9 May 1853 – 15 May 1853

Since I returned from Haverhill, not only I find the ducks are gone, but I no longer hear the chill- lill of the blue snowbird or the sweet strains of the fox-colored sparrow and the tree sparrow. The robin’s strain is less remarkable. I have devoted most of my day to Mr. Alcott. He is broad and genial, but indefinite; some would say feeble; forever feeling about vainly in his speech and touching nothing. But this is a very negative account of him, for he thus suggests far more than the sharp and definite practical mind. The feelers of his thought diverge, — such is the breadth of their grasp, — not converge; and in his society almost alone I can express at my leisure, with more or less success, my vaguest but most cherished fancy or thought. There are never any obstacles in the way of our meeting. He has no creed. He is not pledged to any institution. The sanest man I ever knew; the fewest crotchets, after all, has he.’ It has occurred to me, while I am thinking with plea- sure of our day’s intercourse, “ Why should I not think aloud to you?” Having each some shingles of thought well dried, we walk and whittle them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pump- kin pine. We wade so gently and reverently, or we pull together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought are not scared from the stream, but come and go grandly, like yonder clouds that float peacefully through the western sky. When we walk it seems as if the heavens — whose mother-o’-pearl and rainbow tints come and go, form and dissolve — and the earth had met to- gether, and righteousness and peace had kissed each other. I have an ally against the arch-enemy. A blue- robed man dwells under the blue concave. The blue sky is a distant reflection of the azure serenity that looks out from under a human brow.'! We walk to- gether like the most innocent children, going after wild pinks with case-knives. Most with whom I en- deavor to talk soon fetch up against some institution or particular way of viewing things, theirs not being a universal view. They will continually bring their own roofs or—what is not much better—their own narrow skylights between us and the sky, when it is the unob- structed heavens I would view. Get out of the way with your old Jewish cobwebs. Wash your windows.” Saw on Mr. Emerson’s firs several parti-colored warblers, or finch creepers (Sylvia Americana), a small blue and yellow bird, somewhat like but smaller than the indigo-bird; quite tame, about the buds of the firs, now showing red; often head downward. Heard no note, He says it has been here a day or two. At sundown paddled up the river. The pump-like note of a stake-driver from the fenny place across the Lee meadow. The greenest and rankest grass as yet is that in the water along the sides of the river. The hylodes are peeping. I love to paddle now at evening, when the water is smooth and the air begins to be warm. The rich warble of blackbirds about retiring is loud and incessant, not to mention the notes of numerous other birds. The black willow has started, but not yet the button-bush. Again I think I heard the night-warbler. Now, at starlight, that same nighthawk or snipe squeak is heard, but no hovering. The first bat goes suddenly zigzag overhead through the dusky air; comes out of the dusk and disappears into it. That slumbrous, snoring croak, far less ringing and musical than the toad’s (which is occasionally heard), now comes up from the meadow’s edge. I save a floating plank, which ex- hales and imparts to my hands the rank scent of the muskrats which have squatted on it. I often see their fresh green excrement on rocks and wood. Already men are fishing for pouts. This has been almost the first warm day; none yet quite so warm. Walking to the Cliffs this after- noon, I noticed, on Fair Haven Hill, a season still- ness, as I looked over ‘the distant budding forest and heard the buzzing of a fly.

5 a. m. — Up railroad. The veery note after having heard the yorrick for some days, in the primitive-looking pineswamp. Heard also that peculiarly wild evergreen-forest note which I heard May 6th, from a small, lisping warbler, — er er ter re rer ree, —from high in the pines, as if'a chickadee (?); or was it the still smaller, slenderer white-bellied bird I saw? Female (?) yellowbird (?) this morning. All at once a strain which sounded like old times and recalled a hundred associations. Not at once did I remember that a year had elapsed since I heard it, and then the idea of the bobolink was formed in my mind, yet I afterward doubted if it was not the imitation of a catbird.t’ Saw a kingbird, looking like [a] large phoebe, on a willow by the river, and heard higher the clear whistle of the oriole. New days, then, have come, ushered in by the warbling vireo, yellowbird, Maryland yellow-throat, and small pewee, and now made perfect by the twittering of the king- bird and the whistle of the oriole amid the elms (for I hear the last in various parts of the town within a few hours), which are but just beginning to leaf out, thinking of his nest there, —if not already the bobo- link. The warbling vireo promised warmer days, but the oriole ushers in summer heats. There is an old pasture behind E. Wood’s incrusted with the clay-like thallus of the bseomyces, which is unexpectedly thin. The fruit now large. How far the woodpecker’s tapping is heard! And no wonder, for he taps very hard as well as fast, to make a hole, and the dead, dry wood is very resounding withal. Now he taps on one part of the tree, and it yields one note; then on that side, a few inches distant, and it yields another key; propped on its tail the while. The pear has blossomed. The butternut buds are more advanced than any hickories I have noticed. P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook and Smith’s Hill. The Nepeta Glechoma is out under R. Brown’s poles, a pretty deep-blue, half-concealed, violet-like flower. It is the earliest flower of this character. Warm days when you begin to think of thin coats. I proceed down the Turnpike. ‘The masses of the golden willow are seen in the distance on either side the way, twice as high