4 September 1854 – 10 September 1854

Monday. Aster multiflorus. Observed the under sides of a shrub willow by the river, lit by the rays of the rising sun, shining like silver or dewdrops. Yet, when I stood nearer and looked down on them at a different angle, they were quite dull. I have provided my little snapping turtle with a tub of water and mud, and it is surprising how fast he learns to use his limbs and this world. He actually runs, with the yolk still trailing from him, as if he had got new vigor from contact with the mud. The in- sensibility and toughness of his infancy make our life, with its disease and low spirits, ridiculous. He im- presses me as the rudiment of a man worthy to in- habit the earth. He is born with a shell. That is symbolical of his toughness. His shell being so rounded and sharp on the back at this age, he can turn over without trouble. P. M. — To climbing fern. Polygonum articulatum, apparently three or four days. In the wood-paths I find a great many of the Castile-soap galls, more or less fresh. Some are saddled on the twigs. They are now dropping from the shrub oaks. Is not Art itself a gall? Nature is stung by God and the seed of man planted in her. The artist changes the direction of Nature and makes her grow according to his idea. If the gall was anticipated when the oak was made, so was the canoe when the birch was made. Genius stings Nature, and she grows according to its idea. 7.30. — To Fair Haven Pond by boat. Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water- bugs (?) like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon. The high shore above the railroad bridge was very simple and grand, — first the bluish sky with the moon and a few brighter stars, then the near high level bank like a distant mountain ridge or a dark cloud in the eastern horizon, then its reflection in the water, making it double, and finally the. glassy water and the sheen in one spot on the white lily pads. Some willows for relief in the distance on the right. It was Ossianic. I noticed this afternoon that bubbles would not readily form on the water, and soon burst, probably on account of the late rains, which have changed its quality. There is probably less stagnation and scum. It is less adhesive. A fine transparent mist. Lily Bay seemed as wide as a lake. You referred the shore back to the Clam- shell Hills. The mere edge which a flat shore presents makes no distinct impression on the eye and, if seen at all, appears as the base of the distant hills. Com- monly a slight mist yet more conceals it. The dim low shore, but a few rods distant, is seen as the base of the distant hills whose distance you know. The low shore, if not entirely concealed by the low mist, is seen against the distant hills and passes for their immediate base. For the same reason hills near the water appear much more steep than they are. We hear a faint me- tallic chip from a sparrow on the button-bushes or willows now and then. Rowse was struck by the sim- plicity of nature now,—the sky the greater part, then a little dab of earth, and after some water near you. Looking up the reach beyond Clamshell, the moon on our east quarter, its sheen was reflected for half a mile from the pads and the rippled water next them on that side, while the willows lined the shore in indistinct black masses like trees made with India ink (without distinct branches), and it looked like a sort of Broadway with the sun reflected from its pavements. Such willows might be made with soot or smoke merely, lumpish with fine edges. Meanwhile Fair Haven Hill, seen blue through the transparent mist, was as large and imposing as Wachusett, and we seemed to be approaching the Highlands of the river, a mountain pass, where the river had burst through mountains. A high mountain would be no more impos- ing. Now I began to hear owls, screech (?) owls, at a distance up-stream; but we hardly got nearer to them, as if they retreated before us. At length, when off Wheeler’s grape and cranberry meadow, we heard one near at hand. The rhythm of it was pe-pe-ou ; this once or twice repeated, but more of a squeal and some- what human. Or do not all strange’ sounds thrill us as human, till we have learned to refer them to their proper source? They appeared to answer one another half a mile apart; could be heard from far woods a mile off. The wind has risen and the echo is poor; it does not reverberate up and down the river. No sound of a bullfrog, but steadily the cricket-like Rana palustris * alongshore. Rowse heard a whip-poor-will at Sleepy Hollow to- night. No scent of muskrats.

