1 September 1856 – 7 September 1856

P. M. — With R. W. E. to Saw Mill and Solidago odora. He has just had four of his fir trees next his house cut, they shaded his windows so. They were set out by Coolidge, E. thinks twenty-eight years ago. ‘The largest has thirty-seven annual rings at the base and measures at one foot from the ground forty-six and a half inches in circumference; has made, on an average, about half an inch of wood in every direction. There is no Bidens cernua, if that is it, by the Turn- pike. It was apparently killed by the recent high water. Solidago latifolia not out quite. We go admiring the pure and delicate tints of fungi on the surface of the damp swamp there, following up along the north side of the brook past the right of the old camp. There are many very beautiful lemon- yellow ones of various forms, some shaped like buttons, some becoming finely scalloped on the edge, some club- shaped and hollow, of the most delicate and rare but decided tints, contrasting well with the decaying leaves about them. There are others also pure white, others a wholesome red, others brown, and some even a light indigo-blue above and beneath and throughout. When colors come to be taught in the schools, as they should | | | . Coral Fungus be, both the prism (or the rainbow) and these fungi should be used by way of illustration, and if the pupil does not learn colors, he may learn fungi, which perhaps is better. You almost envy the wood frogs and toads that hop amid such gems,-—— some pure and bright enough for a breastpin. Out of every crevice between the dead leaves oozes some vehicle of color, the unspent wealth of the year, which Nature is now casting forth, as if it were only to empty herself. Cohush berries appear now to be in their prime, and arum berries, and red choke-berries, which last further up in this swamp, with their peculiar glossy red and squarish form, are really very handsome. A few medeola berries ripe. The very dense clusters of the smilacina berries, finely purple-dotted on a pearly ground, are very interesting; also the smaller and similar clusters of the two-leaved convallaria. Many of the last and a few of the first are already turned red, clear semilucent red. They have a plea- sant sweetish taste. | ce Cistus flowers well out again in the old camp path, now nearly all grown up. I notice that the birches have sprung up in close, straight rows in the old ruts there. I think it stands about thus with asters and golden- rods now : — The early meadow aster is either quite withered or much the worse for the wear, partly on account of the freshet. Diplopappus cornifolius, not seen of late. D. umbellatus, perhaps in prime or approaehing it, but not much seen. , A. patens, apparently now in prime and the most abundant of the larger asters. ' 52 A. A. A. A. prime. . inariifolius, hardly noticed. Na) macrophyllus, probably past prime. acuminatus, not seen at all. Radula, rather past prime. dumosus, very common, most so of the small white, and in undulatus, hardly one seen yet open, a late aster. corymbosus, in prime, or maybe past. . levis, just beginning.* . Tradescanti, got to be pretty common, but not yet in prime. . puniceus, hardly yet in prime.’ . longijolius, hardly one seen yet. . multiflorus, not one seen yet.’

P. M. —'To Painted-Cup Meadow. Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves, — light reflected from the surface of each one, for they are grown and worn and washed smooth at last, no infantile downiness on them. This, say ever since August 26th, and we have had no true dog-day common about Sept. Ist. weather since the copious rains began, or three or four weeks. A sheeny light reflected from the burnished leaves as so many polished shields, and a steady creak from the locusts these days. Frank Harding has caught a dog-day locust which lit on the bottom of my boat, in which he was sitting, and z-ed there. When you hear him you have got to the end of the alphabet and may imagine the &. It has a mark somewhat like a small writing w on the top of its thorax. A few pigeons were seen a fortnight ago. I have noticed none in all walks, but G. Minott, whose mind runs on them so much, but whose age and infirmi- ties confine him to his wood-shed on the hillside, saw a small flock a fortnight ago. I rarely pass at any season of the year but he asks if I have seen any pigeons. One man’s mind running on pigeons, [he] will sit thus in the midst of a village, many of whose inhabitants never see nor dream of a pigeon except in the pot, and where even naturalists do not ob- serve [them], and he, looking out with expectation and faith from morning til night, will surely see them. I think we may detect that some sort of prepara- tion and faint expectation preceded every discovery we have made. We blunder into no discovery but it will appear that we have prayed and disciplined ourselves for it. Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small, scarcely a third as large as those of the common species, and for some unac- countable reason this distinction kept recurring to me, and I regarded the size of the flowers I saw, though I did not believe that it grew here; and in a day or two my eyes fell on [it], aye, in three different places, and different varieties of it. Also, a short time ago, I was satisfied that there was but one kind of sunflower (divaricatus) indigenous here. Hearing that one had found another kind, it occurred to me that I had seen a taller one than usual lately, but not so distinctly did I remember this as to name it to him or even fully remember it myself. (I rather remembered it after- ward.) But within that hour my genius conducted me to where I had seen the tall plants, and it was the other man’s new kind. The next day I found a third kind, miles from there, and, a few days after, a fourth in another direction. It commonly chances that I make my most interest- ing botanical discoveries when I [am] in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things. My father asked John Legross if he took an interest in politics and did his duty to his country at this crisis. He said he did. He went into the wood-shed and read the newspaper Sundays. Such is the dawn of the literary taste, the first seed of literature that is planted in the new country. His grandson may be the author of a Bhagvat-Geeta. I see bright-yellow blossoms on perfectly crimson Hypericum angulosum in the S. lanceolata path. By the Indian hemp at the stone bridge, am surprised to see the Salix lucida, a small tree with very marked and handsome leaves, on the sand, water’s edge, at the great eddy. The branches of an inch in diameter are smooth and ash-colored, maple-like; the recent shoots stout and yellowish-green, very brittle at base. The leaves are the largest of any willow I have seen, ovate-oblong or ovate-lanceolate, with a long, narrow, tapering point (cuspidate), some on vigorous shoots, two and a half by seven inches wide in the blade, glandular-serrate, with pedicellate glands at the rounded base, thick, smooth, and glossy above, smooth and green beneath, with broad crescent-shaped, glandular- toothed stipules at base of petioles, five eighths to one inch long. According to Emerson, “Sir W. J. Hooker says it is one of the most generally diffused of all the willows in British North America.” Captain Hubbard said on Sunday that he had plowed up an Indian gouge, but how little impression that had made on him compared with the rotting of his cranberries or the loss of meadow-grass! It seemed to me that it made an inadequate impression compared with many trivial events. Suppose he had plowed up five dollars! The botanist refers you, for wild [szc] and we presume wild plants, further inland or westward to so many miles from Boston, as if Nature or the Indians had any such preferences. Perchance the ocean seemed wilder to them than the woods. As if there were pri- marily and essentially any more wildness in a western acre than an eastern one! The S. lucida makes about the eleventh willow that I have distinguished. When I find a new and rare plant in Concord I seem to think it has but just sprung up here, —that it is, and not I am, the newcomer, — while it has. grown here for ages before I was born. It transports me in imagination to the Saskatchewan. It grows alike on the bank of the Concord and of the Mackenzie River, proving them a kindred soil. I see their broad and glossy leaves reflecting the autumn light this moment all along those rivers. Through this leaf I communicate with the Indians who roam the boundless Northwest. It tastes the same nutriment in sand of the Assabet and its water as in that of the Saskatchewan and Jasper Lake, suggesting that a short time ago the shores of this river were as wild as the shores of those. We are dwelling amid these wild plants still, we are eating the huckleberries which lately only the Indian ate and dried, we are raising and eating his wild and nutritive maize, and if we have imported wheat, it is but our wild rice, which we annually gather with grate- ful awe, like Chippewas. Potatoes are our ground- nuts. Sprranthes cernua, apparently some days at least, though not yet generally; a cool, late flower, growing with fringed gentian. I cannot yet even find the leaves of the latter — at the house-leek brook. I had come to the Assabet, but could not wade the river, it was so deep and swift. The very