as the road is wide, conspicuous against the distant, still half-russet hills and forests, for the green grass hardly yet prevails over the dead stubble, and the woods are but just beginning to gray. The female willow is a shade greener. At this season the traveller passes through a golden gate on cause- ways where these willows are planted, as if he were approaching the entrance to Fairyland; and there will surely be found the yellowbird, and already from a dis- tance is heard his note, a tche tche tche tcha tchar tcha, — ah, willow, willow. Could not he truly arrange for us the difficult family of the willows better than Borrer, or Barratt of Middletown? And as he passes between the portals, a sweet fragrance is wafted to him; he not only breathes but scents and tastes the air, and he hears the low humming or susurrus of a myriad in- sects which are feeding on its sweets. It is, apparently, these that attract the yellowbird. ‘The golden gates of the year, the May-gate. The traveller cannot pass out of Concord by the highways in any direction with- out passing between such portals, —graceful, curving, drooping, wand-like twigs, on which leaves and blos- soms appear together. It is remarkable that I saw this morning for the first time the bobolink, gold robin, and kingbird, — and have since heard the first two in various parts of the town and am satisfied that they have just come, — and, in the woods, the veery note. I hear the ringing sound of the toads .borne on the rippling wind as I keep down the causeway. He is the richest who has most use for nature as raw material of tropes and symbols with which to de- scribe his life. If these gates of golden willows affect me, they correspond to the beauty and promise of some experience on which I am entering. If I am over- flowing with hfe, am rich in experience for which I lack expression, then nature will be my language full of poetry, —all nature will fable, and every natural phenomenon be a myth. The man of science, who is not seeking for expression but for a fact to be ex- pressed merely, studies nature as a dead language. I pray for such inward experience as will make nature significant. That sedum (?) by Tuttle’s is now a foot high; has no great cactus-like buds, and is quite distinct from the house-leek in Jesse Hosmer’s field. What is it? A gooseberry which has been in blossom for some time, by the roadside on the left, between Wright’s and Hosmer’s old place. It is apparently Ribes hirtellum. Is that the swamp gooseberry of Gray, now just begin- ning to blossom at Saw Mill Brook? It has a divided style and stamens, etc., as yet not longer than the calyx, though my slip has no thorns nor prickles. ‘The leaves are deeply divided and glossy. But what is the stout, prickly gooseberry in the garden, with divided style? It seems the Cynosbati of Bigelow, yet not of Gray. A cerastium, apparently viscosum, on right hand just beyond the Hosmer house. What kind? A wild red cherry (Cerasus Pennsylvanica) Just out by the first-named gooseberry. I was surprised by the number of bees above this gooseberry’s blossoms, small and inconspicuous as they are. Indeed there is scarcely a flower which is not immediately found out by insects, and their coming must be coincident with flowers and leaves. Some of the most forward plantain-leaved antennaria is already pinkish at top. You hear the clear whistle and see the red or fiery orange of the oriole darting through Hosmer’s orchard. But its note is not melodious and rich. It is at most a clear tone, the healthiest of your city beaux and belles. When I heard the first bobolink strain this morn- ing I could not at first collect myself enough to tell what it was I heard,—a reminiscence of last May in all its prime occurring in the midst of the experience of this in its unripe state. Suddenly, the season be- ing sufficiently advanced, the atmosphere in the night condition, these flashing, scintillating notes are struck out from it where that dark mote disappears through it, as sparks by a flint, with a tinkling sound. This flashing, tinkling meteor bursts through the expect- ant meadow air, leaving a train of tinkling notes be- hind. Successive regiments of birds arrive and are dis- banded in our fields, like soldiers still wearing their regimentals. I doubted at first if it were not a strain brought on a few days in advance by an imitative catbird or thrush (?) from where he had been staying. Within a day or more, a lower and decidedly downy and small racemed amelanchier has opened, and I think that the first and slightly downy and greenish-leaved ones are associated with the decidedly smooth and red-leaved Botryapium. Is not this now the most con- spicuous native flower? The Vaccinium vacillans is out. The three colored violets, as I observe them this afternoon, are thus distinguished: the ovata, a dark lilac, especially in sun; the cucullata, oftenest slaty- blue, sometimes lilac, deeper within, more or less pale and striped; the pedata, large, exposed, clear pale-blue with a white spot. None like the sky, but pedata most like it; lilac ovata least like it. Yet the last is the richest-colored. The pedata often pale to whiteness. It begins now to be quite obvious along the side of warm and sandy woodland paths. Saw, quite near, a skunk, in a cloud of long, coarse black and white hair, within a rod and a half, sharply staring at me with head to the ground, with its black, shining, bead-like eyes. It was at the edge of its hole. Its head is so narrow, and snout long and pointed, that it can make those deep holes in the spring. By the way, what makes these innumerable little punc- tures just through the grass in woodland paths, as with a stick? Is this, too, by the skunk ? The chestnut leaves are now commonly as far un- folded as the larger maples and earlier oaks and more than the elm; yet perhaps it should come after the red and black oaks. The aspen leaves (P. tremuli- formis), at least a few days since, were decidedly the most forward and conspicuous of any tree, and are still, I think, being more than an inch in diameter, light-green, but open and trembling and not in dense masses. Only the rather rare paper birch