2 June 1856 – 8 June 1856

Carum, 2. e. caraway, in garden. Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. Pp. M. — With R. W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction. Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April.t’ Returned by bridle-road. Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more. English haw- thorn will open apparently in two days. Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat. 5 p. M.— To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? White maple keys conspicuous. In the first volume of Brewster’s “‘ Life of Newton” I 1 fAlluding to the tradition that on the day of the “‘ Concord Fight” (April 19, 1775) grass and grain were already waving in the wind, the season being exceptionally early.] read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the ‘‘ Philosophical Transactions ” at five hundred feet distance.

Tuesday. Surveying for John Hosmer be- yond pail-factory. Hosmer says that seedling white birches do not grow larger than your arm, but cut them down and they spring up again and grow larger. While clearing a line through shrub oak, which put his eyes out, he asked, “What is shrub oak made for?” R. Hoar, I believe, bought that (formerly) pine lot of Loring’s which is now coming up shrub oak. Hosmer says that he will not see any decent wood there as long as he lives. H. says he had a lot of pine in Sudbury, which being cut, shrub oak came up. He cut and burned and raised rye, and the next year (it being sur- rounded by pine woods on three sides) a dense growth of pine sprang up. As I have said before, it seems to me that the squir- rels, etc., disperse the acorns, etc., amid the pines, they being a covert for them to lurk in, and when the pines are cut the fuzzy shrub oaks, etc., have the start. If you cut the shrub oak soon, probably pines or birches, maples, or other trees which have light seeds will spring next, because squirrels, etc., will not be likely to carry acorns into open land. If the pine wood had been surrounded by white oak, probably that would have come up after the pine.? While running a line in the woods, close to the water, on the southwest side of Loring’s Pond, I observed a chickadee sitting quietly within a few feet. Suspecting a nest, I looked and found it in a small hollow maple stump which was about five inches in diameter and two feet high. I looked down about a foot and could just discern the eggs. Breaking off a little, I managed to get my hand in and took out some eggs. There were seven, making by their number an unusual figure as they lay in the nest, a sort of egg rosette, a circle around with one (or more) in the middle. In the meanwhile the bird sat silent, though rather restless, within three feet. ‘The nest was very thick and warm, of average depth, and made of the bluish-slate rabbit’s (?) fur. The eggs were a perfect oval, five eighths inch long, white with small reddish-brown or rusty spots, especially about larger end, partly developed. The bird sat on the remaining eggs next day. I called off the boy in another direction that he might not find it. Plucked a white lily pad with rounded sinus and lobes in Loring’s Pond, a variety. Picked up a young wood tortoise, about an inch and a half long, but very orbicular. Its scales very distinct, and as usual very finely and distinctly sculptured, but there was no orange on it, only buff or leather-color on the sides beneath. So the one of similar rounded form and size and with distinct scales but faint yellow spots on back must have been a young spotted turtle, I think, after all.

Surveying for J. Hosmer. Very warm. While running a line on the west edge o. Loring’s Pond, south of the brook, found, on a hummock in the open swamp, in the midst of bushes, at the foot of a pitch pine, a nest about ten inches over, made of dry sedge and moss. I think it must have been a duck’s nest. This pond and its islets, half flooded and inaccessible, afford excellent places. Anthony Wright says that he used to get slippery elm bark from a place southwest of Wetherbee’s Mill, about ten rods south of the brook. He says there was once a house at head of hollow next beyond Clamshell. Pointed out the site of “ Perch *” Hosmer’s house in the small field south of road this side of Cozzens’s; all smooth now. Dr. Heywood worked over him a fortnight, while the perch was dissolving in his throat. He got little compassion generally, and the nickname “Perch” into the bargain. Think of going to sleep for fourteen nights with a perch, his fins set and his scales (!), dissolving in your throat! ! What dreams! What waking thoughts! Also showed where one Shaw, whom he could just re- member, used to live, in the low field north of Dennis’s barn, and also another family in another house by, him. English hawthorn from Poplar Hill blossoms in house.