Were those plump birds which looked some- what like robins crossing the river yesterday afternoon golden plover? I heard the upland plover note at same time, but these were much stouter birds. The dangle-berries are now the only whortleberries which are quite fresh. The feverwort berries began to turn about a fortnight ago. Now quite yellow. P. M. — Up Assabet to Sam Barrett’s Pond. The river rising probably. The river weeds are now much decayed. Almost all pads but the white lily have disappeared, and they are thinned, and in midstream those dense beds of weeds are so much thinned (pota- mogeton, heart-leaf, sparganium, etc., etc.) as to give one the impression of the river having risen, though it is not more than six inches higher on account of the rain. As I wade, I tread on the great roots only of the yellow lily. I see now, against the edge of the pads on each side of the stream, a floating wreck of weeds, at first almost exclusively the Sparganium minor, which stood so thick in midstream, the first important contribution to the river wreck. These apparently become rotten or loose (though they are still green), and the wind and water wash them to one side. ‘They form floating masses of wreck, and a few small stums and pontederias are already mixed with them. The stream must be fullest of weeds and most verdurous (potamogetons, heart-leaf, sparganium, etc.) when the brink is in perfection. The potamogetons are much decayed and washed and blown into a snarl, and no longer cover the surface with a smooth green shield, nor do the heart-leaf. This is a fall phenomenon. The river weeds, be- coming rotten, though many are still green, fall or are loosened, the water rises, the winds come, and they are drifted to the shore, and the water is cleared. During the drought I used to see Sam Wheeler’s men carting hogsheads of water from the river to water his shrubbery. ‘They drove into the river, and, naked all but a coat and hat, they dipped up the water with a pail. Though a shiftless, it looked like an agreeable, labor that hot weather. Bathed at the swamp white oak, the water again warmer than I expected. One of these larger oaks is stripped nearly bare by the caterpillars. Cranberry- raking is now fairly begun. The very bottom of the river there is loose and crumbly with sawdust. I bring up the coarse bits of wood (water-logged) between my feet. I see much thistle-down without the seed floating on the river. Saw a hummingbird about a cardinal-flower over the water’s edge. Just this side the rock, the water near the shore and pads is quite white for twenty rods, as with a white sawdust, with the exuviz of small insects about an eighth of an inch long, mixed with scum and weeds, apparently like the green lice on birches, though they want the long antenne of the last. Yet I suspect they are the same. Did not the rain destroy them? What others are so plenty? I see, as often before, a dozen doves on the rock, apparently for coolness, which fly before me. Polygonum amphibium var. terrestre apparently in prime. I find some zizania grains almost black. See a chip-bird. See many galls thickly clus- yy. tered and saddled about the twigs of some young swamp white oaks, dome- shaped; hold on all winter; with grubs in middle; reddish-green. A pretty large tupelo on a rock behind Sam Bar- hi ft : He Sam wena a i: rett’s; some of its leaves a very deep and brilliant scarlet, equal to any leaves in this respect. Some waxwork leaves variegated greenish-yellow and dark- green. His pond has been almost completely dry, — more than he ever knew, — and is still mostly so. ‘The muddy bottom is exposed high and dry, half a dozen rods wide, and half covered with great drying yellow and white lily pads and stems. He improves the op- portunity to skim off the fertile deposit for his com- post-heap. Saw some button-bush balls going to seed, which were really quite a rich red over a green base, especially in this evening light. They are commonly greener and much duller reddish. Barrett shows me some very handsome pear-shaped cran- berries, not uncommon, which may be a permanent variety different from the com- mon rounded ones. Saw two pigeons which flew about his pond and then lit on the elms over his house. He said they had come to drink from Brooks’s, as they often did. He sees a blue heron there almost every morning of late. Such is the place for them. A soap- wort gentian by river; remarkably early (?). The top has been bitten off! I hear the tree-toad to-day. Now at sundown, a blue heron flaps away from his perch on an oak over the river before me, just above the rock. Hear locusts after sundown.

