12 June 1854 – 18 June 1854

P. M.—To Walden. Clover now reddens the fields. Grass in its prime. Comfrey in front of /Stow’s well out some days appar- ently. With the roses now fairly begun I associate summer heats.- Galium trifidum var. latifolium (?), smooth-angled, some with linear leaves. Is it éne- tortum ? Hear the evergreen-forest note, and see the bird on the top of a white pine, somewhat creeper- like, along the boughs, and golden head except a black streak from eyes, black throat, slate-colored back, forked tail, white beneath, — er te, ter ter te. Another bird with yellow throat near by may have been the other sex. Is it the golden-winged warbler? * Pyrola chlorantha. Rosa lucida, probably yester- day, the 11th, judging from what I saw Saturday, 2. e. the 10th. A bud in pitcher the 13th. The R. nitida is the most common now. The round-leaved cornel is well out at Heywood Peak, probably two or three days. Perhaps this and the maple-leaved viburnum are as early as the V. nudum and V. dentatum, only more rare. Scared a kingfisher on a bough over Walden. As he flew off, he hovered two or three times thirty or forty feet above the pond, and at last dove and ap- parently caught a fish, with which he flew off low over the water to a tree. Mountain laurel at the pond. A narrow-leaved potamogeton well out at the bathing- place, — leaves two to three inches long. Four-leaved loosestrife. Silene antirrhina, how long? Do I not see two birds with the seringo note,— the Savannah (?) sparrow, larger with not so bright a yellow over eye, none on wing, and white breast, and beneath former streaked with dark and perhaps a dark spot, and the smaller yellow-winged, with spot on wing also and ochreous breast and throat? The first sings che che rar, che ra- a-a-a-a-ar. Sundown.— To Clamshell Hill. Nightshade a day or two. ‘The cracks made by cold in pastures in the winter are still quite distinct. Phleum or herd’s-grass (?). I sit on the Clamshell Hill at sunset, while several kinds of swallows are playing low over it chasing each other, and occasionally alighting on the bare hillside. The level rays of the sun shine into and light up the trunk and limbs of a swamp white oak on Hubbard’s meadow.

Tuesday. I hear a quail this morning. 2 p. M. — By boat to Bittern Cliff and so to Lee’s Chiff. I hear the muttering of thunder and see a dark cloud in the west-southwest horizon; am uncertain how far up-stream I shall get. The Nuphar lutea var. Kal- miana, apparently two or three days in some places; generally not yet. Its leaf appears to be the prevail- ing pad; it is outside in the deepest water, and is smaller and narrower in proportion to its breadth than the other, with a small! leaf-stem, the lobes over- lapping. Now, in shallow places near the bends, the large and conspicuous spikes of the broad-leaved potamogeton rise thickly above the water. Though the plants are slanted downward by the stream, the spikes at their ends rise perpendicularly two or three inches. My boat passes over these beds of potamo- getons, pressing their spikes under water. I see the yellow water ranunculus in dense fields now, in some places on the side of the stream, two or three inches above water, and many gone to seed. See a white lily bud.

P. M. — To lime-kiln with Mr. Bacon of Natick. Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Bigelow, some days, at foot of Loring’s land. Common mallows well out; how long? What is that sisymbrium or mustard-like plant at foot of Loring’s? Erigeron strigosus (??) out earliest, say yesterday. Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown’s barn by road, with elongated spikes and only pistillate flowers. Hedge-mustard, how long? Pepper- grass, how long? Sometime. Scirpus lacustris, maybe some days. I see a black caterpillar on the black wil- lows nowadays with red spots. Mr. Bacon thinks that cherry-birds are abundant where cankerworms are. Says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his obser- vation alone); that there are one or two arbor-vites native in Natick. He has found the Lygodium palmatum there. There is one pure-blooded Indian woman there. Pearl [?], I think he called her. He thought those the exuvize of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water.’ Makes his own microscopes and uses garnets. He called ? Russell makes them many other creatures also. the huckleberry-apple a parasitic plant, — pterospora, — which [has] grown on and changed the nature of the huckleberry. Observed a diseased Andromeda panicu- lata twig prematurely in blossom. Caught a locust,— properly harvest -fly (cicada), — drumming on a birch, which Bacon and Hill (of Waltham) think like the septendecum, except that ours has not red eyes but black ones. Harris’s other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he (Harris) heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off; is pretty sure.

