19 June 1854 – 25 June 1854

Monday. P. M.— Up Assabet. A thunder-shower in the north. Will it strike us? How impressive this artillery of the heavens! It rises higher and higher. At length the thunder seems to roll quite across the sky and all round the horizon, even where there are no clouds, and I row home- ward in haste. How by magic the skirts of the cloud are gathered about us, and it shoots forward over our head, and the rain ‘comes at a time and place which . baffles all our calculations! Just before it the swamp white oak in Merrick’s pasture was a very beautiful sight, with its rich shade of green, its top as it were incrusted with light. Suddenly comes the gust, and the big drops slanting from the north, and the birds fly as if rudderless, and the trees bow and are wrenched. It comes against the windows like hail and is blown over the roofs like steam or smoke. It runs down the large elm at Holbrook’s and shatters the house near by. It soon shines in silver puddles in the streets. This the first rain of consequence for at least three weeks. Amelanchier berries now generally reddening. Me- thinks the Botryapium has broader, more ovate, often rounded and pointed leaves, the calyx-lobes recurved on the fruit, while the oblongifolia is inclined to obo- vate and narrower leaves and erect calyx-lobes. Flow- | ering raspberry, perhaps yesterday. Men may talk about measures till all is blue and smells of brimstone, and then go home and sit down and expect their measures to do their duty for them. The only measure is integrity and manhood.

Tuesday. Motherwort to-morrow. Elder. A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool. I see where the crickets are eating the wild strawberries. P. M. — To Shad-bush Meadow. Heard a new bird — chut-cheeter-varrer-chutter-wit — on the low bushes,. about the size of Wilson’s thrush apparently. Apparently olivaceous (?) above, most so on head, yellow front, dark bill, dark wings with two white bars, all yellow or yellowish breast and beneath. Perhaps never heard it before. Cow-wheat, appar- ently two or three days. A three-leaved Lysimachia stricta apparently, with reddish flower-buds, not open. Shad-berries almost, but scarce. ‘There seems to be much variety in the Rosa lucida, — some to have stouter hooked prickles than the R. Carolina. Upland hay- ing begun, or beginning. Common nettle.

Wednesday. We have had thick fog, and rain fell through it this morning. P. M. — To Walden, etc. Miichella in Deep Cut woods, probably a day or two. Its scent is agreeable and refreshing, between the mayflower and rum cherry bark, or like peach- stone meats. Pyrola secunda at Laurel Glen, a day or two (?). A third of the spike now out. Most hiera- ciums (venosum) are shut by day; some open this cloudy afternoon. When I see the dense, shady masses of weeds about water,—already an unexplorable maze, — I am struck with the contrast between this and the spring, [when] I wandered about in search of the first faint greenness along the borders of the brooks. Then an inch or two of green was something remark- able and obvious afar. Now there is a dense mass of weeds along the waterside, where the muskrats lurk, and overhead a canopy of leaves conceals the birds and shuts out the sun. It is hard to realize that the seeds of all this growth were buried in that bare, frozen earth. The glyceria is budded and drooping at the pond, but hardly in flower. In the little meadow pool, or bay, in Hubbard’s shore, I see two old pouts tending their countless young close to the shore. The former are slate-colored. The latter are about half an inch long and very black, forming a dark mass from eight to twelve inches in diameter. The old are constantly circling around them, —over and under and through, — as if anxiously en- deavoring to keep them together, from time to time moving off five or six feet to reconnoitre. The whole mass of the young — and there must be a thousand of them at least —is incessantly moving, pushing forward and stretching out. Are often in the form of a great pout, apparently keeping together by their own instinct chiefly, now on the bottom, now rising to the top. Alone they might be mistaken for polly- wogs. The old, at any rate, do not appear to be very successful in their apparent efforts to communicate with and direct them. At length they break into four parts. The old are evidently very careful parents. One has some wounds apparently. In the second part of the story of Tanner it is said: “ Ah-wa-sis-sie — Little catfish. The Indians say this fish hatches its young in a hole in the mud, and that they accompany her for some time afterwards.” Yet in Ware’s Smellie it is said that fishes take no care of their young. I think also that I see the young breams in schools hovering over their nests while the old are still pro- tecting them. I see two varieties of Galiwm trifidum, apparently equally early, one smooth, the other rough; sometimes it grows in very dense tufts. Peltandra well out, ap- parently yesterday; quite abundant and pretty, raised two or three inches above the water. Prinos verti- cillatus, possibly yesterday. Hypericum ellipticum. Eriocaulon. Partridges drum still. The effect of the pond on its shore while standing at a great height is remarkable. ‘Though considerably lower than it was, it appears much higher in some places, where it has worn away a barrier between itself and a meadow and so made the water deeper there. Rambled up the grassy hollows in the sprout-lands north (?) of Goose Pond. I felt as if in a strange coun- try, —a pleasing sense of strangeness and distance. Here, in the midst of extensive sprout-lands, are nu- merous open hollows more or less connected, where for some reason * the wood does not spring up, — and I am glad of it, — filled with a fine wiry grass, with the panicled andromeda, which loves dry places, now in blossom around the edges, and small black cherries and sand cherries straggling down into them. The woodchuck loves such places and now wabbles off with a peculiar loud squeak like the sharp bark of a red squirrel, then stands erect at the entrance of his hole, ready to dive into it as soon as you approach. As wild and strange a place as you might find in the unexplored West or East. The quarter of a mile of sprout-land which separates it from the highway seems as complete a barrier as a thousand miles of earth. Your horizon is there all your own. Indigo, apparently a day in some places. Calopogon a day or two at least in Hubbard’s Close, — this hand- somest of its family after the arethusa. Again I am attracted by the deep scarlet of the wild moss rose half open in the grass, all glowing with rosy light.