6 a. M.— To Hill. The sun is rising directly over the eastern (mag- netic east) end of the street. Not yet the equinox. I hear a faint warbling vireo on the elms still, in the morning. My little turtle, taken out of the shell Sep- tember 2d, has a shell one and seven fortieths inches long, or four fortieths longer than the diameter of the ege-shell, to say nothing of head and tail. Warm weather again, and sultry nights the last two. The last a splendid moonlight and quite warm. I am not sure that I have seen bobolinks for ten days, nor blackbirds since August 28th. 9 p. M.— There is now approaching from the west . one of the heaviest thunder-showers (apparently) and with the most incessant flashes that I remember to have seen. It must be twenty miles off, at least, for I can hardly hear the thunder at all. The almost incessant flashes reveal the form of the cloud, at least the upper and lower edge of it, but it stretches north and south along the horizon further than we see. Every minute I see the crinkled lightning, intensely bright, dart to earth or forkedly along the cloud. It does not always dart direct to earth, but sometimes very crookedly, like the bough of a tree, or along the cloud forkedly. The forked thunderbolt of the poets. It seems like a tremendous dark battery bearing down on us, with an incessant fire kept up behind it. And each time, apparently, it strikes the earth or something on it with terrific violence. We feel the rush of the cool wind while the thunder is yet scarcely audible. The flashes are, in fact, incessant for an hour or more, though lighting up different parts of the horizon, — now the edges of the cloud, now far along the hori- zon, — showing a clearer golden space beneath the cloud where rain is falling, through which stream tor- tuously to earth the brilliant bolts. It 1s a visible strik- ing or launching of bolts on the devoted villages. It crinkles through the clear yellow portion beneath the cloud where it rains, like fiery snakes or worms, like veins in the eye. At first it was a small and very dis- tant cloud in the southwestern horizon, revealed by its own flashes, —its rugged upper outline and its whole form revealed by the flashes, — and no thun- der heard. It seemed like a ship firing broadsides, but it gradually advanced and extended itself, and united with others north and south along the horizon, and the thunder began to be heard, and wind came, etc. At last came the rain, but not heavy, nor the thunder loud, but the flashes were visible all around us. Before this, in the afternoon, to the Hollowell place via Hubbard Bath, crossing the river. A very warm day, one of the warmest of the year. The water is again warmer than I should have be- lieved; say an average summer warmth, yet not so warm as it has been. It makes me the more surprised that only that day and a half of rain should have made it so very cold when I last bathed here. Is not all our really hot weather always contained between the 20th of May and the middle of September? ‘The checker- berries are just beginning to redden. ‘The cinnamon ferns along the edge of woods next the meadow are many yellow or cinnamon, or quite brown and withered. The sarsaparilla leaves, green or reddish, are spotted with yellow eyes centred with reddish, or dull-reddish eyes with yellow iris. They have a very pretty effect held over the forest floor, beautiful in their decay. The sessile-leaved bellwort is yellow, green, and brown, all together or separately. Some white oak leaves are covered with dull-yellow spots. Now apparently is the time to gather the clusters of shrub oak acorns, before they drop, to adorn a shelf with. Some, how- . ever, are ready to fall on account of the late drought. I see where the squirrels have eaten them (the 2lzc?- folia) and left the shells on a stump. See galls on the chinquapin, sessile on the stem, spherical, and in ap- pearance between that of yesterday on the swamp white oak, and the Castile-soap galls. I think I may say that large Solomon’s-seal berries have begun to be red. I see no swallows now at Clamshell. They have probably migrated. Still see the cracks in the ground, and no doubt shall till snow comes. Very few of the Aster undulatus this year, and they late. Some large roundish or squarish Viburnum nudum berries by fence between Hosmer Spring and Lupine Hill, near foot of hill, but I see no difference between the leaves, etc., and the others. An aster, longifolius-like, some days at Hosmer Ditch, with smaller flowers, 27-rayed, smaller scales, leaves rough above and serrate, and purple stem rough. I will call it A. carneus for present. A similar, with flesh-colored blossom and longer scales, at A. Hey- wood Ditch. It may be a variety of what I saw by Mill Brook and called tenuzfolius; scales alike, but that had smooth leaves.

