8 June 1857 – 14 June 1857

P. M. — To Saw Mill Brook. White actza done there. There are two good-sized black walnuts at Cyrus Smith’s, by wall, out appar- ently a day. When I split the twigs they seemed hol- lowed by a worm or disease, the pith being (as is said of the butternut also) in plates. The fertile flower is probably not obvious yet. That of the butternut is now very distinct with its crimson stigmas. Mother was saying to-day that she bought no new clothes for John until he went away into a store, but made them of his father’s old clothes, which made me say that country boys could get enough cloth for their clothes by robbing the scarecrows. So little it need cost to live.

A large fog. Celastrus scandens, maybe a day. Triosteum, apparently several days (not at all June Ist). Both kinds of sap, yellow birch and black, are now, in some bottles, quite aromatic and alike; but this year, methinks, it has a more swampy taste and musty, and most of the bottles are merely sour. P. M. — To Violet Sorrel and Calla Swamp. A peetweet’s nest near wall by Shattuck’s barn, and will not return to nest while you wait, but keeps up a very faint chip in the bushes or grass at some distance. Merrick’s pasture, at base of a dock; four eggs just on the point of being hatched. A regular nest of weak stubble set in ground. In the sprout-land beyond the red huckleberry, an indigo-bird, which chips about me as if it had a nest there. This is a splendid and marked bird, high-colored as is the tanager, looking strange in this latitude. Glow- ing indigo. It flits from top of one bush to another, chirping as if anxious. Wilson says it sings, not like most other birds in the morning and evening chiefly, but also in the middle of the day. In this I notice it is like the tanager, the other fiery-plumaged bird. They seem to love the heat. It pe had its nest in one of those bushes. The calla is generally past prime and going to seed. [I had said to Pratt, “It will be worth the while to look for other rare plants in Calla Swamp, for I have observed that where one rare plant grows there will commonly be others.” Carrying out this design, this afternoon, I had not taken three steps into the swamp barelegged before I found the Naumbergia thyrsiflora in sphagnum and water, which I had not seen growing before. (Channing brought one to me from Hubbard’s Great Meadow once.) It is hardly beginning yet. (In prime June 24th. Vide June 24th.) The water in this Calla Swamp feels cold to my feet, and perhaps this is a peculiarity of it; on the north side a hill. When I was at the yellow-throat’s nest (as above) I heard that very loud sharp pheet pheet of a wood- chuck (?) or rabbit which I have often heard before. The hellebore was very much eaten off about the wall whence it proceeded. It was kept up from time to time while I stayed.

At R. W. E.’s a viburnum, apparently nudum var. cassinoides (?) (pyrifoliwm Pursh), four or five days at least. (Vide in press.) It agrees with Bige- low’s account, except that the leaves are decidedly serrate and the calyx-segments not acute. Has but a very slight tendency to thorns!! ‘Twigs of this year red. The cymes are nearly sessile; petioles, etc., very little rusty-dotted. Compare it with prunzfolium, and see fruit. It stands in a row with E.’s pear trees and has been mistaken for one, which, when not in flower, it very much resembles. Probably came from Wat- son’s with them. (On the 13th I see apparently the same at Watson’s, Plymouth, which he calls, and im- ported as, V. prunifolium! ) P. M.— To White Cedar Swamp. A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a picta’s hole. The Leucothoé racemosa, not yet gener- ally out, but a little (it being mostly killed) a day or two. In Julius Smith’s yard, a striped snake (so called) was running about this forenoon, and in the afternoon it was found to have shed its slough, leaving it half- way out a hole, which probably it used to confine it in. It was about in its new skin. Many creatures — devil’s- needles, etc., etc. — cast their sloughs now. Can’t I? Farmer tells me to-day that he has seen a regular barn swallow with forked tail about his barn, which was black, not rufous; also of an owl’s nest in a pine, the young probably two or three weeks old. Vide June 24th.