and an occa- sional white birch in a favorable place (I see no black nor yellow ones this afternoon) can be compared with it, and such, indeed, make now, at last, a denser green; but in the case of the golden willow it is as much flowers as leaves that make the show. But the P. grandidentata which have flowered show no leaves yet; only very young ones, small downy leaves now. Of sizable wild trees which blossom, the most for- ward in respect to leafing, methinks, are the tremble, the willows, wild black cherry, the birches (the papy- racea especially), balm-of-Gilead, Ostrya. The spring growth of the larch is the most conspicuous of ever- greens [sic], though its buds have not pushed out so far as the white pines. As on the late willows, so on the oaks, catkins and leaves appearing together. Both leaf and flower buds of the oaks, especially shrub oaks and red and black, are reddish (the white and swamp white are not at present), and hence the reddish mistiness of the deciduous woods at present. At Saw Mill Brook, I see the flower-buds of the nodding trillium. I sit on a rock in Saw Mill Brook. The hornbeam (Carpinus) is just ready to bloom, its hop-like catkins, shorter than those of the Ostrya, do not shed pollen just yet.1. I was in search of this, and, not observing it at first, and having forgotten it, I sat down on a rock, with the thought that if I sat there quietly a little while I might see some flower or other object about me; unexpectedly, as I cast my eyes upward, over my head stretched a spreading branch of the carpinus full of small catkins with anthers now reddish, spread like a canopy just over my head. As it is best to sit in’a grove and let the birds come to you, so, as it were, even the flowers will come to you. I sit here surrounded by hellebores eighteen inches high or more, with handsome, regular, plaited leaves, regularly arranged around the erect stems, and a multitude of ferns are unrolling themselves, altogether making the impression of a tropical vegetation. I hear, and have for a week, in the woods, the note of one or more small birds somewhat like a yellow- bird’s. What is it? Is it the redstart? I now see one of these. ‘The first I have distinguished. And now I feel pretty certain that my black and yellow warbler of May Ist was this. As [I sit, it inquisitively hops nearer and nearer. It is one of the election-birds of rare colors which I can remember, mingled dark and reddish. This reminds me that I supposed much more variety and fertility in nature before I had learned the numbers and the names of each order. I find that I ‘had expected such fertility in our Concord woods alone as not even the completest museum of stuffed birds of all the forms and colors from all parts of the world comes up to. The neat and active creeper hops about the trunks, its note like a squeaking twig. I leave the woods and begin to ascend Smith’s Hill along the course of the rill. The anemonies with reddish-pink buds stand thick amid the loose grass under protecting brush or fagots, about rocks and young trees. From the hill, I look westward over the landscape. The deciduous woods are in their hoary youth, every expanding bud swaddled with downy webs. From this more eastern hill, with the whole breadth of the river valley on the west, the mountains appear higher still, the width of the blue border is greater, — not mere peaks, or a short and shallow sierra, but a high blue table-land with broad foundations, a deep and solid base or tablet, in proportion to the peaks that rest on it. As you ascend, the near and low hills sink and flatten into the earth; no sky is seen behind them; the distant mountains rise. The truly great are dis- tinguished. Vergers, crests of the waves of earth, which in the highest break at the summit into gra- nitic rocks over which the air beats. A part of their hitherto concealed base is seen blue. You see, not the domes only, but the body, the facade, of these terrene temples. You see that the foundation an- swers to the superstructure. Moral structures. (‘The sweet-fern leaves among odors now.) ‘The successive lines of haze which divide the western landscape, deeper and more misty over each intervening valley,- are not yet very dense; yet there is a light atmospheric line along the base of the mountains for their whole length, formed by this denser and grosser atmosphere through which we look next the earth, which almost melts them into the atmosphere, like the contact of molten metal with that which is unfused; but their pure, sublimed tops and main body rise, palpable sky- land above it, like the waving signal of the depart- ing who have already left these shores. It will be worth the while to observe carefully the direction and altitude of the mountains from the Cliffs. The value of the mountains in the horizon, — would not that be a good theme for a lecture? The text for a discourse on real values, and permanent; a sermon on the mount. They are stepping-stones to heaven, —as the rider has a horse-block at his gate, — by which to mount when we would commence our pil- grimage to heaven; by which we gradually take our departure from earth, from the time when our youth- ful eyes first rested on them, — from this bare actual earth, which has so little of the hue of heaven. They make it easier to die and easier to live. They let us off. (With Alcott almost alone is it possible to put all institutions behind us. Every other man owns some stock in this or that one, and will not forget it.) Whether any picture by a human master hung on our western wall could supply their place. Whether to shovel them away and level them would really smooth the way to the true west. Whether the skies would not weep over their scars. They are valuable to mankind as is the iris of the eye to a man. They are the path of the translated. The undisputed terri- tory between earth and heaven. In our travels rising higher and higher, we at length got to where the earth was blue. Suggesting that this earth, unless our con- duct curse it, is as celestial as that sky. They are the pastures to which we drive our thoughts on these 20ths of May. (George Baker told me the other day that he had driven