5.30 a. M. — To Island and Hill. A young painted tortoise on the surface of the water, as big as a quarter of a dollar, with a reddish or orange sternum. I suppose that my skater insect is the hydrometer. Found a nest of tortoise eggs, apparently buried last night, which I brought home, ten in all, — one lying wholly on the surface, — and buried in the garden. The soil above a dark virgin mould about a stump was unexpectedly hard.’ P. M. — Up Assabet to Garlic Wall. That tall grass opposite the Merrick Swimming- Place is getting up pretty well, and blossoming with a broad and regular spike, for some time. This is the third afternoon that we have had a rumbling thunder- cloud arise in the east, — not to mention the west, — but all signs have failed hitherto, and I resolve to pro- ceed on my voyage, knowing that I have a tight [roof] in my boat turned up. The froth on the alders, an- dromeda, etc.,— not to speak of the aphides, — dirties and apparently spots my clothes, so that it is a serious objection to walking amid these bushes these days. I am covered with this spittle-lke froth. At the Assabet Spring I must have been near a black and white creep- er’s nest. It kept up a constant chipping. Saw there also, probably, a chestnut-sided warbler. A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings. A red oak there has many large twigs drooping withered, apparently weakened by some insect. May it not be the locust of yesterday? Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weeds. The swamp-pink ap- parently two or even three days in one place. Saw a wood tortoise, about two inches and a half, with a black sternum and the skin, which becomes orange, now ochreous merely, or brown. The little painted tortoise of the morning was red beneath. Both these young tortoises have a distinct dorsal ridge. ‘The garlic not in flower yet. I observed no Nuphar lutea var. Kalmiana on the Assabet. | 7 p. M.— To Chiff by railroad. Cranberry. Prinos levigatus, apparently two days. Methinks the birds sing a little feebler nowadays. The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare. ‘The sun has set, or is at least concealed in a low mist. As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I feel the leaves in the sprout-land oak, hickory, etc., cold and wet to my hand with the heavy dew that is falling. They look dry, but when I rub them with my hand, they show moist or wet at once. Probably I thus spread minute drops of dew or mist on their surface. It cannot be the warmth of my hand, for when I breathe on them it has no effect. I see one or two early blueberries prematurely turning. The Amelanchier Botryapium berries are already red- dened two thirds over, and are somewhat palatable and soft, — some of them, — not fairly ripe.

5 a. mM. — Up railroad. As the sun went down last night, round and red in a damp misty atmosphere, so now it rises in the same manner, though there is no dense fog. Poison-dogwood yesterday, or say day before, 2. e. 14th. Rubus hispidus, perhaps yesterday in the earliest place, over the sand. Mullein, perhaps yesterday.

Saturday. 5 a. mM. — To Hill. A cold fog. These mornings those who walk in grass are thoroughly wetted above mid-leg. All the earth is dripping wet. I am surprised to feel how warm the water is, by contrast with the cold, foggy air. The frogs seem glad to bury themselves in it. The dewy cobwebs are very thick this morning, little napkins of the fairies spread on the grass. Whorled utricu- larias. A potamogeton off Dodd’s with fine, grassy, thread-like leaves and stems (somewhat flattish), and small globular spikes, maybe some time? Ranunculus reptans, maybe a day or more. A duck, probably wood duck, which is breeding here. From the Hill I am reminded of more youthful mornings, seeing the dark forms of the trees eastward in the low grounds, partly within and against the shining white fog, the sun just risen over it. ‘The mist fast rolling away eastward from them, their tops at last streaking the mist and dividing it into vales. All beyond them a submerged and unknown country, as if they grew on the sea- shore. Why does the fog go off always toward the sun, — is seen in the east when it has disappeared in the west? The waves of the foggy ocean divide and flow back for us Israelites of a day to march through. I hear the half-suppressed guttural sounds of a red squir- rel on a tree; at length he breaks out into a sharp bark. Slavery has produced no sweet-scented flower like the water-lily, for its flower must smell like itself. It will be a carrion-flower.' Saw the sun reflected up from the Assabet to the hill- top, through the dispersing fog, giving to the water a peculiarly rippled, pale-golden hue, — “gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy.” The judges and lawyers, and all men of expediency, consider not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what they call constitutional. They try the merits of the case by a very low and incompe- tent standard. Pray, is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity constitutional, or iniquity? It is as imperti- nent, in important moral and vital questions like this, to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to ask whether it is profitable or not. ‘They persist in being the servants of man, and the worst of men, rather than the servants of God. Sir, the question is not whether you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, entered into an agreement to serve the devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you will not now, for once and at last, serve God, —in spite of your own past recreancy or that of your ancestors, — and obey that eternal and only just Constitution which he, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your being. Is the Constitution a thing to live by? or die by? No, as long as we are alive we forget it, and when we die we have done with it. At most it is only to swear by. While they are hurrying off Christ to the cross, the ruler decides that he cannot constitutionally interfere to save him. The Christians, now and always, are they who obey the higher law, who discover it to be accord- ing to their constitution to interfere. They at least cut off the ears of the police; the others pocket the thirty pieces of silver. This was meaner than to crucify Christ, for he could better take care of himself.! P. M.— To Walden and Cliffs va almshouse. Rumex obtusifolius (?), maybe some days. ‘The evergreen-forest bird at old place in white pine and oak tops, top of Brister’s Hill on right. I think it has black wings with white bars. Is it not the black-throated green warbler? The unmistakable tanager sits on the oaks at midday and sings with a hoarse red-eye note, pruit, prewee, prewa, prear, pred (often more notes), some of the latter notes clearer, without the r. It does not sing so continuously as the red-eye, but at short intervals repeats its half-dozen notes. Iris Virginica well out at Peltandra Meadow, probably a day or two, though not yet at Arum Meadow. The sorrel-fields are now turning brown.