Thursday. The rain of last night has brought down more leaves of elms and buttonwoods. P. M. — To Moore’s Swamp and Walden. See some hips of the moss rose, very large and hand- some, bright-scarlet, very much flattened globular. On the Walden road heard a somewhat robin-like clicking note. Looked round and saw one of those small slate- colored, black-tipped, white-rumped hawks skimming over the meadows with head down, at first thirty feet high, then low till he appeared to drop into the grass.’ It was quite a loud clicketing sound. Paddled to Baker Farm just after sundown, by full moon. I suppose this is the Harvest Moon, since the sun must be in Virgo, enters Libra the 23d inst. The wind has gone down, and it is a still, warm night, and no mist. It is just after sundown. The moon not yet risen, one star, Jupiter (?), visible, and many bats over and about our heads, and small skaters creating a myriad dim- ples on the evening waters. We see a muskrat cross- ing, and pass a white cat on the shore. There are many clouds about and a beautiful sunset sky, a yel- lowish (dunnish?) golden sky, between them in the horizon, looking up the river. All this is reflected in the water. The beauty of the sunset is doubled by the reflection. Being on the water we have double the amount of lit and dun-colored sky above and beneath. An elm in the yellow twilight looks very rich, as if ‘ Male marsh hawk. moss- or ivy-clad, and a dark-blue cloud extends into the dun-golden sky, on which there is a little fantastic cloud like a chicken walking up the point of it, with its neck outstretched. The reflected sky is more dun and richer than the real one. Take a glorious sunset sky and double it, so that it shall extend downward beneath the horizon as much as above it, blotting out the earth, and [let] the lowest half be of the deepest tint, and every beauty more than before insisted on, and you seem withal to be floating directly into it. This seems the first autumnal sunset. The small skaters seem more active than by day, or their slight dimpling is more obvious in the lit twilight. A stray white cat sits on the shore looking over the water. ‘This is her hour. A nighthawk dashes past, low over the water. This is what we had. It was in harmony with this fair evening that we were not walking or nding with dust and noise through it, but moved by a paddle without a jar over the liquid and almost invisible surface, floating directly toward those islands of the blessed which we call clouds in the sunset sky. I thought of the Indian, who so many similar evenings had paddled up this stream, with what advantage he beheld the twilight sky. So we advanced without dust or sound, by gentle influences, as the twilight gradually faded away. The height of the rail- road bridge, already high (more than twenty feet to the top of the rail), was doubled by the reflection, equalling that of a Roman aqueduct, for we could not possibly see where the reflection began, and the piers appeared to rise from the lowest part of the reflection to the rail above, about fifty feet. We floated directly under it, between the piers, as if in mid-air, not being able to distinguish the surface of the water, and looked down more than twenty feet to the reflected flooring through whose intervals we saw the starlit sky. The ghostly piers stretched downward on all sides, and only the angle made by their meeting the real ones betrayed where was the water surface. The twilight had now paled (lost its red and dun) and faintly illumined the high bank. I observed no firefly this evening, nor the 4th. The moon had not yet risen and there was a half-hour of dusk, in which, however, we saw the reflections of the trees. Any peculiarity in the form of a tree or other object — if it leans one side or has a pointed top, for instance — is revealed in the reflection by being doubled and so insisted on. We detected thus distant maples, pines, and oaks, and they were seen to be related to the river as mountains in the horizon are by day. Night is the time to hear; our ears took in every sound from the meadows and the village. At first we were disturbed by the screeching of the locomotive and rumbling of the cars, but soon were left to the fainter natural sounds, — the creaking of the crickets, and the little Rana palustris’ (1 am not sure that I heard it the latter part of the evening), and the shrilling of other crickets (?), the occasional faint lowing of a cow and the distant barking of dogs, as in a whisper. Our ears drank in every sound. I heard once or twice a dumping frog. This was while we lay off Nut Mea- dow Brook waiting for the moon to rise. She burned her way slowly through the small but thick clouds, and, as fast as she triumphed over them and rose over them, they appeared pale and shrunken, like the ghosts of their former selves. Meanwhile we measured the breadth of the clear cope over our heads, which she would ere long traverse, and, while she was concealed, looked up to the few faint stars in the zenith which is ever lighted. C. thought that these few faint lights in the ever-lit sky, whose inconceivable distance was enhanced by a few downy wisps of cloud, sur- passed any scene that earth could show.!