14 July 1856 – 20 July 1856

P. M.— To Muhlenbergii Brook. Anthony Wright found a lark’s nest with fresh eggs on the 12th in E. Hubbard’s meadow by ash tree, — two nests, probably one a second brood. Nasturtiwm his- pidum (?), apparently three or four days. See and hear martins twittering on the elms by riverside. Bass out about two days at Island. There is a pyrus twenty feet high with small fruit at Assabet Spring. Noli-me-tangere already springs at Muhlenbergii Brook, some days. Saw apparently my little ruby (?)- crested wren (?) on the weeds there. Senecio long gone to seed and dispersed. Canada thistle some time on Huckleberry Pasture-side beyond. Ceratophyllum with a dense whorl of twelve little oval red-dotted apparent flower-buds (?) in an axil. While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Close and Walden.

Sium out not long. I see many young shin- ers (?) * (they have the longitudinal bar), one to two and a half inches long, and young breams two or three inches long and quite broad. Geum Virginianum, apparently two or three days. See several bullfrogs lying fully out on pads at 5 p. M. They trump well these nights. It is remarkable how a copious rain, raising the river a little, flattens down the heart-leaf and other weeds at bathing-places.

Found a great many insects in white lilies which opened in pan this forenoon, which had never opened before. What regularand handsome petals! regu- larly concave toward the inside, and calyx hooked at tip. P. M. — To Water Dock Meadow and Linnea Hill- side. Hear a new note from bank swallows when going over the Hosmer pastures, a sort of screep screep, shrill and like what I have referred to the barn swallow. They are probably out with young. Ludwigia palustris and ilysanthes have been out apparently some time on the flat Hosmer shore or meadow, where the surface has been laid bare by the ice. There, too, the Hypericum Sarothra has pushed up abundantly. I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long; also young frogs a little larger. Horse-mint out at Clamshell, apparently two or three days. Bathed at Clamshell. See great schools of minnows, apparently shiners, hovering in the clear shallow next the shore. They seem to choose such places for security. They take pretty good care of themselves and are harder to catch with the hands than you expect, darting out of the way at last quite swiftly. Caught three, however, between my hands. They have brighter golden irides, all the abdomen conspicuously pale-golden, the back and half down the sides pale-brown, a broad, distinct black band along sides (which methinks marks the shiner), and comparatively transparent beneath bebind vent. When the water is gone I am surprised to see how they can skip or spring from side to side in my cup-shaped two - hands for a long time. This to enable them to get off floating planks or pads on the shore when in fright they may have leaped on to them. But they are very tender, and the sun and air soon kill them. If there is any water in your hand they will pass out through the smallest crack between your fingers. They are about three quar- ters of an inch long generally, though of various sizes. Half a dozen big bream come quite up to me, as I stand in the water. They are not easily scared in such a case. The large skunk-cabbage fruit looks quite black now where the haymakers have passed. Stooping to drink at the Hosmer Spring, I saw a hundred caddis-cases, of light-colored pebbles, at the bottom, and a dozen or twenty crawled half-way up the side of the tub, appar- ently on their way out to become perfect insects. Cows in their pasture, going to water or elsewhere, make a track four or five inches deep and frequently not more than ten inches wide. The great water dock has been out some days at least. Its valves are quite small at first, but lower leaves pownted. 1 hear in the meadow there a faint incessant z-ing sound, as of small locusts in the meadow-grass. Under the oak in Brown’s moraine pasture, by Water Dock Meadow, a great arum more than three feet high, like a tropical plant, in open land, with leafets more than a foot long. There is rich-weed there, apparently not quite out.

P. M.—To Wheeler meadow to look at willows. Again scare up a woodcock, apparently seated or sheltered in shadow of ferns in the meadow on the cool mud in the hot afternoon. Rosa Carolina, some time, at edge of Wheeler meadow near Island Neck. You see almost everywhere on the muddy river bot- tom, rising toward the surface, first, the coarse multifid leaves of the Ranunculus Purshii, now much the worse for the wear; second, perhaps, in coarseness, the cera- tophyllum, standing upright; third, perhaps, the Bidens Beckwi, with its leafets at top; then the Utricu- laria vulgaris, with its black or green bladders, and the two lesser utricularias in many places.

P. M.-— Marlborough Road via railroad and Dugan wood-lot.

P. M. — Up Assabet. Button-bush, apparently two or three days. I suspect that those very variously formed leaves in and about woods which come to naught — like the sium in deep water — are of the nabalus. Caught a middle-sized copper-colored devil’s-needle (with darker spots on wings), sluggish, on a grass stem, with many dark-colored elliptical eggs packed closely to outside, under its breast.