meadow, poke-logan, was a quarter of a mile long and as deep as the river before. So I had come round over the bridge. In Painted-Cup Meadow the ferns are yellowing, imbrowned, and crisped, as 1f touched by frost (?),. yet it may be owing to the rains. It is evident that, at this season, excessive rain will ripen and kill the leaves as much as a drought does earlier. I think our straw- berries recently set out have died, partly in consequence. Perhaps they need some dryness as well as warmth at this season. Plainly dog-days and rain have had the most to do as yet with the changing and falling of the leaves. So trees by water change earliest, sassafrases at Cardinal Shore, for example, while those on hill are not turned red at all. These ferns I see, with here and there a single maple bough turned scarlet, — this quite rare. Some of the small early blueberry bushes are a clear red (Vaccinvum Pennsylvanicum), and the hnger- ing clusters of blueberries contrast strangely with the red leaves of the V. vacillans. Smooth sumachs show quite red on dry, warm hillsides. While I am plucking the almost spicy blueberries amid the crimson leaves there on the springy slope, the cows gather toward the outlet of their pastures and low for the herdsman, reminding me that the day is drawing to a close. Centaurea will apparently be entirely done in a week. How deceptive these maps of western rivers! Me- thought they were scattered according to the fancy of the map-maker, — were dry channels at best, — but it » turns out that the Missouri at Nebraska City is three times as wide as the Mississippi at Burlington, and Grasshopper Creek, perhaps, will turn out to be as big as the Thames or Hudson. There was an old gentleman here to-day who lived in Concord when he was young and remembers how Dr. Ripley talked to him and other little boys from the pulpit, as they came into church with their hands full of lihes, saying that those lilies looked so fresh that they must have been gathered that morning! Therefore they must have committed the sin of bath- ing this morning! Why, this is as sacred a river as the Ganges, sir. I feel this difference between great poetry and small: that in the one, the sense outruns and overflows the words; in the other, the words the sense.

P. M. — To Hubbard’s Swamp for Vibur- num nudum berries. The river smooth, though full, with the autumn sheen on it, as on the leaves. I see painted tortoises with their entire backs covered with perfectly fresh clean black scales, such as no rubbing nor varnishing can produce, contrasting advantageously with brown and muddy ones. One little one floats past on a drift- ing pad which he partly sinks. I find one sassafras berry, dark-blue in its crimson cup, club-shaped. It is chiefly stone, and its taste is like that of tar (!), methinks, far from palatable. So many plants, the indigenous and the bewilder- ing variety of exotics, you see in conservatories and nurserymen’s catalogues, or read of in English books, and the Royal Society did not make one of them, and knows no more about them than you! All truly indige- nous and wild on this earth. I know of no mark that betrays an introduced plant, as none but the gardener can tell what flower has strayed from its parterre; but where the seed will germinate and the plant spring and grow, there it is at home. Weeds are uncultivated herbaceous plants which do not bear handsome flowers. | Polygala sanguinea is now as abundant, at least, as at any time, and perhaps more conspicuous in the meadows where I look for fringed gentian. Gathered four or five quarts of Viburnum nudum berries, now in their prime, attracted more by the beauty of the cymes than the flavor of the fruit. The berries, which are of various sizes and forms, —ellip- tical, oblong, or globular, — are in different stages of maturity on the same cyme, and so of different colors, —green or white, rose-colored, and dark purple or black, —72. e. three or four very distinct and marked colors, side by side. If gathered when rose-colored, they soon turn dark purple and are soft and edible, though before bitter. They add a new and variegated wildness to the swampy sprout-lands. Remarkable for passing through so many stages of color before they arrive at maturity. A singular and pleasing con- trast, also, do the different kinds of viburnum and cornel berries present when compared with each other. The white berries of the panicled cornel, soon and apparently prematurely dropping from its pretty fingers, are very bitter. So also are those of the C. sericea. One carrion-flower berry is turning blue in its dense spherical cluster. Castile-soap galls are crowding the more legitimate acorn on the shrub oak.