Thursday. P. M.— To Indian Ditch. Achillea Miullefolium. Black cherry, apparently yesterday. ‘The Muscicapa Coopertsings pe pe pe’, sit- ting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump (?), etc., unlike kingbird. Return by J. Hosmer Desert. Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the — red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves, — some even in swamps. Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack. This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields. A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres. The bird utters its peculiar tchuck near by. Pitch pine out, the first noticed on low land, maybe a day or two. Froth on pitch pine. A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, eight feet from ground, next to the stem, of twigs lined with root-fibres; three fresh eggs, dark dull greenish, with dusky spots equally distributed all over, in Hosmer (?) pines twenty- seven paces east of wall and fifty-seven from factory road by wall. Jay screams as usual. Sat till I got within ten feet at first. . A cuckoo’s nest’ with three light bluish-green eggs partly developed, short with rounded ends, nearly of a size; in the thicket up railroad this side high wood, in a black cherry that had been lopped three feet from ground, amid the thick sprouts; a nest of nearly aver- age depth (?), of twigs lined with green leaves, pine- needles, etc., and edged with some dry, branchy weeds. The bird stole off silently at first. Five rods south of railroad. I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans (??), at least for the present, though I do not see grooves in stem. Oakes, in his catalogue in Thompson’s “ History ~ of Vermont,” says it is not found in northeast out of that State. The pods of the common one also turn upward. It is about four flowered; no petals; pods, which have formed in tumbler, more than twice but not thrice as long as calyx, bent down nearly at right angles with peduncles and then curving upward. The common cerastium is in tufts, spreading, a darker green and much larger, hairy but not glutinous, pods but little longer than calyx (as yet) and upright.!

P. M.— To Andromeda Ponds. Cold mizzling weather. In the large circular hole or cellar at the turntable on the railroad, which they are repairing, I see a star- nosed mole endeavoring in vain to bury himself in the sandy and gravelly bottom. Some inhuman fellow has cut off his tail. It is blue-black with much fur, a very thick, plump animal, apparently some four inches long, but he occasionally shortens himself a third or more. Looks as fat as a fat hog. His fore feet are large and set sidewise or on their edges, and with these he shovels the earth aside, while his large, long, starred snout is feeling the way and breaking ground. I see deep indentations in his fur where his eyes are situated, and once I saw distinctly his eye open, a dull blue (?)- black bead, not so very small, and he very plainly no- ticed my movements two feet off. He was using his eye as plainly as any creature that I ever saw. Yet Em- mons says it is a question whether their eyes are not merely rudimentary. I suppose this was the Condylura ton ots macroura, since that is most common, but only an inch ‘of its tail was left, and that was quite stout. I carried him along to plowed ground, where he buried himself in a minute or two. Still see cherry-birds in flocks of five or six. A catbird- nest on shore of Andromeda and in shrub oak, three feet high, twigs and bark shreds lined with root-fibres; three eggs. ‘Those nests in the andromeda are blackbird’s. Many sound the alarm while I am wading through the swamp. Noticed one with three eggs. That willow, male and female, opposite to Trillium Woods on the railroad, I find to be the Salix rostrata, or long-beaked willow, one of the ochre-flowered (I had remarked the peculiar yellow of its flowers) willows (fulve) of Barratt. It is now just beginning to open its long beaks. The S. cordata is another of the ochre- flowered ones. How well suited the lining of a bird’s nest, not only for the comfort of the young, but to keep the eggs from breaking! Fine elastic grass stems or root-fibres, pine- needles, or hair, or the like. These tender and brittle things which you can hardly carry in cotton lie there without harm. J. Hosmer, who is prosecuting Warner for flowing his land, says that the trees are not only broken off when young by weight of ice, but, being rubbed and barked by it, become warty or bulge out there.

