30 June 1856 – 6 July 1856

P. M. — Paddled on the Acushnet. Passed through some schools of fishes which were rip- pling the surface about us in midstream. The back fins, very long and sharp, pro- jected two or three inches above water. Walton said afterward that they were menhaden.

Return to Concord. Looked at the birds in the Natural History Rooms in Boston.. Observed no white spots on the sparrow hawk’s wing, or on the pigeon or sharp-shinnéed hawk’s. Indeed they were so closed that I could not have seen them. Am uncertain to which my wing belongs. May I not have seen the white-crowned sparrow in company with the white-throated? They are much alike. Yet Wilson says they rarely associate. The hemlock and pine warbler are much alike. Isit possible I have con- founded them ?

P. M.— To Assabet River. In the main stream, at the Rock, I am surprised to see flags and pads, laying the foundation of an islet in the middle, where I had thought it deep before. Ap- parently a hummock lifted by ice sunk there in the spring, and this may be the way in which many an island has been formed in the river. I scare up one or two woodcocks in different places by the shore, where they are feeding, and in a meadow. They go off with a whistling flight. Can see where their bills have probed the mud. See a sternotherus on a small stump two feet over water. I approach and take hold of it, but cannot easily remove it. It appears to be shrunk on, withering away and dying there. It barely moves its head and eyes slightly, and its flippers look very much shrunken, yet it tumbles off after I leave. Apparently a male. I notice afterward, on succeeding days, many of them resting thus sluggishly, and find that I can approach and handle them and leave them as I found them. They appear much more sluggish than the other kinds now, though they were active enough in the spring. The tor- toises improve every rock, and willow slanting over the water, and every floating board and rail. You will see one on the summit of a black willow stump several feet high, and two or more part way up. Some tumble > from a height of five or six feet into the water before you. Even the great snap-turtle puts his head out and climbs up a rock on the bank with the rest.

A. M.— To Loring’s Pond. Pink-colored yarrow. Epilobium coloratum, a day or more. Young partridges (with the old bird), as big as robins, make haste into the woods from off the rail- road. Plucked some large luscious purple pyrus berries. Lactuca some days out. Borrowed Witherell’s boat and paddled over Loring’s Pond. A kingbird’s nest in fork of a button-bush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg. Much of this pond is now very shallow and muddy and crowded with pads, etc. I can hardly push through them. Yet I can see no more white lily pads shaped as that appears to have been which I found here a few weeks since. Many pickerel dart away from amidst the pads, and in one place I see one or two great snap- turtles. I notice two varieties (?), perhaps, of Asclepias Cor- nutt now out, one on the railroad meadow this side the Brooks Crossing, the other beyond the first mile-post above. The last has broader leaves and blunter and more decidedly mucronate, and pedicels and peduncles quite downy, the former little more than twice the length of the petals. The other has narrower and more pointed leaves, peduncles and pedicels but little downy com- paratively, the latter more than three times the length "of the petals and not so numerous as in the other. Vide their pods, if spiny, by and by. The Spergularia rubra was not open in the morning when I passed up, at 8 or 9 A. M., but was opened when I returned at noon, but closed again at 5 P. M. The notes of barn swallows, perhaps with their young, are particularly loud now and almost metallic, like that of a mackerel gull. The large evening-primrose below the foot of our garden does not open till some time between 6.30 and 8 p. M. or sundown. It was not open when I went to bathe, but freshly out in the cool of the evening at sun- down, as if enjoying the serenity of the hour.

P. M.— To Assabet Bath. Campanula aparinoides, roadside opposite centaurea, several days. Early low blueberries ripe. Crossed the river at bath place. On the sandy bank opposite, saw a wood tortoise voraciously eating sorrel leaves, under my face. In A. Hosmer’s ice-bared meadow south of Turnpike, hear the distressed or anxious peet of a peetweet, and see it hovering over its young, half grown, which runs beneath and suddenly hides securely in the grass when but few feet from me. White avens, evidently Bigelow’s Geum album (which Gray makes only a variety of G. Virginianum), a good while, very rough and so much earlier than the G. Vir- ginianum that only one flower remains. The heads have attained their full size, with twisted tails to the awns, while the other will not open for some days. I think Bigelow must be right. Lysvmachia lanceolata, a day or two. Rhus typhina in our yard; how long? Did not see it out in New Bedford ten days ago. There is a young red mulberry in the lower hedge beneath the celtis. G. Emerson says the sweet-briar was doubtless intro- duced, yet, according to Bancroft, Gosnold found it on the Elizabeth Isles.