cows to Winchendon, forty miles, in one day.) Men often spend a great deal on a border to their papered walls, of the costliest figure and colors, ultramarine (or what other?). This color bears a price like precious stones. We may measure our wealth, then, by the number of square rods of superficial blue earth in our earth border. Such proportion as it bears to the area of the visible earth, in such proportion are we heavenly-minded. Yet I doubt if I can find a man in this country who would not think it better if they were converted into solid gold, which could in no case be a blessing to all, but only a curse to a few, — and so they would be stepping-stones to hell. Return by Mill Brook Ditch Path. There is now a multiplicity of sounds, in which the few faint spring ones are drowned. The birds are in full blast, sing- ing, warbling, chirping, humming. Yet we do not re- celve more ideas through our ears than before. The storms and ducks of spring have swept by and left us to the repose of summer, the farmers to the ignoble pursuits of planting and hoeing corn and potatoes. The summer is not bracing, as when you hear the note of the jay in the cool air of October from the rustling chestnut woods. Hear the night-warbler now dis- tinctly. It does not soon repeat its note, and disappears with the sound. I mistook a distant farmer’s horn calling the men to early tea for the low hum of a bee in the grass. Heard a tree-toad. The pond, Walden, has risen considerably since the melting.

5 a. m.—In the morning and evening, when waters are still and smooth, and dimpled by innate currents only, not disturbed by foreign winds and currents of the air, and reflect more light than at noonday. [Sic.] P. M. — To Corner Spring va Hubbard’s Bathing- Place. The buck-ean is budded, but hard to find now. The Viola lanceolata is now abundant thereabouts, me- thinks larger and quite as fragrant (which is not say- ing much) as the blanda. How long has it been open? It is a warm afternoon, and great numbers of painted and spotted tortoises are lying in the sun in the meadow. I notice that the thin scales are peeling off of one of the painted and curled up more than half an inch at the edges, and others look as if they had just lost them, the dividing-line being of a dull cream- color. Has this lying in the sun anything to do with it? I nearly stepped upon a song sparrow and a striped snake at the same time. The bird fluttered away almost as if detained. I thought it was a case of charming, without doubt, and should think so still if I had not found her nest with five eggs there, which will account for her being so near the snake that was about to de- vour her. ‘The amelanchier has a sickish fragrance. It must be the myrtle-bird which is now so common in Hubbard’s Meadow Woods or Swamp, with a note somewhat like a yellowbird’s, striped olive-yellow and black on back or shoulders, light or white beneath, black dim; restless bird; sharp head. ‘The catbird has a squeaking and split note with some clear whistles. The late pipes (limosum ?), now nearly a foot high, are very handsome, like Oriental work, their encircled columns of some precious wood or gem, or like small bamboos, from Oriental jungles. Very much like art. The gold-thread, apparently for a day or two, though few flowers compared with buds; not at once referred to its leaf, so distant on its thread-like peduncle. The water-saxifrage also for a day or two in some places, on its tall, straight stem, rising from its whorl of leaves. Sorrel now fairly out in some places. I will put it under May 8th. A high blueberry by Potter’s heater piece. A yellow lily. The red-eye at the spring; quite a woodland note. The different moods or degrees of wildness and poetry of which the song of birds is the keynote. The wood thrush Mr. Barnum never hired nor can, though he could bribe Jenny Lind and put her into his cage. How many little birds of the warbler family are busy now about the opening buds, while I sit by the spring! They are almost as much a part of the tree as its blos- soms and leaves. They come and give it voice. Its twigs feel with pleasure their little feet clasping them. I hear the distant drumming of a partridge. Its beat, however distant and low, falls still with a re- markably forcible, almost painful, impulse on the ear, like veritable little drumsticks on our tympanum, as if it were a throbbing or fluttering in our veins or brows or the chambers of the ear, and belonging to ourselves, — as if it were produced by some little in- sect which had made its way up into the passages of the ear, so penetrating is it. It is as palpable to the ear as the sharpest note of a fife. Of course, that bird can drum with its wings on a log which can go off with such a powerful whir, beating the air. I have seen a thoroughly frightened hen and cockerel fly almost as powerfully, but neither can sustain it long. Beginning slowly and deliberately, the partridge’s beat sounds faster and faster from far away under the boughs and through the aisles of the wood until it becomes a regu- lar roll, but is speedily concluded. How many things shall we not see and be and do, when we walk there where the partridge drums! As I stand by the river in the truly warm sun, I hear the low trump of a bullfrog, but half sounded, — doubting if it be really July, — some bassoon sounds, as it were the tuning that precedes the summer’s or- chestra; and all is silent again. How the air is satu- rated with sweetness on causeways these willowy days! The willow alone of trees as yet makes light, often rounded masses of verdure in large trees, stage above stage. But oftenest they are cut down at the height of four or five feet and spread out thence. There appear to be most clouds in the horizon on [one] of these days of drifting downy clouds, because, when we look that way, more fall within our field of view, but when we look upward, overhead we see the true proportion of clear blue. The mountains are something solid which is blue, a terra firma in the heavens; but in the heavens there is nothing but the air. Blue is the color of the day, and the sky is blue by night as well as by day, because it knows no night.