P. M. — To Miles Swamp, Conantum. What are those small yellow birds with two white bars on wings, about the oak at Hubbard’s Grove? Aralia racemosa berries just ripe, at tall helianthus by bass [?] beyond William Wheeler’s; not edible. Indian hemp out of bloom. Butterflies in road a day or two. The crackling flight of grasshoppers. The grass also is all alive with them, and they trouble me by getting into my shoes, which are loose, and obliging me to empty them occasionally. Measured an archangelica stem (now of course dry) in Corner Spring Swamp, eight feet eight inches high, and seven and a quarter inches in circumference at ground. It is a somewhat zigzag stem with few joints and a broad umbelliferous top, so that it makes a great show. One of those plants that have their fall early. There are many splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime,’ forming a dense ovate head on a short peduncle; the individual berries of various sizes, between pear and mitre and club form, flattened against each other on a singular (now purple and white) core, which is hollow. What rank and venomous luxuriance in this swamp sprout- land! Viola pedata again. I see where squirrels have eaten green sweet viburnum berries on the wall, to- gether with hazelnuts. The former, gathered red, turn dark purple and shrivelled, like raisins, in the house, and are edible, but chiefly seed. ‘The fever- bush is conspicuously flower-budded. Even its spicy leaves have been cut by the tailor bee, and circular pieces taken out. He was, perhaps, attracted by its smoothness and soundness. Large puffballs, sometime.

Friday. To Brattleboro, Vt. Will not the prime of goldenrods and asters be just before the first severe frosts ? | As I ride along in the cars, I think that the ferns, etc., are browned and crisped more than usual at this season, on account of the very wet weather. Found on reaching Fitchburg that there was an in- terval of three and a half hours between this and the Brattleboro train, and so walked on, on the track, with shouldered valise. Had observed that the Nashua River in Shirley was about one mile west of Groton Junction, if I should ever want to walk there. Ob- served by railroad, in Fitchburg, low slippery elm shrubs with great, rough, one-sided leaves. Solidago lanceolata past prime, a good deal. Aster puniceus in prime. About one mile from West Fitch- burg depot, westward, I saw the panicled elder berries on the railroad but just beginning to redden, though it is said to ripen long before this. As I was walking through Westminster, I remembered that G. B. Emer- son says that he saw a handsome clump of the Salix lucida on an island in Meeting-House Pond in this town, and, looking round, I saw a shrub of it by the rail- road, about one mile west of West Fitchburg depot, and several times afterward within a mile or two. Also in the brook behind Mr. Alcott’s house in Walpole, N. H. Took the cars again in Westminster. The scenery began to be mountainous and interesting in Royalston and Athol, but was more so in Erving. In North- field first observed fields of broom-corn very common, Sorghum saccharatum, taller than corn. Alcott says they bend down the heads before they gather them, to fit them for brooms. Hereabouts women and children are already picking hops in the fields, in the shade of large white sheets, like sails.

At Brattleboro. Mr. Charles C. (?) Frost showed me a printed list of the flowers of B., furnished by him to a newspaper in B. some years since. He says he finds Aster sumplex and A. ptarmicoides there (according to Oakes the latter is not found in New England out of Vermont), the latter now covered by the high water of the river; also A. concinnus, of Wood, perhaps (not in Gray) (vide specimen pressed); also Solidago patula and serotina, as well as Canadensis and gigantea. Also finds, he says, Helianthus giganteus (Oakes gives only H. diwaricatus and decapetalus to Vermont), with quite small flowers, bank of river, behind town-house; and decapetalus.and strumosus. Speaks of the fragrance of the dicksonia fern and the sensitiveness of the sen- sitive fern. If you take a tender plant by the stem, the warmth of your hand will cause the leaves to curl. Thought my great dish-cover fungus a Coprolus (?) (so called from growing in dung ?). Read in Thompson’s History of Vermont, which con- tains very good natural history, including a catalogue of the Plants of Vermont made by Oakes and, in the last edition, additional ones found by Frost. A. M. — Walked down the railroad about a mile, returning partly by river-bank. The depot is on the site of “‘Thunderbolt’s” house. He was a Scotch highwayman. Called