7 June 1852 – 13 June 1852

Surveying for Sam. Pierce. Found piece of an Indian soapstone pot.

The buck-bean in Hubbard’s meadow just going out of blossom. The yellow water ranunculus is an important flower in the river now, rising above the white lily pads, whose flower does not yet appear. I perceive that their petals, washed ashore, line the sand conspicuously. The green-briar in flower. For a week past we have had washing days. The grass waving, and trees having leaved out, their boughs wave and feel the effect of the breeze. Thus new life and motion is imparted to the trees. The season of waving boughs; and the lighter under sides of the new leaves are exposed. This is the first half of June. Already ‘the grass is not so fresh and liquid-velvety a green, having much of it blossom[ed] and some even gone to seed, and it is mixed with reddish ferns and other plants, but the general leafiness, shadiness, and wav- ‘ing of grass and boughs in the breeze characterize the season. ‘The wind is not quite agreeable, because it prevents your hearing the birds sing. Meanwhile the crickets are strengthenirfg their quire. The weather is very clear, and the sky bright. The river shines like silver. Methinks this is a traveller’s month. The locust in bloom. The waving, undulating rye. The decid- uous trees have filled up the intervals between the ever- greens, and the woods are bosky now. Is that the Thalictrum Cornuti that shows green sta- mens, at the Corner Spring? Gathered strawberries on Fair Haven. Rather acid yet. The priests of the Germans and Britons were druids. They had their sacred oaken groves. Such were their steeple houses. Nature was to some extent a fane to them. There was fine religion in that form of worship, and Stonehenge remains as evidence of some vigor in the worshippers, as the Pyramids, perchance, of the vigor of the Egyptians, derived from the slime of the Nile. Evelyn says of the oak, which he calls “ these robust sons of the earth,” ‘‘ It is reported that the very shade of this tree is so wholesome, that the sleeping, or lying under it, becomes a present remedy to para- lytics, and recovers those whom the mistaken malign influence of the Walnut-tree has smitten.’?! Which we may take for a metaphorical expression of the invigor- ating influence of rude, wild, robust nature, compared with the effeminating luxury of civilized life. Evelyn has collected the fine exaggerations of antiquity respect- ing the virtues and habits of trees and added some him- self. He says, “ I am told that those small young acorns which we find in the stock-doves’ craws are a delicious * * (John Evelyn, Silva: or a Discourse of Forest Trees.] fare, as well as those incomparable salads, young herbs taken out of the maws of partridges at a certain season of the year, which gives them a preparation far ex- ceeding all the art of cookery.” If the oft-repeated glorification of the forest from age to age smacks of religion, is even druidical, Evelyn is as good as several old druids, and his “ Silva” is a new kind of prayer- book, a glorifying of the trees and enjoying them for- ever, which was the chief end of his life. A child loves to strike on a tin pan or other ringing vessel with a stick, because, its ears being fresh, sound, attentive, and percipient, it detects the finest music in the sound, at which all nature assists. Is not the very cope of the heavens the sounding-board of the infant drummer? So clear and unprejudiced ears hear the sweetest and most soul-stirring melody in tinkling cow- bells and the like (dogs baying the moon), not to be referred to association, but intrinsic in the sound itself; those cheap and simple sounds which men despise be- cause their ears are dull and debauched. Ah, that I were so much a child that I could unfailingly draw music from a quart pot! Its little ears tingle with