16 July 1860 – 22 July 1860

2 p.m. — To Great Meadows by boat. You notice now along the river, on the muddy shores, the dry (and closed) whitish heads of the canary grass, standing high above its yet fresh green leaves. It forms only narrow, dense patches a few rods in length. The banks of the Great Meadows are red-top, and (is it not ?) Agrostis scabra (the fine long-branched, yet branch- ing again often below the middle) and fowl-meadow on the lower parts of the bank commonly. The Glyceria acutiflora is abundant and now going to seed in the wettest part of the Holt portion of the meadow. ‘That which I have called the Poa dentata of 'Torrey is a very common grass in ditches and other wet places, especially ~ with the last-named at the Holt, and is now mostly done. I should think it might be an undescribed species of Glyceria. Setaria viridis, Channing’s garden, probably two or three days. I notice the fruit of the bur-reed (opposite Prichard Shore), now large, pickle-green, and about as big as that of the upper Sudbury meadows; so I think it is the same, though not so rank. In the bays by the riverside where the pads have been least eaten, I see at least three times as many of the three kinds mixed as can lie on that surface, one over- lapping and crowding another and the more exposed curled up on their edges; but they are so much riddled already and eaten by insects that this abundant sup- ply is needed. It is an abundant vegetable food appar- ently for many kinds. I see a large tuft of pontederia whose leaves have been slit longitudinally into a dozen parallel slits, — not always clear out, — and so they hang in ribbons; and there is a downy feather of a bird attached to one. Could it have been done by some water-fowl ? Pipes have been out of bloom apparently a long time.

2 p.m. — To Walden. The soft sand on the bottom of Walden, as deep as I can wade, feels very warm to my feet, while the water feels cold. This may be partly a mere sensation, but I suspect that the sand is really much warmer than the water and that some creatures take refuge in it accord- ingly, that much heat passes through the water and is absorbed in the sand. Yet when I let a thermometer lie on the bottom and draw it up quickly I detect no differ- ence between the temperature of the bottom and of the water at the surface. Probably it would have been differ- ent if the thermometer had been buried in the sand. The air at 2 p.m. was 77; Walden near the shore is 76, in the middle, 74°; and when I let down a ther- mometer some sixty feet and draw it up quickly, I get no lower than 74°, but it may have risen as it came up. The nighthawk’s ripping sound, heard overhead these days, reminds us that the sky is, as it were, a roof, and that our world is limited on that side, it being reflected as from a roof back to earth. It does not suggest an ™~ infinite depth in the sky, but a nearness to the earth, as of a low roof echoing back its sounds. Eleocharis acicularis still blooms. The sternotherus in Walden has a smooth, clean shell, rather prettily marked, it is so clean, and would by many be taken for a different species from that of the river, which is commonly colored with mud and moss. I take two into the boat, and they think it enough when they have merely hidden their heads in a corner. Also the great bullfrogs which sit out on the stones every two or three rods all around the pond are singu- larly clean and handsome bullfrogs, with fine yellow throats sharply separated from their pickle-green heads by their firmly shut mouths, and with beautiful eyes. They sit thus imperturbable, often under a pile of brush, at nearly regular intervals. An English taxidermist of Wayland (a cockney) told me the other day that he would have set up a bullfrog, it has so beautiful a “hie,” but he could not buy a bullfrog’s “hie” in the market.

2 P.M. — To Second Division. The Asclepias Cornutt is abundantly visited nowa- days by a large orange-brown butterfly with dark spots and with silver spots beneath. Wherever the asclepias grows you see them. The Second Division juncus is already withering and is considerably browned, so early is it. It appears not to ripen any seed.

2 p.m. — To Walden. Warm weather, — 86 at 2 P.M. (not so warm for a good while). Emerson’s lot that was burnt, between the railroad and the pond, has been cut off within the last three months, and I notice that the oak sprouts have com- monly met with a check after growing one or two feet, and small reddish leafets have again put forth at the extremity within a week or so, as in the spring. Some of the oak sprouts are five to six feet high already. On his hill near by, where the wood was cut about two years ago, this second growth of the oaks, especially white oaks, is much more obvious, and commenced longer ago. The shoots of this year are generally about two feet long, but the first foot consists of large dark- green leaves which expanded early, before the shoot met with a check. This is surmounted by another foot of smaller yellowish-green leaves. This is very gener- ally the case, and produces a marked contrast. Dark- green bushes surmounted by a light or yellowish-green growth. Sometimes, in the first-mentioned sprout-land, you see where the first shoot withered, as if frost-bitten at ~~ the end, and often only some large buds have formed there as yet. Many of these sprouts, the rankest of them, are fated to fall, being but slightly joined to the stump, riddled by ants there; and others are already prostrated. Bathing on the side of the deep cove, I noticed just below the high-water line (of rubbish) quite a number of little pines which have just sprung up amid the stones and sand and wreck, some with the seed atop. This, then, is the state of their coming up naturally. They have evidently been either washed up, or have blown across the ice or snow to this shore. If pitch pine, they were probably blown across the pond, for I have often seen them on their way across. Both Scirpus subterminalis and debilis are now in bloom at the Pout’s Nest, the former the longest time, the water being very low and separated from the pond. The former out for some time, the latter not long. Great numbers of pollywogs have apparently just changed into frogs. At the pondlet on Hubbard’s land, now separated from the main pond by a stony bar, hundreds of small frogs are out on the shore, enjoying their new state of existence, masses of them, which, with constant plashing, go hopping into the water a rod or more before me, where they are very swift to conceal themselves in the mud at the bottom. Their bodies may be one and a half inches long or more. I have rarely seen so many frogs together. Yet I hardly see one pollywog left in this pool.