Friday. 8.30 a. mM. — Set out for CAPE COD. uM EGcs.— At Natural History Rooms.— The egg found on ground in R. W. E.’s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink’s, for that is about as big as a bay-wing’s but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches. The egg of the Turdus solitarius is lettered “Swamp Robin.” Is this what they so call at New Bedford? The wood thrush’s is a slender egg, a little longer than a catbird’s and uniform greenish-blue. The yellow-shouldered sparrow’s egg 1s size of Maryland yellow-throat’s, white with brown spots, sometimes in a ring at the larger end. The Savannah sparrow’s is about the same size, dirty-white with thick brown blotches. I find that the egg Farmer gave me for the “chicklisee’s” is enough like the yellow-throat’s to be it. Can he be thinking of the note, whittichee? Or is it the yellow-shouldered sparrow’s egg? The egg of the hermit thrush’ is about as big as that of Wilson’s thrush, but darker green. Some edible swallows’ (?) nests, on a stick, side by side, shallow and small and shaped like oyster-shells, light-colored, but yet placed somewhat like the chim- ney swallows’. Among the frogs in alcohol I notice the Scaphiopus solitarius, Cambridge! ! Michaux says that mocker-nuts are of various sizes and forms, some round, some oblong. So I have found them. He also says that “the red-flowering maple [ Acer rubrum]'is the earliest tree whose bloom announces the return of Spring.”” This is a mistake, the white maple being much earher. I have not found the white spruce yet. P. M. — At Watson’s, Plymouth. W. has several varieties of the English hawthorn (oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and sin- gle, and very handsome now. His English oak is almost entirely out of bloom, though I got some flowers. The biggest, which was set out in °49, is about thirty feet high, and, as I mea- sured, just twenty inches in circumference at four inches from the ground. A very rapid growth. I obtained there specimens of the plum-leaved wil- low, come well ditto, — because it comes on fast, — and Salix rosmarinifolia. Only some lingering bloom with the last. He has the foreign Betula alba (much like our popu- lifolia), its bark loosened up like our papyracea, but not so white; and what was sent him for populifolia, much like our red birch, the bark much like that of alba loosened up, but more reddish, the limbs red, leaves like a balm-of-Gilead somewhat, large (vide press). The papyracea leaves are unusually wedge-shaped at base, methinks. The moosewood is chiefly fruiting, but some still 1857} AT WATSON’S IN PLYMOUTH 415 in bloom. Cornus sanguinea, in its prime. Its bark is bright-red and greenish. That of C. sericea (not well named) is dark-purplish. The Oriental is later to bloom than ours or else smaller-fruited. The American mountain-ash not yet out (Cheney’s in Concord, a day or two, June 25th). Nuttall says its leaves are at last very smooth. I have hitherto ob- served the Pyrus aucuparia, or European, at Prichard’s, Whiting’s, etc. W. has the Crategus prunifolius, with its thorns (vide herbarium); Castanea vesca, Spanish chestnut, of which ours is made a variety merely; Populus monilifera, as he calls it, and another very like it. Bayberry well out. Senecio vulgaris a common weed, apparently in prime. Honkenya and beach pea well out on Plymouth beach. W. has a very flourishing and large white maple of his setting, and they stand in Plymouth streets also, very pretty.

I see large mosses on the beach, crimson and lighter, already spread on the sand. See children going a-flagging and returning with large bundles, for the sake of the inmost tender blade. They go miles for them here.