the melody. To it there is music in sound alone. Evelyn speaks of ‘‘ mel-dews ”’ attracting bees. Can mildews be corrupted from this? Says that the alder, laid under water, “ will harden like a very stone,” and speaks of their being used “for the draining of grounds by placing them . . . in the trenches,” which I have just seen done here under Clamshell Hill. Evelyn’s love of his subject teaches him to use many expressive words, some imported from the Latin, which I wonder how we can do without. He says of the “oziers or aquatic salix,” “It likewise yields more limber and flexible twigs for baskets, flaskets, hampers, cages, lattices, cradles, . . . the bodies of coaches and waggons, . . . for chairs, hurdles, stays, bands,”’ etc.; “likewise for fish-weirs, and to support the banks of impetuous rivers: In fine, for all wicker and twiggy works; ‘ Viminibus Salices’ — Vire.” Many of his words show a poetic genius. The above-mentioned is the reason that children are fond of and make what grown people call a novse, because of the music which their young ears detect in it. Peaches are the principal crop in Lincoln, and cher- ries a very important one; yet Evelyn says, ‘“‘ We may read that the peach was at first accounted so tender and delicate a tree, as that it was believed to thrive only in Persia; and even in the days of Galen, it grew no nearer than Egypt, of all the Roman Provinces, but was not seen in the city till about thirty years before Pliny’s time;”’ but now it is the principal crop culti- vated in Lincoln in New England, and it is also cul- tivated extensively in the West and on lands not half a dozen years vacated by the Indians. Also, “ It was 680 years after the foundation of Rome, ere Italy had tasted a cherry of their own, which being then brought thither out of Pontus, did after 120 years, travel ad ultimos Britannos,”’ and I may add Lincolnos. As Evelyn says, ‘‘ Methinks this should be a wonderful incitement.” Evelyn well says “a sobbing rain.” Trees live so long that Evelyn in Milton’s day tells anecdotes of old trees, and recent writers tell the same or similar anecdotes of the same trees still standing. They have stood to have the stories repeated and en- larged concerning them. He tells of ‘‘ Neustadt an der grossen Linden, or Neustadt by the great Lime-tree.”’ After quoting at length some of the inscriptions on the stone columns placed under this famous tree by noble persons, proving its age, he adds, “ Together with sev- eral more too tedious to recite; and even these might have [been] spared the reader, but that I found the instance so particular and solemn.”’ What means that custom of parents planting a tree or a forest at the birth of an heir, to be an inheritance or a dower, but a sort of regrafting the man on the vegetable? If a forest were planted at the birth of every man, nations would not be likely to become effete. It has ever been regarded as a crime, even among warriors, to cut down a nation’s woods. He, Evelyn, speaks of pines “ pearling out into gums.” Things raised in a garden he calls “ hortular jurniture.” He talks of modifying the air as well as the soil, about plants, ‘“‘and make the remedy as well regional as topical.” This suggests the propriety of Shakespeare’s expression the “region cloud,” region meaning then oftener upper regions relatively to the earth. He speaks of a “‘ dewie sperge or brush,” to be used. instead of a watering-pot, which “ gluts”’ the earth. He calls the kitchen-garden the “ olitory garden.” Ina dedication of his ‘‘ Kalendarium Hortense” to Cowley, he inserts two or three good sentences or quotations, viz.: “As the philosopher in Seneca desired only bread and herbs to dispute felicity with Jupiter,” so of Cow- ley’s simple retired life. “ Who would not, like you, cacher sa vie?” ‘ Delivered from the gilded imper- tinences of life.”