5.30 a. M. — To Nawshawtuct by river. The first considerable fog I have noticed, at first as high as the trees, curling gray over the water now be- neath me, as I paddle my boat, and through it I see the welling dimples of the still stream. You are pretty sure now to hear the stake-driver farther or nearer, morning or evening. ‘Thought I heard a tanager. What are those dark-brown striped sparrow-like birds, rather tame, on hickories, size of myrtle-bird, mottled with black on breast and more or less distinct yellowish on rump and wing shoulder, at least on male; somewhat brown-creeper-looking, without long bill? The fog has now risen up as high as the houses at 6.15 and mingled with the smokes of the town. The first [sic] are puffed up as if they were cold, to nearly twice their size, as they sit on willows. The yellowbird has another note, ichut tchut tchar te tchit e war. P. M.— To Black Birch Woods and Yellow Birch Swamp. Veronica serpyllifolia at Flint’s and along the road- sides, apparently for some time, for not only are there some frost-bitten flowers, but pods alone as large as flowers, even as if they belonged to last year. Yet is it any earlier than May? A pretty but minute bluish flower. Some grass is seen to wave in the distance on the side of N. Barrett’s warm hill, showing the lighter under sides. ‘That is a soft, soothing, June-like im- pression when the most forward grass is seen to wave and the sorrel looks reddish. The year has the down of youth on its cheek. This, too, is the era of the bobo- link, now, when apple trees are ready to burst into bloom. Now it is too late to retreat from the summer adventure. You have passed the Rubicon, and will spend your summer here. Lately, for a few days, the note of the pine warbler rang through the woods, but now it is lost in the notes of other birds. Then each song was solo. Its vetter vetter vetter vetter rang through silent woods. Now I rarely hear it. A yellow butterfly. The river meadows from Barrett’s wall are very green where the water has gone down. A wild pear in blossom on Ponkawtasset, detected by its uprightness and no large limbs; but the blossoms, being white, are not so handsome as the apple, but are earlier. The V. cucullata are large and conspicuous on Bar- rett’s side-hill. ‘The ovata blue the ground in the Boulder Field. These and the pedata are all more or less lilac-colored, and it produces a pleasing bewilder- ment to pass from clump to clump, and one species to another, and say which is the most lilac. Putting one cluster beside another more lilac, the first no longer seems lilac at all. Has not violet then always some lilac in it? The birches (white) are now rapidly and conspicu- ously greening. ‘They make the first conspicuous mass of green amid the evergreens; not grayish or hoary like the oaks; a closer-woven light-green vest. The black birch is now a beautiful sight, its long, slender, bushy branches waving in the wind (the leaf-buds but just beginning to unfold), with countless little tassel- like bunches of five or six golden catkins, spotted with brown and three inches long, one bunch at the end of each drooping twig, hanging straight down, or dan- gling like heads of rye, or blown off at various angles with the horizon. All these, seen against the sky on the otherwise bare trees, make an exceedingly graceful out- line, the catkin is so large and conspicuous. (On the white birch the catkins are more slender, and are con- cealed by the more forward leaves.) The reddish long female flowers are detected in the axils lower down. I notice that the staminate ones are apparently torn by birds, pecking at insects. Not a bunch is perfect. The yellow birch is considerably the most forward, — its flowers, not, perhaps, its leaves, which last are only ex- panded on young trees, though here is one large one leaved out. ‘The yellow birch first, then the black or the paper birch, then the white. The staminate flowers of the yellow birch are already imbrowned and dry, and the female flowers large and hop-like, one inch long. The twigs of this tree are, methinks, still longer and slen- derer than those of the black birch, a yard long by one sixth of an inch diameter at base without a branch at the ends of the limbs, or a yard and a half by a third of an inch with a little fork near the end, or often three inches in diameter by more than twenty feet; and so is described the whole tree, of long slender branches springing from the height of five or six feet upward in the form of a great brush. I do not know another place in town where there are black birches enough to give you the effect of a forest of these trees, but in a swamp here. They are so slender and brushy that they yield to the wind, and their tops, with gracefully drooping twigs bent down by dangling tassel-like cat- kins, are all inclined one way, sweeping the air, making a peculiarly light and graceful sight. I am surprised to find the pedicularis, or lousewort, —a yellowish one, — out, on a warm bank near the meadow-edge. The hellebore is the most forward herb, two feet high. The tupelo shows signs of life, butis later than the black willow; not so late, nearly, as the button-bush. The oaks are in the gray. Some in warm localities already have expanded small leaves, both black, red, and shrub oak. The large light-yellowish scales of the hickory buds, also, are turned back, revealing blos- som-buds and little clusters of tender leaves ready to unfold, and the now [sic] web of verdure is spreading thick and palpable over the forest. Shade is being born; the summer is pitching its tent; concealment will soon be afforded to the birds in which to build their nests. The robin nowadays betrays its great bare nest and blue eggs by its anxious peeping at your approach. Is that the so-called Canada plum, now in bloom twenty rods this side the lime-kiln in the road? And is it ever indigenous here? The farmers on all sides are mending their fences and turning out their cows to pasture. You see where the rails have been newly sharpened, and the leafing birches have been cut and laid over gaps in the walls, as if old fences were putting forth leaves. The beautiful round red (?) buds of the grape now, like beads, at long intervals along the bare vine. William Wheeler has raised a new staring house be- yond the Corner Bridge, and so done irreparable injury to a large section of country for walkers. It obliges us to take still more steps after weary ones, to reach the secluded fields and woods. Channing proposes that we petition him to put his house out of sight; that we send it in to him in the form of a round-robin with his name on one side and mine on the other, — so to abate a nuisance.