We have had six days either rain-threatening or rainy, the last two somewhat rainy or mizzling. P. M. — To Cedar Swamp. Pulled up a yellow lily root, four feet long and branch- ing, two and a half inches [in] diameter and about same size at each end where it had broken off, tree-like. Broken off, it floats. Great white rootlets put out all along it. I find no Andromeda racemosa in flower. It is dead at top and slightly leafed below. Was it the severe winter, or cutting off the protecting evergreens? It grows four or five rods from knoll near a sawed stump between two large red maple clumps. The three-leaved Solomon’s-seal has almost entirely done, while the two- leaved is quite abundant. Stellaria longifolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out. It is obviously different from what I call S. borealis, much more tall (one foot high) and upright, with branches ascending (not spreading) (the other grows in a dense mass at Corner Spring); leaves longer and more linear, and not at all ciliate like the other; stem much sharper-angled, almost winged; flower-buds more long and slender; and grows in high grass and is later. I observe in.a mass of damp shavings and leaves and sand there, in the shade, a little prostrate willow just coming into flower, perhaps a black willow. Pulling it up, I find it to be a twig about sixteen inches long, two thirds buried in the damp mass. This was probably broken off by the ice, brought down, washed up, and buried like a layer there; and now, for two thirds its length, it has put out rootlets an inch or two long abun- dantly, and leaves and catkins from the part above ground. So vivaciousis the willow, availing itself of every accident to spread along the river’s bank. The ice that strips it only disperses it the more widely. It never says die. May I be as vivacious as a willow. Some species are so brittle at the base of the twigs that they break on the least touch, but they are as tough above as tender at base, and these twigs are only thus shed like seeds which float away and plant themselves in the first bank on which they lodge. I commonly litter my boat with a shower of these black willow twigs whenever I run into them. A kingbird’s nest on a black cherry, above Barbarea Shore, loosely constructed, with some long white rags dangling; one egg. At Cedar Swamp, saw the pe-pe catching flies like a wood pewee, darting from its perch on a dead cedar twig from time to time and returning to it. It appeared to have a black crown with some crest, yellowish (?) bill, gray-brown back, black tail, two faint whitish bars on wings, a dirty cream-white throat, and a gray or ash white breast and beneath, whitest in middle. I had noticed when coming up the river two or three dead suckers, one with a remarkable redness about the anal fins; and this reminded me of the ephemere. It was the 2d of June, 1854, that I observed them in such numbers. When I returned to my boat, about five, the weather being mizzling enough to require an um- brella, with an easterly wind and dark for the hour, my boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemerz over the water, though not so great as that. The greater part were flying down-stream against the wind, but if you watched one long enough you would see him suddenly turn at a length and fly swiftly back up the stream. They ad- vanced against the wind faster than I floated along. They were not coupled nor coupling, — I only noticed two coupled, — but flew, most of them, with their bodies curved, thus: or more, and from time to G - time each one descended to the water and touched it, or | rested on it a second or two, sometimes several minutes. They were generally able to rise, but very often before it arose, or not being able to rise, it was seized by a fish. While some are flying down they are met by others coming up. The water was dimpled with the leaping fish. They reach about ten or fifteen feet high over the water, and I also saw a stream of them about: as thick over a narrow meadow a dozen rods from the water in the woods. The weather was evidently un- favorable, what with the wind and the rain, and they were more or less confined to the shore, hovering high over the bushes and trees, where the wind was strong over the river. I had not noticed any on leaves. At one place, against Dodge’s Brook, where they were driven back by a strong head wind at a bend, more than usual were wrecked on the water and the fishes were leaping more numerously than elsewhere. The river was quite alive with them, and I had not thought there were so many in it, — great black heads and tails continually - thrust up on all sides of my boat. You had only to keep your eye on a floating fly a minute to see some fishy monster rise and swallow it with more or less skill and plashing. Some skillfully seized their prey without = much plashing, rising in a low curve and just showing their backs; others rose up perpendicularly, half their length out of water, showing their black backs or white bellies or gleaming sides; others made a noisy rush at their prey and leaped entirely out of water, falling with a loud plash. You saw twenty black points at once. They seemed to be suckers; large fish, at any rate, and probably various kinds. What a sudden surfeit the fishes must have! They are of various sizes, but generally their solid bodies about three quarters of an inch long or less, yel- lowish tinge, transparent, with rows of brown spots; wings gauze-like, with a few opaque brown spots.’ i June 9. P. M. — To Corner Spring. Without an umbrella, thinking the weather settled at last. There are some large cumuli with glowing downy cheeks floating about. Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath. It suggests houses that lie under the shade, the repose and siesta of summer noons, the thunder-cloud, bathing, and all that belongs to summer. These veils are now spread here and there over the village. It suggests also the creak of crickets, a June sound now fairly begun, inducing contemplation and philosophic thoughts, — the sultry hum of insects. A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge fly on our window is rather smaller than the average of the former; has but two streamers and no dark spots on wings. causeway; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence. Veronica scutellata (how long?) at Corner Spring. Compelled to squat under a bank and stand under a wood-pile through a shower. 6.30 p. mM. — Up Assabet. Again, about seven, the ephemerse came out, in num- bers as many as last night, now many of them coupled, even tripled; and the fishes leap as before. A young robin abroad.