Friday. 3 p.m. — Down railroad. I hear the bobolink, though he does not sing so much as he did, and the lark and my seringo, as I go down the railroad causeway. The cricket sings. The red clover does not yet cover the fields. The whiteweed is more obvious. It commonly happens that a flower is considered more beautiful that is not followed by fruit. It must culminate in the flower. The cistus is a deli- cate flower in sandy woods now, with a slight, innocent spring fragrance, — one of those, like the pink, which you cannot bring home in good condition. June-grass is ripe. The red-eye sings now in the woods, perhaps more than any other bird. (In the shanty field.) The mountains are misty andblue. It has been quite windy for ten days, and cold a part of the time. The maple- leaved viburnum at Laurel Glen; the round-leaved cornel, and the mountain laurel, all budded.! The yel- low diervilla (D. trifida) ready to blossom there. The low blueberry leaves and flowers (Vaccinium vacillans of Gray) have a sweet scent. Froth on the pigeon-plain pines. A robin sings (3.30 P.M.) and wood thrush amid the pines; flies hum, and mosquitoes; and the earth feels under the feet as if it were going to be dry. The air in this pitch pine wood is filled with the hum of * [A pencilled interrogation-point in parenthesis follows here.] gnats, flies, and mosquitoes. High blackberries a day or two since. The bullfrogs in Walden (some of them at least) are a light-colored greenish brown. The huckleberry-bird is heard. I perceived that untrace- able odor by the shore of Walden near railroad, where there are grape-vines, and yet the vines do not smell, and I have perceived it for two or three weeks. The vines appear but just in flower. Bittersweet, woody nightshade (Solanum Dulcamara). It has a singular strong odor. Everywhere the leaves of goldenrods from the old roots; also, in some places, epilobium. The veery reminds me of the wood thrush in its note, as well as form and color. You must attend to the birds in the spring. As I climbed the Cliffs, when I jarred the foliage, I perceived an exquisite perfume which I could not trace to its source. Ah, those fugacious universal fragrances of the meadows and woods! Odors rightly mingled! The snapdragon, a slight blue flower, in dry places. Interesting. The oak balls lie about under the black oaks. The shrub oaks on the plain are so covered with foliage that, when I looked down on it from the Cliff, I am impressed as if I looked down on a forest of oaks. The oven-bird and the thrasher sing. The last has a sort of chuckle. The crickets began to sing in warm dry places. Another little veronica (?) on the Cliffs, just going out of bloom, V. arvensis (?), with crenately cut leaves and hairy. The first was the smooth. The pines are budded. I do not see the female flower yet. There is froth at the base of the new shoots even at the top of the highest pines. Yarrow, with a strong tansy scent. Lupines, their pods and seeds. First the profusion of color, spikes of flowers rising above and prevailing over the leaves; then the variety in different clumps, rose(?)-purple, blue, and white; then the handsome palmate leaf, made to hold dew. Gray says from lu- pus (wolf) because they “ were thought to devour the fertility of the soil.” This is scurrilous. Under Fair Haven. First grew the Viola pedata here, then lupines, mixed with the delicate snapdragon. This soil must abound with the blue principle. Is that the tephrosia, so forward? The fruit of the Cerasus pumila is puffed up like How’s plums. The Aralia nudicaulis already shows small green berries. The lupine has no pleasant fragrance. The cistus a slight enlargement of the cinquefoil, the June (?) cinquefoil, what the summer can do. It was probably the Thalictrum Cornuti, meadow- rue, which I saw at the Corner Spring, though it has no white stamens. The red (Indian (?) red) huckle- berry and the white and red blueberry blossoms (the Gaylussacia resinosa, black huckleberry, and Vaccinium vacilans) are very handsome and interesting now and would attract more attention if the prospect of their fruit did not make us overlook them. Moon-seed is a good name for a plant. I should know it. The Jones elm is fifteen and three twelfths feet cir- cumference at five or six feet from ground, or at the smallest place; much more at twelve or fourteen feet from ground, — larger, then, than C. Davis’s elm at the smallest place. The pyrolas now ready to blossom. Shin-leaf is a good name for one. Scleranthus annuus, common knawel, in the paths; inconspicuous and moss-like. Utricularia vulgaris, common bladderwort, a dirty- conditioned flower, like a sluttish woman with a gaudy yellow bonnet. Is the grape out? Solomon’s-seal, two- leaved, with a third. Sanicula Marylandica, black snake-root, without color at first, glows [? ] like a but- tercup, leaf and stem. Those spotted maple leaves, — what mean their bright colors? Yellow with a greenish centre and a crimson border on the green leaves, as if the Great Chemist had dropped some strong acid by chance from a phial designed for autumnal use ! Very handsome. Decay and disease are often beautiful, like the pearly tear of the shellfish and the hectic glow of consumption. The ivy or Rhus Tozxicodendron (radicans when climbing trees), budded to blossom, looks like an aralia.