Methinks I hear and see the tanager now. The middle of May is the time for many transient sylvias. P. M. — To Conantum. See a goldfinch glance by on the back road and hear its cool watery twitter. A little larger than a yellow- bird, more golden, or paler (?) yellow, with black [sic] and on wings. A robin’s nest, with young, on the causeway. At Corner Spring, stood listening to a cat- bird, sounding a good way off. Was surprised to de- tect the singer within a rod and a half on a low twig, the ventriloquist. Should not have believed it was he, if I had not seen the movements of his throat, cor- responding to each note, — looking at this near singer whose notes sounded so far away. There is a small bird or two I have not taken pains to identify; one’s note, perhaps that of May 6th, ee, ce, te ter twee, like a fine squeaking amid the pines. ’s peach trees in bloom, the richest, highest color of any tree’s bloom, like wine compared to beer; the trees, bare of leaves, one mass of pink, some dark, some light, almost flame-like seen against green hillsides or the red ground where the woods have just been cut. How much more beautiful than the life of the peach- raiser! No such rich pink bloom falling through cracks in the dark shutters irradiates his soul. If only such a peach-bloom hue suffused the dark chambers of his soul! Large masses of bloom with the delicate tint which commonly belongs to minute plants only. The bass is suddenly as forward in leaf as the white birch; leaves one inch across, how varnished, thin, and transparent! It is apparently the Myosotis stricta, now just in flower at Columbine Cliff, scorpion grass, minute and white, three inches high, somewhat like a ceras- tium. An Arum triphyllum, but no signs of pollen yet. Probably was set down too early last year, 2. e. before pollen. A thorn with expanded leaves, not deeply lobed, and large red scales and a beautifully shining or varnished ash-colored twig. The male sassafras just out, probably yesterday, but the twig end is the sweet- est. A big woodpecker enlarging the entrance to its nest in an apple tree. I thought it the echo of carpen- ters at work on Wheeler’s house three quarters of a mile off. It was within four or five rods. How well the woodpecker must know by the ring if the tree is hol- low, by this time! Most of the anthers of the black ash are black and withered or blasted, but the rest show no pollen yet. Still methinks it [is] now in bloom; leaf-buds not started. The white ash (male), with its male buds conspicuous but not ready yet, its leaf-buds partly expanded. So, if its flowers are a little later, which is not certain, its leaves are earlier than the last. The sweet viburnum, apparently equally advanced with the nudum, but not so dark-colored, in advance of cornels. Hazelnuts next to birches. Heard a stake-driver in Hubbard’s meadow from Corner road. Thus far off, I hear only, or chiefly, the last dry, hard click or stroke part of the note, sound- ing like the echo from some near wood of a distant stake-driving. Here only this portion of the note, but close by it is more like pumping, when the dry stroke is accompanied by the incessant sound of the pump.