| When the moon was behind those small black clouds in the horizon, they had a splendid silver edging. At length she rose above them and shone aslant, like a ball of fire over the woods. It was remarkably clear to-night, and the water was not so remarkably broad therefore, and Fair Haven was not clothed with that blue veil like a mountain, which it wore on the 4th, but it was not till we had passed the bridge that the first sheen was reflected from the pads. The reflected shadow of the Hill was black as night, and we seemed to be paddling directly into it a rod or two before us, but we never reached it at all. The trees and hills were distinctly black between us and the moon, and the water black or gleaming accordingly. It was quite dry and warm. Above the Cliffs we heard only one or two owls at a distance, a hooting owl and a screech owl, and several whip-poor-wills. The delicious fra- grance of ripe grapes was wafted to us by the night air, as we paddled by, from every fertile vine on the shore, and thus its locality was revealed more surely than by daylight. We knew their fragrance was better than their flavor. They perfumed the whole river for a mile, by night. You might have thought you had reached the confines of Elysium. A shght zephyr wafted us al- most imperceptibly into the middle of Fair Haven Pond, while we lay watching and listening. The sheen of the moon extended quite across the pond to us in a long and narrow triangle, or rather with concave sides like a very narrow Eddystone Lighthouse, with its base on the southwest shore, and we heard the dis- tant sound of the wind through the pines on the hill- top. Or, if we listened closely, we heard still the faint and distant barking of dogs. They rule the night. Near the south shore disturbed some ducks in the water, which slowly flew away to seek a new resting- place, uttering a distinct and alarmed quack some- thing like a goose. We walked up to the old Baker house. In the bright moonlight the character of the ground under our feet was not easy to detect, and we did not know at first but we were walking on sod and not on a field laid down and harrowed. From the upland the pond in the moonlight looked blue, — as much so as the sky. We sat on the window-sill of the old house, thought of its former inhabitants, saw our bandit shadows down the cellar-way (C. had on a red flannel shirt over his thin coat, — since he expected it would be cold and damp, — and looked like one), listened to each sound, and observed each ray of moonlight through the cracks. Heard an apple fall in the little orchard close by, while a whip-poor-will was heard in the pines. Returning to the boat, saw a glow-worm in the damp path in the low ground. Returning later, we experienced better the weird-like character of the night, especially perceived the fragrance of the grapes and admired the fair smooth fields in the bright moon- light. There being no mist, the reflections were won- derfully distinct; the whole of Bittern Cliff with its grove was seen beneath the waves.

P. M.—To boat under Fair Haven Hill via Hubbard Bath, etc., a-graping. The ivy at ivy tree is scarlet a quarter part. Saw one of my small slate-colored hawks of yesterday, sitting in the midst of the upland field beyond, like a crow. There is a great crop of Viburnum nudum ber- ries this year. The green-briar berries not quite ripe. Clams still lie up. The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out. I pluck splendid great bunches of the purple ones, with a rich bloom on them and the purple glowing through it like a fire ; large red ones, also, with light dots, and some clear green. Sometimes I crawl under low and thick bowers, where they have run over the alders only four or five feet high, and see the grapes hanging from a hollow hemisphere of leaves over my head. At other times I see them dark-purple or black against the silvery undersides of the leaves, high overhead where they have run over birches or maples, and either climb or pull them down to pluck them. The witch-hazel on Dwarf Sumach Hill looks as if it would begin to blossom in a day or two. Talked with Garfield, who was fishing off his shore. By the way, that shore might be named from him, for he is the genius of it, and is almost the only man I ever see on that part of the