bar, toward the river, the surface of the bar being an inch or two higher than the water. Probably the water, falling, left it thus on dry (moist) land. I notice this forenoon (11.30 a.m.) remarkably round-topped white clouds just like round-topped hills, i - on all sides of the sky, often a range of such, such wey ge ee as I do not remember to have seen before. There was considerable wind on the surface, from the north- east, and the above clouds were moving west and southwest, —a generally distributed cumulus. What added to the remarkableness of the sight was a very fine, fleecy cirrhus, like smoke, narrow but of indefinite length, driving swiftly eastward beneath the former, proving that there were three currents of air, one above the other. (Ihe same form of cloud prevailed to some extent the next day.) Salix alba apparently yesterday. The early potentillas are now quite abundant. P. M. — To stone-heaps and stone bridge. Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March. (‘The same is true till 9th of May at least; 7. e., in spite of east winds there is no rain.) I find no stone-heaps made yet, the water being very low. (But since — May 8th —I notice them, and per- haps I overlooked them before.) I notice on the east bank by the stone-heaps, amid the bushes, what I supposed to be two woodchucks’ holes, with a well-worn path from one to the other, and the young trees close about them, aspen and black cherry, had been gnawed for a foot or more upward for a year or two. There were some fresh wounds, and also old and extensive scars of last year partially healed. The naked viburnum is leafing. The sedge appar- ently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two. A crowd of men seem to generate vermin even of the human kind. In great towns there is degradation undreamed of elsewhere, — gamblers, dog-killers, rag- pickers. Some live by robbery or by luck. There was the Concord muster (of last September). I see still a well- dressed man carefully and methodically searching for money on the muster-fields, far off across the river. I turn my glass upon him and notice how he proceeds. (I saw them searching there in the fall till the snow came.) He walks regularly and slowly back and forth ever the ground where the soldiers had their tents, — still marked by the straw,—with his head prone, and poking in the straw with a stick, now and then turning back or aside to examine something more closely. He is dressed, methinks, better than an average man whom you meet in the streets. How can he pay for his board thus? He dreams of finding a few coppers, or perchance a half-dime, which have fallen from the soldiers’ pockets, and no doubt he will find something of the kind, having dreamed of it, — having knocked, this door will be opened to him. Walking over the russet interval, I see the first red-winged grasshoppers. ‘They rise from the still brown sod before me, and I see the redness of their wings as they fly. They are quite shy and hardly let me come within ten feet before they rise again, — often before I have seen them fairly on the ground. ; It was 63° at 2 Pp. M., and yet a good deal of coolness * in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat. (Yet a week later, with thermometer at 60 and but little wind, it seems much warmer.) We have had cool nights of late.

'To Cambridge and Boston. I see at the Aquarium many of my little striped or barred breams, - ~~~ \ now labelled Bryttus obesus. Compared with ~ the common, they have rounded tails, - larger dorsal and anal fins, and are fuller or heavier forward. I observe that they incline to stand on their heads more. The proprietor said that some little fishes one and a half to two inches long, with a very distinct black line along the sides, which I should have called brook minnows, Agassiz was confident were young suckers, but Mr. Putnam thought that they were the Leuciscus - atronarus, 7.e. my brook minnow. I observe that a - leuciscus (probably pulchellus, if not argenteus), five inches long, also has a broad line along the side, but not nearly so dark. He shows me the eudora (water-plant), which he has not seen east of the Connecticut.