Saturday. 9 a.m.— To Wayland by boat. E. Wood has added a pair of ugly wings to his house, bare of trees and painted white, particularly conspicuous from the river. You might speak of the alar extent of this house, monopolizing so much of our horizon; but alas! it is not formed for flight, after all. The water is considerably rough to-day, and higher than usual at this season. The black willows have started, but make no show of green. The button-bushes are yet apparently dead. The green buds of yellow lilies are bobbing up and down, already showing more or less yellow; this the most forward sign in the water. The great scalloped platters of their leaves have begun to show themselves on the surface, and the red round leaves of the white lily, now red above as well as below. A myriad of polygonums, pota- mogetons, and pontederias are pushing up from the bottom, but have not yet reached the surface. Dande- lions and houstonias, etc., spot the meadows with yellow and white. The still dead-looking willows and button-bushes are alive with red-wings,’ now perched on a yielding twig, now pursuing a female swiftly over the meadow, now darting across the stream. No two have epau- lets equally brilliant. Some are small and almost white, and others a brilliant vermilion. ‘They are handsomer than the golden robin, methinks. The yellowbird, kingbird, and pewee, beside many swal- lows, are also seen. But the rich colors and the rich and varied notes of the blackbirds surpass them all. Passing Conantum under sail at 10 o'clock, the cows in this pasture are already chewing the cud in the thin shade of the apple trees, a picture of peace, already enjoying the luxury of their green pastures. I was not prepared to find the season so far advanced. ‘The breeze which comes over the water, sensibly cooled or freshened by it, is already grateful. Suddenly there start up from the riverside at the entrance of Fair Haven Pond, scared by our sail, two great blue herons, — slate- color rather, — slowly flapping and undulating, their projecting breast-bones very visible, — or is it possibly their necks bent back ? — their legs stuck out straight behind. Getting higher by their flight, they straight come back to reconnoitre us. Land at Lee’s Cliff, where the herons have pre- ceded us and are perched on the oaks, conspicuous from afar, and again we have a fair view of their flight. We find here, unexpectedly, the warmth of June. The hot, dry scent, or say warm and balmy, from ground amid the pitch pines carpeted with red nee- dles, where a wiry green grass is springing up, reminds us of June and of wild pinks. Under the south side of the Cliff, vegetation seems a fortnight earlier than elsewhere. Not only the beautiful little veronicas (serpyllifolia) are abundantly out, and cowslips past their prime, columbines past prime, and saxifrage gone to seed, some of it, and dandelions, and the sod sparkling with the pure, brilliant, spotless yellow of cinquefoil, also violets and strawberries, but the glossy or varnished yellow of buttercups (bulbosus, also abun- dant, some days out) spots the hillside. The south side of these rocks is like a hothouse where the gardener has removed his glass. ‘The air, scented with sweet- briar, may almost make you faint in imagination. The nearer the base of the rock, the more forward each plant. ‘The trees are equally forward, red and black; leaves an inch and a half long and shoots of three inches. The prospect from these rocks is early-June-like. You notice the tender light green of the birches, both white and paper, and the brown-red tops of the maples where their keys are. Close under the lee of the but- ton-bushes which skirt the pond, as I look south, there is a narrow smooth strip of water, silvery and con- trasting with the darker rippled body of the pond. Its edge, or the separation between this, which I will call the polished silvery border of the pond, and the dark and ruffled body, is not a straight line or film, 1853} A STRIP OF SMOOTH WATER 155 but an ever-varying, irregularly and finely serrated or fringed border, ever changing as the breeze falls over the bushes at an angle more or less steep, so that this moment it is a rod wide, the next not half so much. Every feature is thus fluent in the landscape. Again we embark, now having furled : our sail and taken to our oars. The air : is clear and fine-grained, and as we glide by the hills I can look into the very roots of the grass amid the springing pines in their deepest valleys. ‘The wind rises, but still it is not a cold wind. There is nothing but slate-colored water and a few red pads appearing at Lily Bay. After leaving Rice’s harbor the wind is with us again. What a fine tender yellow green from the meadow-grass just pushed up, where the sun strikes it at the right angle! How it contrasts with the dark bluish-green of that rye, already beginning to wave, which covers that little rounded hill by Pantry Brook! Grain waves earlier than grass. How flat the top of the muskrat’s head as he swims, and his back, even with it, and then when he dives he ludicrously shows hevtal, . yo They look gray and brown, Fidel eS ciel et, PWorreeAbiongSt-ine- not Spring the chrysosplenium beds are very large, rich and deep, almost out of bloom. I find none of the early blackberry in bloom. It is mostly destroyed. Already we pluck and eat the sweet flag and detect small critch- icrotches. The handsome comandra leaves also are prominent. In the woods which skirt the river near Deacon Farrar’s swamp, the Populus grandidentata, just expanding its downy leaves, makes silvery patches in the sun. It is abundant and truly silvery. The paper birch woods at Fair Haven present this aspect: there is the somewhat dense light green of aspens (tremuliformis) and paper birches in the fore- ground next the water, both of one tint, and occa- sionally a red maple with brownish-red top, with— equally advanced, aye, more fully expanded, intermixed or a little higher up—very tall and slender amelan- chiers (Botryapium?), some twenty-five feet high, on which no signs of fruit, though I have seen them on some; some silvery grandidentata, and red and black oaks (some yellowish, some reddish, green), and still reddish-white oaks, just starting; and green pines for contrast, showing the silvery under sides of their leaves or the edges of their dark stages (contrast- ing with their shaded under sides). These are the colors of the forest-top, — the rug, looking down on it. Tufts of coarse grass‘ are in full bloom along the riverside, — little islets big enough to support a fisher- man. Again we scare up the herons, who, methinks, will build hereabouts. They were standing by the water- side. And again they alight farther below, and we see their light-colored heads erect, and their bodies at various angles as they stoop to drink. And again they flap away with their great slate-blue wings, necks curled up (?) and legs straight out behind, and, having attained a great elevation, they circle back over our heads, now seemingly black as crows against the sky, — crows with long wings, they might be taken for, — but higher and higher they mount by stages in the sky, till heads and tails are lost and they are mere black wavelets amid the blue, one always following close behind the other. They are evidently mated. It would be worth the while if we could see them oftener in our sky. Some apple trees are fairly out. What is that small slate-colored hawk with black tips to wings?