river. He says that the two turtles, of one of which I have the shell, weighed to- gether eighty-nine pounds. He saw one when he was a boy, which his father caught in Fair Haven Pond, which several who saw it thought would have weighed sixty pounds. That the biggest story he could tell. Referred to the year not long since when so many were found dead. There was one rotting right on that shore where we were, “as big as a tray.” Once, he and another man were digging a ditch in a meadow in Waltham. (He thought it was the last of September or first of October — and that we did not see them put their heads out much later than this.) They found two mud turtles three feet beneath the surface and no hole visible by which they entered. They laid them out on the grass, but when they went to look for them again, one was lost and the other had buried him- self in the meadow all but the tip of his tail. He heard some years ago a large flock of brant go over “yelling” very loud, flying low and in an irregu- lar dense flock like pigeons. He says the east shore of Fair Haven under the Hill is covered with heron-tracks. One of his boys had seen marks where an otter had slid and eaten fish near the mouth of Pole Brook (my Bidens Brook). Remembered old people saying that this river used to be a great hunting-place a hundred years ago or more. A still stream with meadows, and the deer used to come out on it. Had heard an old Mr. Hosmer, who lived where E. Conant does, say that he had shot three dozen muskrats at one shot at Birch Island (the island at mouth of Fair Haven Pond). His father caught the great turtle while fishing and sent him up to the house on Baker’s farm where a Jones lived, to get an axe to cut his head off. There were two or three men — Luke Potter, who lived where Hayden does, for one — playing cards, and when they learned what he wanted the axe for, they came down to the shore to see him, and they judged that he would weigh sixty pounds. ‘Two or three years ago he saw one caught that weighed forty-two pounds. I saw a muskrat-cabin apparently begun on a small hummock for a core, now just before the first frost and when the river wreck had begun to wash about. Those fine mouthfuls appear to be gathered from the river-bottom, — fine pontederias, sium, fontinalis, etc., etc., decayed but somewhat adhesive. See fresh pon- tederia blossoms still. Started up ten ducks, which had settled for the night below the bath place, apparently wood ducks. I doubt if I have distinguished the Bidens cernua. It may be the one I have thought a small chrysanthe- moides. I find these last with smaller rays and larger outer involucres and more or less bristly stems, yet equally connate and as regularly serrate, and it looks like a difference produced by growing in a drier soil. Many green-briar leaves are very agreeably thickly spotted now with reddish brown, or fine green on a yellow or green ground, producing a wildly variegated leaf. I have seen nothing more rich. Some of these curled leaves are five inches wide with a short point. It is a leaf now for poets to sing about, a leaf to in- spire poets. Now, while I am gathering grapes, I see them. It excites me to a sort of autumnal madness. They are leaves for Satyrus and Faunus to make their garlands of. My thoughts break out like them, spotted all over, yellow and green and brown. The freckled leaf. Perhaps they should be poison, to be thus spotted. I fancied these brown were blood-red spots, by contrast, but they are not. Now for the ripening year! Even leaves are beginning to be ripe. Garfield says he found a hen-hawk’s nest near Holden’s Swamp (the old ones had got his chickens), sixty feet up a white pine. He climbed up and set a trap in it baited with a fish, with a string ten feet long attached. The young, but just hatched, faced him, and he caught the old one by the legs thus. I have brought home a half-bushel of grapes to scent my chamber with. It is impossible to get them home in a basket with all their rich bloom on them, which, no less than the form of the clusters, makes their beauty. As I paddled home with my basket of grapes in the bow, every now and then their perfume was wafted to me in the stern, and I thought that I was passing a richly laden vine on shore. Some goldfinches twitter over, while I am pulling down the vines from the birch- tops. The ripest rattle off and strew the ground before I reach the clusters, or, while I am standing on tiptoe and endeavoring gently to break the tough peduncle, the petiole of a leaf gets entangled in the bunch and I am compelled to strip them all off loosely. “Yet once more . . I come to pluck your Dacian harsh and crude, And with fore’d fingers rude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year.” !