Sunday. P. M.— To climbing fern. The tephrosia is interesting for the contrast of yel- lowish or cream-color with red. On every dry or sandy bank I see the curled egg-shells of tortoises, which the skunks have sucked. The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer’s pines. The leaves of what I call Rumesx obtusifolius are now lighter green and broader and less curled and, I think, shorter-petioled than those of the curled dock, and the root is not yellow but white at core. The great water (?) dock, with its broad but pointed leaves, is just beginning to be obvious. The flowering fern seed ripe, probably [a] good while in some places. There are many strawberries this season, in meadows now, just fairly begun there. The meadows, like this Nut Meadow, are now full of the taller grasses, just be- ginning to flower, and the graceful columns of the rue (Thalictrum), not yet generally in flower, and the large tree- or shrub-like archangelica, with its great umbels, now fairly in bloom along the edge of the brook. What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men, —to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it 1s cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or how much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men. As for asking the South to grant us the trial by jury in the case of runaway slaves, it is as if, seeing a righteous man sent to hell, we should run together and petition the devil first to grant him a trial by jury, forgetting that there is another power to be petitioned, that there is another law and other prece- dents. Am surprised to find the Cirstzwm horridulum, or great yellow thistle, out, some already withering, turned a dark purple, possibly a week old. I discover that J. Dugan found the eggs of my snapping turtle of June 7th, apparently the same day. It did not go to a new place then, after all. I opened the nest to-day. It is, perhaps, five or six rods from the brook, in the sand near its edge. The surface had been disturbed over a foot and a half in diameter and was slightly concave. ‘The nest commenced five inches beneath, and at its neck was two and a half inches across and from this nearly four inches deep, =*24,, .- «-.. and swelled out : : below to four re inches in width; Ras shaped lke a short, rounded bottle with a broad mouth; and the surrounding sand was quite firm. I took out forty-two eggs, close packed, and Dugan says he had previously broken one, which made forty-three. They are a dirty white and spherical, a little more than one and one sixteenth inches in diam- eter, — soft-shelled, so that my finger left a permanent dimple in them. It was now ten days since they had been laid, and a little more than one half of each was darker-colored (probably the lower half) and the other white and dry-looking. I opened one, but could detect no organization with the unarmed eye. The halves of the shell, as soon as emptied, curled up, as we see them where the skunks have sucked them. They must all have been laid at one time. If it were not for the skunks, and probably other animals, we should be - overrun with them. Who can tell how many tortoise eggs are buried thus in this small desert? Observed in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been, hopping on the lower branches and in the underwood, — a somewhat sparrow-like bird, with its golden-brown crest and * Daniel Foster says he found forty-two this summer, in a nest in — his field in Princeton. white circle about eye, carrying the tail somewhat like a wren, and inclined to run along the branches. Each had a worm in its bill, no doubt intended for its young. That is the chief employment of the birds now, gathering food for their young. I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest. Examined, as well as I could with the glass, what I will call the tweeser-bird, — tra-wee, shreea-shre, — raspingly. I ‘have heard [it] perhaps as long as the evergreen-forest. It is a slender, somewhat small, vireo-like bird, yellow and yellowish all beneath, ex- cept a chestnutish (?) crescent on breast, with ap- parently a white spot on the wing, and certainly a yellow or greenish-yellow back between wings. Keep- ing rather high in the trees, I could not see the gen- eral color of the upper parts, but thought it was dark olivaceous or maybe slaty. Can it be the blue yellow-back warbler? * Small grasshoppers very abundant in some dry grass. I find the lygodium, a late fern, now from a foot to eighteen inches high and not yet flower-budded or the leaves fully expanded. Platanthera flava at the Harrington Bathing-Place, possibly yesterday, — an un- important yellowish-green spike of flowers. A large fresh stone-heap eight or ten inches above water just below there, — quite sharp, like Teneriffe. <Aralia hispida. Typha latifolia may have shed pollen two or three days. I am surprised at the abundance of its sulphur-like pollen, on the least jar covering my hands and clothes, — green; at least it does not burn. The female part of the spike green and solid and ap- parently «immature. Epilobtum angustifolium up rail- road, this end of high wood. Another round red sun of dry and dusty weather to-night, — a red or red-purple helianthus. Every year men talk about the dry weather which has now begun as if it were something new and not to be ex- pected. Often certain words or syllables which have sug- gested themselves remind me better of a bird’s strain than the most elaborate and closest imitation. Heard young partridges. It is not any such free-soil party as I have seen, but a free-man party,—v1. e. a party of free men, —that is wanted. It is not any politicians, even the truest and soundest, but, strange as it may sound, even godly men, as Cromwell discovered, who are wanted to fight this battle, — men not of policy but of probity. Politicians! I have looked into the eyes of two or three of them, but I saw nothing there to satisfy me. They will vote for my man to-morrow if I will vote for theirs to-day. They will whirl round and round, not only horizon- tally like weathercocks, but vertically also. My advice to the State is simply this: to dissolve her union with the slaveholder instantly. She can find no respectable law or precedent which sanctions its continuance. And to each inhabitant of Massachu- setts, to dissolve his union with the State, as long as she hesitates to do her duty.?