Sunday. P. M. — To Annursnack. Silvery cinquefoil now open. Its petals, perchance, show the green between them, but the beautiful under sides of the leaves more than make up for it. What was that bird beyond the Lee place, with a chickadee- like note, black head and throat, and light color round the neck and beneath; methinks longer and slenderer than the chickadee? The golden willow catkins begin to fall; their prime is past. And buttercups and silvery cinquefoil, and the first apple blossoms, and waving grass beginning to be tinged with sorrel, introduce us to a different season. ‘The huckleberry, resznosa, its red flowers are open, in more favorable places sev- eral days earlier, probably; and the earliest shrub and red and black oaks in warm exposures may be set down to to-day. A red butterfly goes by. Methinks I have seen them before. The painted-cup is now abundantly and fully out. Six or eight inches high above its spidery leaves, almost like a red flame, it stands on edge of the hill just rising from the meadow, — on the instep of the hill. It tells of July with its fiery color. It promises a heat we have not experienced yet. This is a field which lies nearer to summer. Yel- low is the color of spring; red, of midsummer. ‘Through pale golden and green we arrive at the yellow of the buttercup; through scarlet, to the fiery July red, the red lily. The first cricket’s chirrup which I have chanced to hear now falls on my ear and makes me forget all else; all else is a thin and movable crust down to that depth where he resides eternally. He already foretells autumn. Deep under the dry border of some rock in this hill- side he sits, and makes the finest singing of birds out- ward and insignificant, his own song is so much deeper and more significant. His voice has set me thinking, philosophizing, moralizing at once. It is not so wildly melodious, but it is wiser and more mature than that of the wood thrush. With this elixir I see clear through the summer now to autumn, and any summer work seems frivolous. I am disposed to ask this humblebee that hurries humming past so busily if he knows what he is about. At one leap I go from the just opened buttercup to the life-everlasting. This singer has an- tedated autumn. His strain is superior (inferior ?) ‘ to seasons. It annihilates time and space; the summer is for time-servers. The Erigeron bellidifolius has now spread its rays out flat since last Sabbath. I may set it down to May 10th, methinks. It is the first of what I may call the daisy family, sometimes almost white. What are those large conical-shaped fungi of which I see a dozen round an apple tree? I thought them pieces of a yellowish wasp-nest, 77 they are so honeycombed. I looked again on the forest from this hill, which view may contrast with that of last Sunday. The mist produced by the leafing of the deciduous trees has greatly thickened now and lost much of its reddish- ness in the lighter green of expanding leaves, has be- come a brownish or yellowish green, except where it has attained distinctness in the light-green foliage of the birch, the earliest distinct foliage visible in extensive great masses at a great distance, the aspen not being common. ‘The pines and other evergreens are now fast being merged in a sea of foliage. The weather has grown rapidly warm. Methinks I wore a greatcoat here last Sunday; now an under- coat is too much. I even think of bathing in the river. I love to sit in the wind on this hill and be blown on. We bathe thus first in air; then, when the air has warmed it, in water. Here are ten cows feeding on the hill beside me. — Why do they move about so fast as they feed? They have advanced thirty rods in ten minutes, and some- times the [last] one runs to keep up. Is it to give the grass thus a chance to grow more equally and always get afresh bite? The tall buttercup on the west edge of Painted-Cup Meadow for a day or two at least, and the fringed polygala as long. This side stone bridge, Bar- barea vulgaris, or common winter cress, yellow rocket, also as long. A thorn will blossom in a day or two, without varnished ashy twigs and with deep-cut lobes. The following trees and shrubs methinks Jeaf out in nearly the following order. The more questionable, or which I have not seen, are marked — (?). Gooseberry Thorns Swamp white oak Currant Waxwork Chestnut oak Trembles Maples (??) Hardhack (?) Some willows Shrub oak Salix nigra Young white, red, and Chinquapin oak Grape sugar maples Red ‘ White ash Balm-of-Gilead Black te Black “ Elder Scarlet “-(?) Sumach Meadow-sweet Hazel Beech (?) Diervilla Larch Swamp-pink Black cherry White pine Witch-hazel Ostrya Elm Nemopanthes (*) Alder Hornbeam (??) Prinos Paper birch Cornels (some later ?) Clethra Black ‘“ Chestnut Tupelo Yellow “ Great-leaved poplar Mountain laurel (??) White “ Butternut Panicled andromeda Pyrus arbutifolia Hickories Dwarf Apple Bass Rhodora Amelanchier Sassafras Button-bush Choke cherry Locust (?) Hemlock (?) ? (?)! Dwarf “ Celtis(? ) White spruce ! Wild red “ Pitch pine Black spruce ! Viburnum nudum Juniperus repens ‘© Tentago Red cedar (? The above list made Maple.leaved vibur- White “ May 20th. num (?) Arbor-vitee Barberry White oak ? Seen a day or two after the button-bush started. The hemlock appeared later, but it may [be] because it is of slower growth.