This morning I find a little hole, three quar- ters of an inch or an inch over, above my small tortoise eggs, and find a young tortoise coming out (apparently in the rainy night) just beneath. It is the Sternothe- rus odoratus — already has the strong scent — and now has drawn in its head and legs. Isee no traces of the. yolk, or what-not, attached. It may have been out of the egg some days. Only one as yet. I buried them in the garden June 15th. I am affected by the thought that the earth nurses these eggs. They are planted in the earth, and the earth takes care of them; she is genial to them and does not kill them. It suggests a certain vitality and intelligence in the earth, which I had not realized. This mother is not merely inanimate and inorganic. Though the immediate mother turtle abandons her offspring, the earth and sun are kind to them. The old turtle on which the earth rests takes care of them while the other waddles off. Earth was not made poisonous and deadly to them. The earth has some virtue in it; when seeds are put into it, they germinate; when turtles’ eggs, they hatch in due time. ‘Though the mother turtle remained and brooded them, it would still nevertheless be the universal world turtle which, through her, cared for them as now. Thus the earth is the mother of all creatures. Garfield said that one of his sons, while they were haying in the river meadows once, found a hundred little pickerel, an inch or inch and a half long, in [a] little hole in the meadow not bigger than a bushel basket and nearly dry. He took them out and put them into the river. Another time he himself found many hundred in a ditch, brought them home, and put them into his large tub. They there lived a spell without his feeding them, but, small as they were, lived on one another, and you could see the tails sticking out their mouths. It would seem as if their spawn was deposited in those little muddy-bottomed hollows in the meadows where we find the schools of young thus landlocked.

Yesterday and to-day the first regular rain-storm, bringing down more leaves, — elms, but- ton woods, and apple tree, —and decidedly raising the river and brooks. The still, cloudy, mizzling days, September Ist and 2d, the thunder-shower of even- ing of September 6th, and this regular storm are the first fall rains after the long drought. Already the grass both in meadows and on hills looks greener, and the whole landscape, this overcast rainy day, darker and more verdurous. Hills which have been russet and tawny begin to show some greenness. On account of the drought one crop has almost entirely failed this year thus far, which the papers have not spoken of. Last year, for the last three weeks of August, the woods were filled with the strong musty scent of decaying fungi, but this year I have seen very few fungi and have not noticed that odor at all, — a failure more perceptible to frogs and toads, but no doubt serious to those whom it concerns. As for birds: — About ten days ago especially I saw many large hawks, prob- ably hen-hawks and young, about. Within a week several of the small slate-colored and black-tipped hawks. August 20th, saw a sucker which I suppose must have been caught by a fish hawk. Hear screech owls and hooting owls these evenings. Have not noticed blue jays of late. Occasionally hear the phe-be note of chickadees. Partridges probably cease to mew for their young. For about three weeks have seen one or two small dippers. For ten days a few wood and probably black ducks. Small flocks of bluebirds about apple trees. Larks common, but have not heard them sing for some time. Am not sure that J have seen red-wings or other blackbirds for ten days. About three weeks ago a small flock of robins and pigeon wood- peckers. Robins common, and still hear some faint notes of woodpeck- ers. Saw a downy woodpecker as a rarity within a week. Believe I hear no song sparrows sing nowadays. See no F. hyemalis ; hear no quails. Heard my last phoebe August 26th. See no flocks of white-in-tails. Hear the nuthatch as a novelty within a week about street. Saw first tree sparrow about a week since in first rain.! Have seen pigeons about a fortnight. Have not distinguished rush sparrows for a long time, nor Savan- nah, nor yellow-winged. Seen no snipe since August 16th. Turtle doves for more than a month. A chip-sparrow seen within a few days. The warbling vireo still heard faintly in the morning. For three weeks blue herons common on meadows and great bittern. Green bittern rather earlier for most part. Have not heard kingfisher of late, — not for three weeks me- thinks. Methinks I heard a faint sound from a chewink within a week? Seen no barn swallows for a week. Heard no catbirds nor brown thrashers sing for long time, but seen the last at least within ten days. Whip-poor-wills still common. Think I saw white-throated (?) sparrows on button-bushes about a week ago, the mizzling day. Hear no golden robins for the last fortnight. Bats common. Not sure I have seen bobolinks since August 20th. Kingbirds seen within a day or two. Hummingbird within a week. Goldfinches common. Nighthawks still, but have not noticed the booming lately. Cherry-birds common. Cuckoo not heard lately. Meadow-hen (?) seen August 30th. Now generally ducks and other migratory birds are returning from north and ours going south.? Diplopappus linaritfolius and Aster undulatus appar- ently now in prime. ? {It is significant that no warblers are included, even negatively, in this list. Compare entry of June 9, 1854.]