30 August 1858 – 5 September 1858

P. M. — To bayonet rush by river. Find at Dodd’s shore: Eleocharis obtusa, some time out of bloom (fresh still at Pratt’s Pool); also Juncus acuminatus (?), just done (also ap- o parently later and yet in bloom at Pout’s Nest); / also what I called Juncus scirpoides, but which s appears to be Juncus paradoxus, with seeds tailed at both ends, (it is fresher than what I have seen before, and smaller), not done. Some of it with few flowers! A terete leaf rises above the flower. It looks like a small bayonet rush. The Juncus militaris has been long out of bloom. The leaf is three feet long; the whole plant, four or five.

P.M. — To Flint’s Pond. A hot afternoon. We have had but few warmer. I hear and see but few bobolinks or blackbirds for several days past. The former, at least, must be withdrawing. I have not heard a seringo of late, but I see to-day one golden robin. The birches have lately lost a great many of their lower leaves, which now cover and yellow the ground. Also some chestnut leaves have fallen. Many brakes in the woods are perfectly withered. At the Pout’s Nest, Walden, I find the Scirpus debilis, apparently in prime, gen- Mn erally aslant; also the Cyperus dentatus, with some spikes changed into leafy tufts; also here less advanced what I have called Juncus acuminatus. Ludwigia alternifolia still. Sericocarpus about done. High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. At a little distance you would not suspect that there were any, — even vines, — for the racemes are bent down out of sight, amid the dense sweet-ferns and sumachs, etc. The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. Those in the sun are a little wilted and insipid. The smooth sumach’s lower leaves are bright-scarlet on dry hills. Lobelia Dortmanna is not quite done. Some ground-nuts are washed out. The Flint’s Pond rush appears to be Cladium maris- coides, twig rush, or, in Bigelow, water bog rush, a good while out of bloom; style three-cleft. It is about three feet high. This, with Hleocharts palustris, which is near- est the shore, forms the dense rushy border of the pond. It extends along the whole of this end, at least about four rods wide, and almost every one of the now dry and brown flower-heads has a cobweb on it. I perceive that the slender semicircular branchlets so fit to the grooved or flattened culm as still, when pressed against it, to make it cylindrical! — very neatly. The monotropa is still pushing up. Red choke-berry, apparently not long. At Goose Pond I scare up a small green bittern. It plods along low, a few feet over the surface, with limp- ing flight, and alights on a slender water-killed stump, and voids its excrement just as it starts again, as if to lighten itself.

P. M.— To Botrychium Swamp. Aster miser not long, but the leaves turned red. At the pool by the oaks behind Pratt’s, I see the Myriophyl- lum ambiguum still, and going to seed, greening the sur- face of the water. The Leersia oryzoides, false rice, or rice cut-grass, is abundant and in prime on the shore there. Also find it on the shore of Merrick’s pasture. It has very rough sheaths. Am surprised to see frog( ?)- spawn just laid, neither in spherical masses nor in a string, but flatted out thin on the surface, some eight or nine inches wide, — a small black spawn, white one side, as usual. I saw one or two F. [sic] fontinalis on the shore. Was it toad-spawn ? | Ranunculus repens in bloom — as if begun again ? — at the violet wood-sorrel spring. Chelone glabra well out, how long? In the same meadow, Aster longifolius well out, not long. That meadow is white with the Erio- phorum polystachyon, apparently var. angustifolium (?). Vide it pressed. On dry land, common, but apparently getting stale, Panicum clandestinum. Dangle-berries now ready for picking. At Botrychium Swamp, Naba- lus altissimus. Of twenty plants (all in shade) only one out, apparently two or three days. Elsewhere, in open land, N. Frasert, apparently several days, say five; but not a very rough one. Ledum Telephium, how long? In the evening, by the roadside, near R. W. E.’s gate, find a glow-worm of the common kind. Of two men, Dr. Bart- lett and Charles Bowen, neither had ever seen it!

Up Assabet. The common light-sheathed Scirpus Eriophorum still. At the Pokelogan, apparently Cinna arundinacea (? ) in prime (one stamen); also Elymus Virginicus (?). Lyme grass or wild rye, apparently lately done. That rich, close, erect-panicled grass of the meadows, apparently for a month in bloom, seems to be Glyceria obtusa. Very common in the meadow west of Brooks Clark’s.