A rainy day; half an inch of rain falls, spoiling much hay. This is so wet a season that the grass is still growing fast and most things are very fresh. The leaves generally do not get to be perfect till the middle of July, when they are of a dark, hard, glossy green, €. g. the swamp white oak. 6 p. ma. — Up Assabet. Now, after the rain, the sun coming forth brightly, the swallows in numbers are skimming low over the river just below the junction. Considerable bur-reed, vallisneria, and heart-leaf has been washed up against the weeds and pads along the sides of the river of late. The canary grass standing so high and densely, with its now very light-brown closed heads, looks more like grain at a distance than any of our wild grasses, as you look down the river from the junction.

2 p.m. — 70°, and, with a breeze, cool. To Annursnack. See in the ditch by the roadside on Colburn Hill a box turtle which was crushed some time ago, and there is the mark of the wheel that passed over him. It is remarkable that, though I have seen but four or five of these turtles in this town, two at least of them had been crushed by a wheel, — that, few as they are, they ™ should have got in the way of a wheel. I found another on the railroad once, southeast of this, on a part of the same dry region, and one on the dry plain under Fair Haven Hill. In the path through Hosmer’s pines beyond the As- sabet, see a wood turtle — whose shell has apparently had one or two mouthfuls taken out of it on the sides —eating in a leisurely manner a common pink-topped toadstool some two inches in diameter, which it had knocked down and half consumed. Its jaws were covered with it. The butterflies at present are chiefly on the Canada thistle and the mayweed. I see on the last, in the road beyond Colburn Hill, a surprising number of the small reddish (small copper) butterflies, for a dozen rods. The leek will apparently bloom very soon. I see the stigmas, I think. What a surprising and stately plant! Its great flower-stem stands now a little aslant, some fifteen or eighteen inches high, regular[ly] beset with its great thick leaves, gradually lessening upward to its massy head. It has a peculiarly columnar appearance, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Yesterday having been a rainy day, the air is now remarkably clear and cool and you rarely see the horizon so distinct. The surface of the earth, espe- cially looking westward, — grass grounds, pastures, and meadows, — is remarkably beautiful. I stand in Hey- wood’s pasture west of the leek and, leaning over the wall, look westward. All things — grass, etc. — are peculiarly fresh this season on account of the copious rains. The next field on the west slopes gently from both east and west to a meadow in the middle. So, as I look over the wall, it is first dark-green, where white clover has been cut (still showing a myriad low white heads which resound with the hum of bees); next, along the edge of the bottom or meadow, is a strip or belt three or four rods wide of red-top, uncut, perfectly distinct; then the cheerful bright-yellow sedge of the meadow, yellow almost as gamboge; then a corre- sponding belt of red-top on its upper edge, quite straight and rectilinear like the first; then a glaucous-green field of grain still quite low; and, in the further corner of the field, a much darker square of green than any yet, all brilliant in this wonderful light. You thus have a sort of terrestrial rainbow, thus: — KEELE The farmer accustomed to look at his crops from a mercenary point of view is not aware how beautiful they are. This prospect was really exciting, even as a rainbow is. Then the next pasture on the northwest, where it sloped toward me gently, a smooth velvet or impalpable green slope, with here and there the lightest cobwebby touch of lighter green like a dew on it, where a little fescue grass still made an impression in spite of “=, the cows. These soft, indefinite lighter touches on the dark-green enamelled slope! It was like a delicately watered surface, and here and there stood on it a few young hickories, their stems and their umbrage both as black as a coal; and further, just this side the wall over which the clear light came, some low bushes, probably sumach, reflected a hoary, silvery light. You can tell the crops afar off by their color. The next, more springy pasture on the north was all lit up with yellow ferns. Smooth sumach apparently in prime, and handsome as a spirea. The flies that rain about your head in woods, how long? Hills (not so far off as to be blue) are now a yellowish brown from the withered heads of grass. Pastures generally a brownish tinge. First locust heard.