4 August 1856 – 10 August 1856

P. M.— Carried party a-berrying to Co- nantum in boat. Lespedeza violacea, perhaps the largest-leafed variety, leafets one inch by one third inch, petioled, well out on side of Blackberry Steep. Scare up a young apparently summer duck, floating amid the pads, and the same again, coming within gunshot. I think it young because it is not very shy. Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning- point is reached. Conantum hillside is now literally black with berries. What a profusion of this kind of food Nature provides, as if to compensate for the scarcity last year! Fortunate that these cows in their pasture do not love them, but pass them by. The blackberries are already softening, and of all kinds there are many, many more than any or all creatures can gather. They are literally five or six species deep. First, away down in the shade under all you find, still fresh, the great very light blue (1. e. with a very thick blue bloom) Vacciniwm Pennsyl- vaniwum in heavy clusters, that early ambrosial fruit, delicate-flavored, thin-skinned, and cool, — Olympian fruit; then, next above, the still denser bunches and clusters of V. vacillans, of various varieties, firm and sweet, solid food; and, rising above these, large blue and also shining black huckleberries (Gaylussacia resinosa) of various flavors and qualities; and over all runs rampant the low blackberry (Rubus Cana- densis), weighing down the thicket with its wreaths of black fruit. Also here and there the high blackberry, just beginning, towers over all. You go daintily wading through this thicket, picking, perchance, only the big- © gest of the blackberries — as big as your thumb — and clutching here and there a handful of huckleberries or blueberries, but never, perchance, suspecting the de- licious cool blue-bloomed ones under all. This favor- able moist weather has expanded some of the huckle- berries to the size of bullets. Each patch, each bush, seems fuller and blacker than the last. Such a pro- fusion, yet you see neither birds nor beasts eating them, unless ants and the huckleberry-bug! I carried my hands full of bushes to the boat, and, returning, the two ladies picked fully three pints from these alone, cast- ing the bare bushes into the stream.

A. M.—On river. Mikania a day or two. Polygonum amphibium in water, slightly hairy, well out. Polygonum orientale, how long? P.M.—To house-leek via Assabet Bath. Trichostema, maybe several days in some places. Nightshade berries, how long?

Copious and continuous rain in the night, deluging, soaking rain, with thunder and lightning, beating down the crops; and this morning it is cooler and clearer and windier. P. M. — To Walden. The wind, or motion of the air, makes it much cooler on the railroad causeway ar hills, but in the woods it is as close and melting as before. Solidago altissima, a small specimen, a day or two. Apios tuberosa, some days. Rubus hispidus ripe. Middle umbels of the bristly aralia ripe. Desmodium nudiflorum, some time out at Peak. It is sometimes three feet high! Holly berries ripe. Clethra, how long? Some anychia shows green seed. Desmodiwm rotundifolium, some days at least. Cynoglossum Morisoni mostly gone to seed, roadside, at grape-vine just beyond my bean-field. Some is five feet high. Aster macrophyllus, apparently two or three days, at hillside, under beaked hazel. Eupatorium purpureum at Stow’s Pool, apparently several days, but more common there the tall hollow one, whorled to top, also out. Hear a nuthatch. Hveraciwm scabrum. Artificial, denaturalized persons cannot handle na- ture without being poisoned. If city-bred girls visit their country cousins, — go a-berrying with them, — they are sure to return covered with blueberry bumps at least. They exhaust all the lotions of the country apothecary for a week after. Unnamable poisons in- fect the air, as if they were pursued by imps. I have known those who forbade their children going into the woods at all.

Hemp, perhaps a week. Heard this forenoon what I thought at first to be chil- dren playing on pumpkin stems in the next yard, but it turned out to be the new steam-whistle music, what they call the Calliope (!) in the next town. It-sounded still more like the pumpkin stem near at hand, only a good deal louder. Again I mistook it for an instrument in the house or at the door, when it was a quarter of a mile off, from habit locating it by its loudness. At Acton, six miles off, it sounded like some new seraphim in the next house with the blinds closed. All the milkmen and their horses stood still to hear it. The horses stood it remarkably well. It was not so musical as the ordinary whistle. P. M. — With a berry party, mde to Conantum.

Rain, lightning, and thunder all day long in torrents. The ground was already saturated on the night of the 5th, and now it fills all gutters and low grounds. No sooner has one thunder-shower swept over and the sky begun to light up a little, than another darkens the west. We were told that lightning cleared the air and so cleared itself, but.now we lose our faith in that theory, for we have thunder|{-shower] after thunder-shower and lightning is become a drug. Na- ture finds it just as easy to lighten the last time as at first, and we cannot believe that the air was so very impure.

Saturday. Notwithstanding the very copious rain, with lightning, on the night of August 5th and the deluge which fell yesterday, raising the river still higher, it rained again and again with very vivid lightning, more copiously than ever, last night, and without long intervals all this day. Few, if any, can remember such a succession of thunder-storms merged into one long thun- der-storm, lasting almost continuously (the storm does) two nights and two days. We are surprised to see that it can lighten just as vividly, thunder just as loud, rain just as copiously at last as at first. P. M. — Up Assabet. The river is raised about two feet! My boat is nearly even full, though under the willows. The water stands nearly a foot over the highest part of the large flat rock by Island. ‘There is more current. The pads are drowned; hardly one to be seen afloat; the utmost length of their tethers does not permit them to come within a foot or ten inches of the surface. They lay smoothly on the top before, with considerable spare coil beneath; now they strain in vain toward the surface. All the Bidens Beckii is drowned too, and will be delayed, if not exterminated for this year. The water is cool to the bather after so much rain.

Sunday. The weather is fair and clear at last. The dog-days over at present, which have lasted since July 30th. P. M.— To Fair Haven Hill and Walden. Fragrant everlasting, maybe some days.