Friday. There has been a foggy haze, dog-day-like, for perhaps ten days, more or less. To- day it is so cold that we sit by a fire. A little skunk, a quarter or a third grown, at the edge of the North River, under hill. Birds do not sing this afternoon, though cloudy, as they did a month ago. I think they are most lively about the end of May. P. M. — Walden and Cliffs. I see by the railroad causeway young barn swallows on the fences learning to fly. Lactuca, maybe a day or two, but the heads not upright yet. Whiteweed now for three weeks has frosted the fields like snow; getting old. Polygonum Convolvulus. Wool-grass tops. Pyrola rotundifolia in cut woods to-morrow. A black snake in Abel Brooks’s wood [?], on a warm dry side of it, his head concealed in a stump, rapidly vibrating his tail, which struck upon the leaves. Five feet one inch long; uniform coal-black above, with greenish coaly reflections; bluish or slaty beneath; white beneath head; about 189 abdominal plates; tail more than one foot long and slender. When the head was dead, exerted great power with its body; could hardly hold it. Early blueberries have begun on the Brown sprout- land, Fair Haven. This the third summer since the woods were cut, and the first for any quantity of berries, I think; so of Heywood’s lot on Walden, which I think was cut also in *51~52. Lysimachia stricta, perhaps yesterday, at Lincoln bound, Walden. After one or two cold and rainy days the air is now clearer at last. From the Cliffs the air is beautifully clear, showing the glossy and light- reflecting greenness of the woods. It is a great relief to look into the horizon. There is more room under the heavens. Specularia, handsome, dark-purple, on Cliffs, how long? Disturbed three different broods of partridges in my walk this afternoon in different places. One in Deep Cut Woods, big as chickens ten days old, went flying in various directions a rod or two into the hillside. Another by Heywood’s meadow, the young two and a half inches long only, not long hatched, making a fine peep. Held one in my hand, where it squatted without winking. A third near Well Meadow Field. We are now, then, in the very midst of them. Now leading forth their young broods. The old bird will return mewing and walk past within ten feet.

P. M.—To Assabet Bathing-Place and Derby Bridge. Mayweed, say 27th. At Ludwigia Poke-logan, a cinder-like spawn in a white, frothy jelly. A green bittern, apparently, awkwardly alighting on the trees and uttering its hoarse, zarry note, zskeow-xskeow- - gskeow. Shad-berry ripe. Garlic open, eighteen inches high or more. The calla fruit is curving down. I observe many kingfishers at Walden and on the Assabet, very few on the dark and muddy South Branch. Asclepias (the mucronate-pointed, what ? ) yesterday. A raspberry on sand by railroad, ripe. Through June the song of the birds is gradually growing fainter. Epilobium coloratum, railroad above red house unless the one observed some time ago was a downy coloratum, with lanceolate leaves. Trifoliwm arvense.