River three and one fourth inches below summer level. Scales of turtles are coming off (painted turtle). Quite a warm day, — 70 at6 p.m. Currant out a day or two at least, and our first gooseberry a day later. P. M. — To Great Meadows by boat. I see Haynes with a large string of pickerel, and he says that he caught a larger yesterday. There were none of the brook pickerel in this string. He goes every day, and has good luck. It must be because the river is so low. Fishing, then, has fairly commenced. It is never any better pickerel-fishing than now. He has caught three good-sized trout in the river within a day or [two]; one would weigh a pound and a half. One above the railroad bridge, and one off Abner Buttrick’s, Saw Mill Brook. He has caught them in the river before, but very rarely. He caught these as he was fishing for pickerel. This, too, may be because the river is low and it is early in the season. He says that he uses the Rana halecina for bait; that a pickerel will spit out the yellow- legged one. Walking over the river meadows to examine the pools and see how much dried up they are, I notice, as usual, the track of the musquash, some five inches wide always, always exactly in the lowest part of the muddy hollows connecting one pool with another, winding as they wind, as if loath to raise itself above the lowest mud. At first he swam there, and now, as the water goes down, he follows it steadily, and at length travels on the bare mud, but as low and close to the water as he can get. Thus he first traces the channel of the future brook and river, and deepens it by dragging his belly along it. se a ia, =~ ~~, 5 . ’ — ; palit wpm Tle a el oe ; “. ee ' a = i ee " : Ce ee ee a — ae ; : ee ee ieee | ge — he ae nar i ell He lays out and engineers its road. As our roads are said to follow the trail of the cow, so rivers in another period follow the trail of the musquash. They are perfect rats to look at, and swim fast against the stream. When I am talking on a high bank I often see one swimming along within half a dozen rods and land openly, as if regardless of us. Probably, being under water at first, he did not hear us. When the locomotive was first introduced into Cho- cord, the cows and horses ran in terror to [the] other sides of their pastures as it passed along, and I suppose that the fishes in the river manifested equal alarm at first; but I notice (to-day, the 11th of May) that a pickerel by Derby’s Bridge, poised in a smooth bay, did not stir perceptibly when the train passed over the neighboring bridge and the locomotive screamed re- markably loud. The fishes have, no doubt, got used to the sound. IT see a bullfrog under water. Land at the first angle of the Holt. Looking across the Peninsula toward Ball’s Hill, I am struck by the bright blue of the river (a deeper blue than the sky), contrasting with the fresh yellow green of the meadow (7. e. of coarse sedges just starting), and, between them, a darker or greener green next the edge of the river, especially where that small sand-bar island is, — the green of that early rank river-grass. This is the first painting or coloring in the meadows. These several colors are, as it were, daubed on, as on chinaware, or as distinct and simple as a child’s painted [sic]. I am struck by the amount and variety of color after so much brown. rh ay ve e As I stood there I heard a thumping sound, which I referred to Peter’s, three quarters of a mile off over the meadow. But it was a pigeon woodpecker excavating its nest within a maple within a rod of me. Though I had just landed and made a noise with my boat, he was too busy to hear me, but now he hears my tread, and I see him put out his head and then withdraw it warily and keep still, while I stay there. Pipes (Equisetum limosum) are now generally three to seven inches high, but so brown as yet that I mistook them at a little distance for a dead brown stubble amid the green of springing sedge, and not a fresh growth at all. They are at last a very dark green still, if I remem- ber. The river is very low, but I find that the meadows, though bare, are not very dry, except for the season, and I am pretty sure that within two or three years, and at this season, I have seen the pools on the meadows drier when there was more water in the river. The Great Meadows are wet to walk over, after all, and the great pools on them are rather unapproachable, even in india-rubber boots. Apparently it is impossible for the meadows to be so dry at this season, however low the river may be, as they may be at midsummer and later. Their own springs are fuller now. A Nuphar advena in one of these pools what you may call out, for it is rather stale, though no pollen is shed. What little water there is amid the pipes and sedge is filled and swarming with apparently the larva of some insect, perhaps ephemerze. They keep up an undulating motion, and have many feathery fringes on the sides. I observe fishes close inshore, active and rippling the water when not scared, as if breeding; often their back fins out. The sun sets red, shorn of its beams. Those little silvery beetles in Ed. Emerson’s aquarium that dash about are evidently the Notonecta, or water- boatmen. I believe there is a larger and somewhat similar beetle, which does not swim on its back, called Dytiscus. Missouri currant out; how long?

Cobwebs on the grass, —half green, half brown, — this morning; certainly not long, perhaps this the first time; and dews. 2 p.m.— 76°. Warm and hazy (and yesterday warm also); my single thick coat too much. Wind southeast. A fresher and cooler breeze is agreeable now. The wind becomes a breeze at this season. The yellowish (or common) winged grasshoppers are quite common now, hopping and flying before me. Viola blanda, how long? Clams lie up abundantly. Bluets have spotted the fields for two or three days mingled with the reddish luzula, as in Conant’s field north of Holden Wood toward the brook. They fill the air with a sweet and innocent fragrance at a few rods’ distance. I have not worn my outside coat since the 19th of April and now it is the 13th of May; nor, I think, had any fire in my chamber. Latterly have sat with the window open, even at evening. Anemone and Thalictrum anemonoides are apparently in prime about the 10th of May. The former abounds in the thin young wood behind Lee’s Cliff. Tent cater- pillar nest an inch and a half over. Dicksonia fern up six inches in a warm place. Yellow butter-flies. Veronica serpyllifolia, say yesterday. There are some dense beds of houstonia in the yard of the old Conantum house. Some parts of them show of a distinctly bluer shade two rods off. They are most interesting now, before many other flowers are out, the grass high, and they have lost their freshness. I sit down by one dense bed of them to examine it. It is about three feet long and two or more wide. The flowers not only crowd one another, but are in several tiers, one above another, and completely hide the ground,—a mass of white. Counting those in a small place, I find that there are about three thousand flowers in a square foot. They are all turned a little toward the sun, and emit a refreshing odor. Here is a lumbering humblebee, probing these tiny flowers. Itis a rather ludicrous sight. Of course they will not support him, except a little where they are densest; so he bends them down rapidly (hauling them in with his arms, as it were), one after another, thrusting his beak into the tube of each. It takes him but a moment to dispatch one. It is a singular sight, a humblebee clambering over a bed of these delicate flowers. There are various other bees about them. See at Lee’s a pewee (phoebe) building. She has just woven in, or laid on the edge, a fresh sprig of saxifrage in flower. I notice that phoebes will build in the same ~, recess in a cliff year after year. It is a constant thing here, though they are often disturbed. Think how many pewees must have built under the eaves of this cliff since pewees were created and this cliff itself built! You can possibly find the crumbling relics of how many, if you should look carefully enough! It takes us many years to find out that Nature repeats herself an- nually. But how perfectly regular and calculable all her phenomena must appear to a mind that has ob- served her for a thousand years! Vernal grass at this cliff (common at Damon’s Spring the 12th). The marginal shield fern is one foot high here. Amelanchier Botryapium flower in prime. Have seen no ducks for a week or more. Knawel some time. Vaccinium Pennsylvanicum flowers against rocks, not long. Sun goes down red. Hear of bear-berry well out the 29th of April at Cliffs, and there probably some days. The peepers and toads are in full blast at night.