Saturday. P. M.—To Lupine Hill via Depot Field Brook. For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?). The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutel- lata), lilac-tinted, rather pretty. The mouse-ear forget- me-not (J/yosotts lawa) has now extended its racemes ( ?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest. The blue flag (Iris versi- color). Its buds are a dark indigo-blue tip beyond the green calyx. It is rich but hardly delicate and sim- ple enough; a very handsome sword-shaped leaf. The blue-eyed grass is one of the most beautiful of flowers. It might have been famous from Proserpine down. It will bear to be praised by poets. The blue flag, not- withstanding its rich furniture, its fringed recurved par- asols over its anthers, and its variously streaked and colored petals, is loose and coarse in its habit. How completely all character is expressed by flowers! This is a little too showy and gaudy, like some women’s bonnets. Yet it belongs to the meadow and ornaments it much. The critchicrotches are going to seed. I love the sweet-flag as well as the muskrat (?). Its tender inmost leaf is very palatable below. Cnothera pumila, dwarf tree-primrose. Ever it will be some obscure small and modest flower that will most please us. Some of the ferns have branches wholly covered with fruit. How difficult, if not impossible, to do the things we have done! as fishing and camping out. They seem to me a little fabulous now. * Boys are bathing at Hubbard’s Bend, playing with a boat (I at the willows). The color of their bodies in the sun at a distance is pleasing, the not often seen flesh-color. I hear the sound of their sport borne over the water. As yet we have not man in nature. What a singular fact for an angel visitant to this earth to carry back in his note-book, that men were forbidden to expose their bodies under the severest penalties ! A pale pink, which the sun would soon tan. White men! There are no white men to contrast with the red and the black; they are of such colors as the weaver gives them. I wonder that the dog knows his master when he goes in to bathe and does not stay by his clothes. Small white-bellied (?) swallows in a row (a dozen) on the telegraph-wire over the water by the bridge. This perch is little enough departure from unobstructed air to suit them. Pluming themselves. If you could furnish a perch aerial enough, even birds of paradise would alight. Swallows have forked tails, and wings and tails are about the same length. They do not alight on trees, methinks, unless on dead and bare boughs, but stretch a wire over water and they perch on it. This is among the phenomena that cluster about the telegraph. Hedge-mustard. (Turned into the lane beyond Den- nis’s.) Some fields are almost wholly covered with sheep’s-sorrel, now turned red, — its valves (?). It helps thus agreeably to paint the earth, contrasting even at a distance with the greener fields, blue sky, and dark or downy clouds. It is red, marbled, watered, mottled, or waved with greenish, like waving grain, —three or four acres of it. To the farmer or grazier it is a trouble- some weed, but to the landscape-viewer an agreeable red tinge laid on by the painter. I feel well into sum- mer when I see this redness. It appears to be avoided by the cows. The petals of the sidesaddle-flower, fully expanded, hang down. How complex it is, what with flowers and leaves ! It is a wholesome and interesting plant to me, the leaf especially. Rye that has sown itself and come up scatteringly in bunches is now nearly ripe. They are beginning to cut rank grass on the village street. I should say the summer began with the leafiness, — umbrageous summer! The glory of Dennis’s lupines is departed, and the white now shows in abundance be- neath them. So I cannot walk longer in those fields of Enna in which Proserpine amused herself gathering flowers. The steam whistle at a distance sounds even like the hum of a bee in a flower. So man’s works fall into nature. The flies hum at mid-afternoon, as if peevish and weary of the length of the days. The river is shrunk to summer width; on the sides smooth whitish water, — or rather it is the light from the pads; — in the middle, dark blue or slate, rippled. The color of the earth at a distance where a wood has been cut off is a reddish brown. Nature has put no large object on the face of New England so glaringly white as a white house. The Ranunculus filijormis on the muddy shore of the river. The locusts’ blossoms in the graveyard fill the street with their sweet fragrance. It is day, and we have more of that same light that the moon sent us, but not reflected now, but shining directly. The sun is a fuller moon. Who knows how much lighter day there may be?

