17 July 1854 – 23 July 1854

Thursday. 2 p.m.— To Bare Hill, Lincoln, by railroad. Have heard a faint locust-like sound from crickets a week or two. In the midst of July heat and drought. The season is trivial as noon. I hear the hot-weather and noonday birds, — red-eye, tanager, wood pewee, etc. Plants are curled and withered. The leaves dry, ripe like the berries. ‘The point of a lower leaf of a smooth sumach is scarlet, and some geranium leaves. Many birch leaves are yellow and falling. Leaves are very much eaten (June is the time to collect perfect ones); of some kinds hard to find a perfect specimen, unless of a firm texture. The Pyrus arbutvfolia is very thick and glossy dark green. The tupelo leaf is pretty firm and perfect, not so glossy, more or less winding, and the shoots are zigzag or winding. Polygonum Hydropiper at Baker Swamp. ‘Thoroughwort, to- morrow or next day. Scutellaria lateriflora, some days at least. The chestnuts, now in full bloom, are con- spicuous from the hills (Bare Hill), like a yellowish or creamy-tinged rime. Vaccinium vacillans on Bare Hill ripe enough to pick, now considerably in advance of huckleberries; sweeter than last and grow in dense clusters. The V. Pennsylvanicum is soft and rather thin and tasteless, mountain and spring like, with its fine light-blue bloom, very handsome, simple and ambrosial. This vacillans is more earthy, like solid food. Many of the huckle- berries here on the hilltop have dried black and shriv- elled before ripening. Boys go after the cows now about 5.30 o’clock. Decodon not distinctly flower-budded yet. Gnapha- lium (pearly) well out, say yesterday. If there is an interregnum in the flowers, it is when berries begin. Scent the bruised leaves of the fragrant goldenrod along the Lincoln road now. What I have called Solidago arguta at Walden (vide radical leaves); also an aster, probably Diplopappus umbellatus, at Baker Swamp, will open in a few days.

Tuesday. 5 a. mM. — Up Turnpike. A haymaking morning fog, through and above which the trees are glorious in the sun. The elm leaves appear to be drinking the moisture along the dusty, debauched highway; some of them yellowing. Whence these fogs and this increase of moisture in the air? The kingbird, song sparrows, and quail are lively. The centaurea, not yet. I think I have not heard a night-warbler for a fortnight. Erigeron Canadensis. Erigeron strigosus 1 must call the other. P. M. — To Sam Barrett’s by boat, and old Wheeler ' house. )

P. M.— To Beck Stow’s and Walden. Alisma, apparently a day or more. Polygonum Careyt to-morrow. In Moore’s Swamp I pluck cool, though not very sweet, large red raspberries in the shade, making themselves dense thickets. Wild holly berries, a day or two. The throttled sound of a cuckoo from out the shade of a grove. How lustily the poison- dogwood grows, — five feet from the ground this year and still growing, covered with a rich glaucous bloom! The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days. Crotalarias but few, apparently a day or two only. The tall, wand-like, large-leaved Desmodium Canadense, some days at least in the dry, rough sunflower field. Black choke-berry, several days. High blueberries scarce, but a few half an inch or more in diameter. Apparently a catbird’s nest in a shrub oak, lined with root-fibres, with three green- blue eggs. Erigeron annuus perhaps fifteen rods or more beyond the Hawthorn Bridge on right hand, —a new plant,— probably last month. Thinner leaves than the strigosus. ‘The white cotton-grass now (and how long?) at Beck Stow’s appears to be the Eriophorum gracile (?). I see no rusty ones. In the maple swamp at Hubbard’s Close, the great cinna- mon ferns are very handsome now in tufts, falling over in handsome curves on every side,—a rank undergrowth about three feet high, completely hiding the dead leaves. Some are a foot wide and raised up six feet long. Clintonia berries in a day or two. I am surprised to see at Walden a single Aster patens with a dozen flowers fully open a day or more. Smooth sumach berries. The anychia shows some small pods; probably flowered about July Ist. Lechea minor shows stamens. A wood thrush to-night. Veery within two or three days.

A very hot day, a bathing day. Warm days about this. P. M. — To Hubbard Bath. That long, narrow sparganium, which is perhaps the smaller one, growing long in our river, stands thick, with the heart-leaf and potamogeton, in the middle in shallow places. Methinks there begins to be a bluish scum on the water at this season, somewhat stagnant- looking. This may be the oil which smooths it. The large potamogeton in midstream is ten feet long. There is an immense quantity of clams there in the middle where it is four feet deep. I dived and took up four large ones in one hand at the first grip. Now and for several days I have seen, on the leaves of the red and black oaks, minute caterpillars feeding, with Ferns in Clintonia Swamp itl very small pearly, dewdrop-like ova near them partly hatched. Skunk-cabbage fruit some days; cut by the mowers. A muttering thunder-cloud in northwest gradually rising and with its advanced guard hiding in the sun and now and then darting forked lightning. The wind rising ominously also drives me home again. At length down it comes upon the thirsty herbage, beating down the leaves with grateful, tender violence and slzghily cooling the air; but all the thunder and lightning was in its van. How soon it swept over and we saw the flash in the southeast! Corn in blossom these days.

The hottest night, — the last. It was almost impossible to pursue any work out-of- doors yesterday. There were but few men to be seen out. You were prompted often, if working in the sun, to step into the shade to avoid a sunstroke. At length a shower passing in the west slightly cooled the air. The domestic animals suffer much. Saw a dog which had crawled into a corner and was apparently dying of heat. Fogs almost every morning now. First no- ticed the dry scent of corn-fields a week ago. Now clouds have begun to hang about all day, which do not promise rain, as it were the morning fogs elevated but little above the earth and floating through the air all day. P. M. — To Assabet Bath.

Sunday. P. M.—To Walden via Hub- bard’s Grove and Fair Haven Hill. Carrot by railroad, some time; say ten days. Eu- patorium purpureum. ‘There is a peculiar light re- flected from the shorn fields, as later in the fall, when rain and coolness have cleared the air. Eupatorium pubescens, to-morrow. The white orchis at same place, four or five days at least; spike one and three quarters by three inches. I see small flocks of song sparrows, etc., rustle along the walls and fences. Lonicera Ciliata, apparently several days, Corner causeway, right side. Boehmeria there also. Since the 19th, have heard locusts oftener. Aster acuminatus at Radula Swamp, in a day or two. My three-leaved Lysimachia stricta (? ) at Radula Swamp, common. A. Radula (?), a day. Saw yesterday on edge of Lee House Meadow a low blueberry (?) bush with large oblongish black berries and narrow leaves, with little or no bloom, conspicuous calyx, apparently between Vaccinium vacillans and V. corymbosum. Some elsewhere two and a half feet high. I also have seen on Fair Haven Hill-side, near west spring, a sort of larger V. Pennsylvanicum with oblong black berries and conspicuous calyx. Lespe- deza capitata, Lupine Bank, a day. Cerasus pumila berries, some time. Hazel leaves in dry places have begun to turn yellow and brown. Lespedeza violacea, apparently several days. I see broods of partridges later than the others, now the ‘size of the smallest chickens. Onoclea green fruit conspicuous. See a thunder-cloud coming up in northwest, but as I walk and wind in the woods, lose the points of compass and cannot tell whether it is travelling this way or not. At length the sun is obscured by its advance guard, but, as so often, the rain comes, leaving thunder and lightning behind.