himself Dr. Wilson (?) when here. The prevailing polygonum in B. was a new one to me, P. Pennsylvanicum, but not roughish on the veins, apparently in prime, with the aspect of P. Persicaria, sometimes spreading and stretching four feet along a hillside, but commonly in rather low ground, roadsides. For the first time dis- tinguish the Aster cordifolius, a prevailing one in B. and but just beginning to flower; like an A. undu- latus with narrow-winged petioles and sharp-toothed leaves; amid bushes and edges of woods, sometimes four feet high, panicled. I see the flowering raspberry still in bloom. This plant is quite common here. The fruit, now ripe, is red and quite agreeable, but not abundant. Desmodium Canadense still. Maple-leaved viburnum very abun- dant here, a prevailing shrub. Berries apparently now in prime, or a little earlier than this, ovoid, dull blue-black. Pluck some rose leaves by Connecticut (vide press), with now smooth, somewhat pear-shaped hips; not a sweet-briar. Also Cornus circinata berries, very light blue or bluish-white. Cirsium discolor, roadside below depot, apparently in prime, much like lanceolatum, but smaller leaves, whitish beneath and inner scales unarmed. Frost said that Dr. Kane left B. the morning of the day I arrived, and had given him a list of arctic plants brought home by him, which he showed me, — pages from his Report, in press. The Solidago Canadensis very common, apparently in prime; also perfectly smooth ones with glaucous stems like some of ours. I am in doubt whether the last, or any that we have in Concord, is the S. sero- tina or gigantea. Frost says he distinguishes both, but Oakes does not give the S. serotina to Vermont. I should say he had but one kind, which varied from leaves rough above and on the veins beneath, and stems smooth below and pubescent above, to leaves quite smooth on both sides and stems very smooth and glaucous; rays also vary very much in size. Or are these only varieties of the Canadensis ? ? IT find small grapes a third of an inch in diameter, many ripe, on the bank of the Connecticut, — plea- santly acid. Clusters three to four or five inches long. The leaves are sharply toothed and green on both sides. Is it the Vitis cordifolia?’ I see also a vine with leaves rusty-downy beneath and not conspicuously toothed, with equally small now green grapes, appar- ently like ours. Is not this V. estivalis? Of the lat- ter the berries are said to be pleasant, and ripe in ‘October.’ Eupatorium ageratoides, white snake-root, in rather low ground or on banks along riverside, apparently in prime. Apparently Helianthus decapetalus, or cut- toothed helianthus, the teeth much larger than with us. Solidago arguta very common, apparently in prime, with sharp-toothed, more or less elliptic leaves and slender terminal drooping racemes; size of S. stricta.

Sunday. At Brattleboro, Vt. a. M.— Climbed the hill behind Mr. Addison Brown’s. The leaves of the Tvarella cordifolia very abundant in the woods, but hardly sharp-lobed. Also observed the leaves of the Hepatica triloba. Was that Szuwm lineare in the pool on the hilltop? Oakes allows only S. latefoliwm to grow in Vermont. The seeds are ap- parently ribbed like ours. (Vide press.) Found the lemna mantling that pool. Mrs. Brown has found it in flower there. Flowering dogwood on hill. P. M. — Up the bank of the Connecticut to West River, up that to a brook, and up that nearly to hos- pital. ; The Connecticut, though unusually high (several feet more than usual), looks low, there being four or five or six rods of bare gravel on each side, and the bushes and weeds covered with clayey soil from a freshet. Not a boat to be seen on it. The Concord is worth a hundred of it for my purposes. It looks narrow as well as shallow. No doubt it is dwarfed by the mountain rising directly from it in front, which, as usual, looking nearer than it is, makes the opposite shore seem nearer. The Solidago Canadensis, and the smooth three- ribbed one, and nemoralis, etc., the helianthus (appar- ently decapetalus), and Aster or Diplopappus linari- folius, Vitis cordifolius (?) (now beginning to be ripe) are quite common along the bank. On a bank-side on West River, Urtica Canadensis, apparently in prime and going to seed, the same that Mr. Whitlow once recommended as a substitute for hemp. Near by the phryma, or lopseed, with still a few small rose-white flowers. I at first thought it a circea. Plenty of harebells thereabouts, and, by the brook, Polygonum Virginianum, three feet high, mostly gone to seed. Apparently Cornus stolonifera (?) by brook (vide press), with the sericea. Aster macrophyllus much past prime.