Sunday. 7 a. m. — To Clark’s Island. B. M. Watson tells me that he learns from pretty good authority that Webster once saw the sea-ser- pent. It seems it was first seen, in the bay between Manomet and Plymouth Beach, by a perfectly relia- ble witness (many years ago), who was accustomed to look out on the sea with his glass every morning the first thing as regularly as he ate his breakfast. One morning he saw this monster, with a head somewhat like a horse’s raised some six feet above the water, and his body the size of a cask trailing behind. He was careering over the bay, chasing the mackerel, which ran ashore in their fright and were washed up and died in great numbers. The story is that Webster had appointed to meet some Plymouth gentlemen at Manomet and spend the day fishing with them. After the fishing was [over], he set out to return to Duxbury in his sailboat with Peterson, as he had come, and on the way they saw the sea-serpent, which answered to the common account of this creature. It passed directly across their bows only six or seven rods off and then disappeared. On the sail homeward, Webster having had time to reflect on what had occurred, at length said to Peterson, “For God’s sake, never say a word about this to any one, for if it should be known that I have seen the sea-serpent, I should never hear the last of it, but wherever I went should have to tell the story to every one I met.’’ So it has not leaked out till now. Watson tells me (and Ed. Watson confirms it, his father having probably been of the party) that many years ago a party of Plymouth gentlemen rode round by the shore to the Gurnet and there had a high time. When they set out to return they left one of their num- ber, a General Winslow, asleep, and as they rode along homeward, amused themselves with conjecturing what he would think when he waked up and found himself alone. When at length he awoke, he comprehended his situation at once, and, being somewhat excited by the wine he had drunk, he mounted his horse and rode along the shore to Saquish Head in the opposite direction. From here to the end of Plymouth Beach is about a mile and a quarter, but, it being low tide, he waded his horse as far as the beacon north of the channel, at the entrance to Plymouth Harbor, about three quarters of a mile, and then boldly swam him across to the end of Plymouth Beach, about half a mile further, notwithstanding a strong current, and, having landed safely, he whipped up and soon reached the town, having come only about eight miles, and had ample time to warm and dry himself at the tavern be- fore his companions, who had at least twenty miles to ride about through Marshfield and Duxbury. And when they found him sitting by the tavern fire, they at first thought it was his ghost. Mr. Ed. Watson’s brother (half ?), the one who used to live in his schooner, told me that he saw (I suppose not long before) a stream of what they call “kelp flies,” supposed to be generated by the rotting kelp, flying along just under the bank, on the shore in Duxbury, some ten feet wide by six deep and of indefinite length, — for he did not know how long they would be passing, —and flying as close as they could conveniently. Ed. - Watson had no doubt of it. They also have what they call menhaden flies. This was an offset to my account of the ephemere. Mr. Albert Watson’s sons are engaged in lobster- catching. One will get two hundred in a day. I was surprised to hear that their lobster-traps (==) were made in Vermont, costing something over a dollar apiece, —much timber, —but it seems they can be made cheaper there and sent down by railroad. They use sculpins, perch, etc., etc., for bait, catching it in a circu- lar net with an iron rim. There were a couple of quarts of pine plugs or wedges in a boat, with which to plug the claws of the lobsters to prevent their fighting and tearing each other’s claws off in the cars. There are large crates of latticework, six or eight feet square, sunk to a level with the water, in which they keep them fresh. They get three cents apiece for them, not boiled. Saw them swim three horses across from Saquish Head to the island, a quarter of a mile or more. One rows a small boat while a man holds the bridle. At first the horses swam faster than the man could row, but soon they were somewhat drawn after the boat. They have sometimes driven a whole drove of cattle over at once. Saw an abundance of horseshoe crabs on the Sa- quish shore, generally coupled, the rearmost or male (if that is he with two club feet) always the smaller. Often there were three or even four in a string, all moving about close to the shore, which apparently they affect. The pigs get a little nutriment out of them. Looking from the island, the water is a light green over a shoal. In a little red cedar grove, of young trees surround- ing an old trunk, the only indigenous wood on the island, some three rods by two, and fifteen feet high, I counted thirty-five crow blackbirds’ nests, sometimes two or three near together in a tree, the young flutter- ing about and some dead beneath. The old in num- bers were meanwhile coarsely chattering over our heads. The nests appeared to be made partly of the grassy seaweed. KE. Watson says that he saw a hen catch and devour a mouse, rather young, that was running across his barn floor. In the shade of the orchard there, amid seaweed, a variety of whiteweed with more entire leaves, etc., and apparently without rays. Is it the Connecticut variety, with short rays? Mr. Watson describes a sea turtle, as big as a mud turtle, found on the shore once. It had a large dent in its back, in which you [could] lay your hand, —a wound. Evening. — At B. M. Watson’s again. Hear a new song, very sweet and clear from what at first sounded like a golden robin, then a purple finch. It was not the first. B. M. Watson speaks of an old lady named Cotton, now alive and over ninety, who is the Plymouth oracle. He says that his father-in-law Russell (whom I saw and who told me this once) knew a Cobb, who had seen Peregrine White. Watson had a colt born about ten or eleven the last evening. I went out to see it early this morning, as it lay in the cold pasture. It got up alarmed and trotted about on its long large legs, and even nibbled a little grass, and behaved altogether as if it had been an in- habitant of this planet for some years at least. They are as precocious as young partridges. It ran about most of the day in the pasture with its mother. Wat- son was surprised to see it so much larger than the night before. Probably they expand at once on com-. ing to the hght and air, like a butterfly that has just come out of its chrysalis.