River three and one fourth inches below summer level. Why is it only three eighteenths of an inch lower than last Sunday (April 29)? For we are in the midst of a remarkable drought, and I think that if there had been any rain within a week near the sources of the river I should have heard of it. Is it that these innumerable sources of the river which the springs in the meadows are, are able to keep up the supply? The river had been falling steadily a good while before. Why, then, has it not fallen more the past week ? The dog’s-tooth violet was sent from Cambridge in flower, May Ist. 2 p.m. — To Second Division. 74°; wind southeast; and hazy. A goldfinch apparently not quite in summer dress; with a dark-brown, not black, front. See a song sparrow’s nest with four eggs in the side of a bank, or rather ditch. .I commonly find the earliest ones in such sheltered and concealed places. What did they do before the white man came here with his ditches and stone walls? (Methinks by the 13th I hear the bay- wing sing the oftenest.) As I go down the warm sandy path in the gully behind J. P. Brown’s, I see quite a number of Viola pedata, indigo-weed shoots six inches high, a prenanthes leaf eight inches high, and two-leaved Solomon’s-seal pushing up, —all signs of warm weather. As the leaves are putting forth on the trees, so now a great many her- baceous plants are springing up in the woods and fields. There is a peculiar stillness associated with the warmth, which the cackling of a hen only serves to deepen, increasing the Sabbath feeling. In the Major Heywood path see many rather small (or middle-sized) blackish butterflies. The Luzula cam- pestris is apparently in prime. Oryzopsis grass well out, how long? Now at last we seek the shade these days, as the most grateful. Sit under the pines near the stone guide- post on the Marlborough road. The note of the pine warbler, which sounded so warm in March, sounds equally cool now. The Second Division rush is not yet out. It is the greatest growth of what you may call the grass kind as yet, the reddish tops, say sixteen inches high (above the now green), trembling in the wind very agreeably. The dark beds of the white ranunculus in the Second Divi- sion Brook are very interesting, the whitish stems seen amid and behind the dark-brown old leaves. The white-throated sparrow, and probably the 28th of April. The large osmunda ferns, say one foot high, some of them; also a little brake one foot high. Hear probably a yellow-throated vireo in the woods. A creeper (black and white) yesterday. Sit on the steep north bank of White Pond. The Amelanchier Botryapium in flower now spots the brown sprout-land hillside on the southeast side, across the pond, very interestingly. Though it makes but a faint impression of color, I see its pink distinctly a quarter of a mile off. It is seen now in sprout-lands half a dozen years old, where the oak leaves have just about all fallen except a few white oaks. (It is in prime about the 8th.) Others are seen directly under the bank on which we sit, on this side, very white against the blue water. Many at this distance would not notice those shad- bush flowers on the hillside, or [would] mistake them for whitish rocks. They are the more interesting for coming thus between the fall of the oak leaves and the expanding of other shrubs and trees. Some of the larger, near at hand, are very light and elegant masses of white bloom. The white-fingered flower of the sprout-lands. In sprout-lands, having probably the start or preéminence over the other sprouts, from not being commonly, or [at] all, cut down with the other trees and shrubs, they are as high or higher than any of them for five or six years, and they are so early that they fee] almost the full influence of the sun, even amid full- grown deciduous trees which have not leafed, while they are considerably sheltered from the wind by them. itn “honk There is so fine a ripple on White 3s3 .:% Pond that it amounts to a mere —P2 Lo = Z ~ imbrication, very regular. °+ The song of the robin heard at 4.30 p. M., this still and hazy day, sounds already ves- pertinal. Maple keys an inch and a half long. Mists these mornings. Our second shad-bush out, how long? It is generally just beginning in the woods. My chamber is oppressively warm in the evening.