P. M. — Up Assabet a-hazelnutting. I see a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad, all but the head and one fore leg taken in. It is a singular sight, that of the lit- tle head of the snake directly above the great, solemn, granitic head of the toad, whose eyes are open, though I have reason to think that he is not alive, for when I return some hours after I find that the snake has dis- gorged the toad and departed. The toad had been swallowed with the hind legs stretched out and close together, and its body is compressed and elongated to twice its length, while the head, which had not been taken in, is of the original size and full of blood. The toad is quite dead, apparently killed by being so far crushed; and its eyes are still open. The body of the snake was enlarged regularly from near the middle to its jaws. It appeared to have given up this attempt at the eleventh hour. Probably the toad is very much more elongated when perfectly swallowed by a small snake. It would seem, then, that snakes undertake to swallow toads which are too big for them. I see where the bank by the Pokelogan is whitewashed, 2. e. the grass, for a yard or two square, by the thin drop- pings of some bird which has roosted on a dead limb above. It was probably a blue heron, for I find some slate-blue feathers dropped, apparently curving breast- feathers, broadly shafted with white. I hear a faint warble from time to time from some young or old birds, from my window these days. Is it the purple finch again, — young birds practicing ?? Zizania still. The hazelnut bushes up this way are chiefly confined to the drier river-bank. At least they do not extend into the lower, somewhat meadowy land further inland. They appear to be mostly stripped. The most I get are left hanging over the water at the swimming-ford. How important the hazelnut to the ground squirrel! They grow along the walls where the squirrels have their homes. They are the oaks that grow before their doors. They have not far to go to their harvesting. These bushes are generally stripped, but isolated ones in the middle of fields, away from the squirrel-walks, are still full of burs. The wall is highway and rampart to these little beasts. They are almost inaccessible in their holes beneath it, and on either side of it spring up, also de- fended by the wall, the hazel bushes on whose fruit the squirrels in a great measure depend. Notwithstanding the abundance of hazelnuts here, very little account is made of them, and I think it is because pains is not taken to collect them before the squirrels have done so. Many of the burs are perfectly green yet, though others are brightly red-edged. ‘The squirrel lives in a hazel grove. There is not a hazel bush but some squirrel has his eye on its fruit, and he will be pretty sure to anticipate you. As we say, “The tools to those who can use them,” so we may say, “The nuts to those who can get them.” That floating grass by the riverside whose lower leaves, so flat and linear, float on the surface of the water, though they are not now, at least, lake-colored, is apparently the Glyceria fluitans, floating fescue grass, still blooming and for a good while. I got it yesterday at Merrick’s shore. At the sand-bar by the swimming-ford, I collect two small juncuses, not knowing but I have pressed them before. One appears to be Juncus scirpoides (? ), small as it is; the other, Juncus articulatus (??). At Prichard’s shore I see where they have plowed up and cast into the river a pile of elm roots, which inter- fered with their laying down the adjacent field. One which I picked up I at first thought was a smal] lead pipe, partly coiled up and muddy in the water, it being appar- ently of uniform size. It was just nineteen feet and eight inches long; the biggest end was twenty-one fortieths of an inch in diameter, and the smallest nineteen fortieths. This difference was scarcely obvious to the eye. No doubt it might have been taken up very much longer. It looked as if, when green and flexible, it might answer the purpose of a rope, — of a cable, for instance, when you wish to anchor in deep water. The wood is very porous. The narrow brown sheaths from the base of white pine leaves now strew the ground and are washed up on the edge of puddles after the rain.

Much rain, with thunder and lightning. Our large-fruited sparganium Is evidently S. ramosum, still a little, at least, in flower. My large grass of the riverside with a narrow or | spike-like appressed panicle, long since out, at the ‘% end of a long bare culm, leafy below, is apparently Phalaris arundinacea. Piper grass is apparently Triticum repens; now done. What I called Panicum capillare (after Hoar, without examining) is P. sanguznale, crab grass, finger grass, or purple panic grass. Panicum capillare (very different and like Eragrostis capillaris, the fine purple grass) is now in prime in garden.

P. M. — To Walden. Prinos verticillatus berries reddening. I hear two or more wood pewees this afternoon, but had not before for a fortnight or more. The pewee days are over for some time. Went down to the pond-hole behind where I used to live. It is quite full of water. The middle or greater part is densely covered with target leaves, crowding one another and curling up on their edges. Then there 1s a space or canal of clear water, five to twenty feet wide, quite around them, and the shore is thickly covered with rattlesnake grass, now ripe. I find many high blueberries, quite fresh, overhanging the south shore of Walden. I find, all about Walden, close to the edge on the steep bank, and at Brister’s Spring, a fine grass now generally past prime, Agrostis perennans,' thin grass, or hair grass, on moist ground or near water. The branches of the panicle are but slightly purplish.