Sunday. 3 p. M.— To Conantum. A warm day. It has been cold, and we have had fires the past week sometimes. Clover begins to show red in the fields, and the wild cherry is not out of blos- som. The river has a summer midday look, smooth to a cobweb, with green shores, and shade from the trees on its banks. The Viburnum nudum. The oblong- leaved sundew, but not its flower. Do the bulbous arethusas last long? What a sweetness fills the air now in low grounds or meadows, reminding me of times when I went straw- berrying years ago! It is as if all meadows were filled with some sweet mint. The Dracena borealis (Bigelow) (Clintonia borealis (Gray)) amid the Solomon’s-seals in Hubbard’s Grove Swamp, a very neat and handsome hliaceous flower with three large, regular, spotless, green convallaria leaves, making a triangle from the root, and sometimes a fourth from the scape, linear, with four drooping, greenish-yellow, bell-shaped (?) flowers. Not in sun. In low shady woods. It is a handsome and perfect flower, though not high-colored. I prefer it to some more famous. But Gray should not name it from the Governor of New York.!| What is he to the lovers of flowers in Massachusetts? If named after a man, it must be a man of flowers. Rhode Island botanists may as well name the flowers after their governors as New York. Name your canals and railroads after Clinton, if you please, but his name is not associated with flowers. Mosquitoes now trouble the walker in low shady woods. No doubt woodchucks in their burrows hear the steps of walkers through the earth and come not forth. Yel- low wood sorrel (Ozalis stricta), which, according to Gray, closes its leaves and droops at nightfall. The woolly aphides on alders whiten one’s clothes now. What is that palmate(?)-leaved water-plant by the Corner causeway? The buck-bean grows in Conant’s meadow. Lambkill is out. I remember with what de- light I used to discover this flower in dewy mornings. All things in this world must be seen with the morning dew on them, must be seen with youthful, early-opened, hopeful eyes. Saw four cunning little woodchucks nib- bling the short grass, about one third grown, that live under Conant’s old house. Mistook one for a piece of rusty iron. ‘The Viburnum Lentago is about out of bloom; shows young berries. The Smilax herbacea, carrion-flower, a rank green vine with long-peduncled umbels, with small greenish or yellowish flowers just opening, and tendrils, at the Miles swamp. It smells exactly like a dead rat in the wall, and apparenily attracts flies (I find small gnats on it) like carrion. A very remarkable odor; a single minute flower in an umbel open will scent a whole room. Nature imitates all things in flowers. They are at once the most beauti- ful and the ugliest objects, the most fragrant and the most offensive to the nosirils, etc., etc. . ‘The compound- racemed convallaria, being fully out, is white. I put it down too early, perhaps by a week. The great leaves of the bass attract you now, six inches in diameter. The delicate maidenhair fern forms a cup or dish, very delicate and graceful. Beautiful, too, its glossy black stem and its wave-edged fruited leafets. I hear the feeble plaintive note of young bluebirds, just trying their wings or getting used to them. Young robins peep. TI think I know four kinds of cornel beside the dog- wood and bunchberry: one now in bloom, with rather small leaves with a smooth, silky feeling beneath, a green- ish-gray spotted stem, in older stocks all gray (Cornus alternifolia ? or sericea?); the broad-leaved cornel in Laurel Glen, yet green in the bud (C. circinata ?); the small-leaved cornel with a small cyme or corymb, as late to be[sic] as the last, in Potter’s hedge and on high hills (C. paniculata); and the red osier by the river (C. stolonifera), which I have not seen this year. Mosquitoes are first troublesome in the house with sultry nights. Orobanche uniflora, single-flowered broom-rape (Bige- low), [or] Aphyllon uniflorum, one-flowered cancer-root (Gray). C. found it June 12 at Clematis Brook. Also the common fumitory (?), methinks; it is a fine-leaved small plant. Captain Jonathan Carver commences his Travels with these words: “In June, 1766, I set out from Bos- ton, and proceeded by way of Albany and Niagara, to Michillimackinac; a Fort situated between the Lakes Huron and Michigan, and distant from Boston 1300 miles. This being the uttermost of our factories towards the northwest, I considered it as the most convenient place from whence I could begin my intended pro- gress, and enter at once into the Regions I designed to explore.” + So he gives us no information respecting the intermediate country, nor much, I fear, about the country beyond. Holbrook says the Emys picta is the first to be seen in the spring.