4 July 1859 – 10 July 1859

June 28th, I observed up the Assabet some exceedingly handsome amelanchier leaves, bright- crimson, regularly striped with green on the veins and with scattered yellow spots. The shrub probably dying. Vide some in press. P. M. — To Fair Haven Pond, measuring depth of river.

P. M.— To Ball’s Hill, sounding river. * Both white and red, when the leaves are not half developed, long ago. Having sounded the river yesterday and to-day from entrance to Fair Haven Pond to oak at Ball’s Hill, the water being to-day three inches lower than yesterday, — or now a foot and a quarter above what I call summer level, — I make these observations: 1 — Calling any place above Ball’s Hill where the water is eleven feet deep or more at summer level a deep hole, I find six such deep holes within the above limits, viz. : 1st, under the steep hill at southwest part of Fair Haven Pond; 2d, at Bittern Cliff; 3d, four rods below French’s Rock, or opposite mouth of Bill Brook; 4th, deep hole at ash; 5th, deep hole at sharp bend; 6th, deep hole at northeast angle of the Holt. In the order of depth they stand thus: — 1. Purple Utricularia Bay 194 feet 2. Sharp bend by Holt 17 3. Northeast angle of Holt 164 4. French’s Rock 12} 5. Bittern Cliff 11 6. Deep hole by ash 11 These “holes” appear to be of two kinds. In two, if not three, of the above instances they appear to be a trace of the original formation of the river valley, and to be independent of the river and not necessarily at an angle. No. 1 is evidently traceable to a very steep and high hill half a dozen rods off, and No. 5 to a small rocky cliff some three rods off. There is a part of the bare, precipitous cliff under water at lowest level. No. 4 appears to be of a similar character with the last. The others (or 2, 3, and 6) are of a different character, — where there is meadow on each side and they are not betrayed by any elevation of the shore. In each case they are close to the positive side at an angle in the river. The deepest (and also the deepest of any in the river proper), which will serve for a sample, is at the sharpest bend in the river in Concord, and, I think, at the narrowest part of the river in the town. The stream, not deep and rather more than ordinarily swift above, here strikes square (or worse [?]) against the easterly bank (which is only some three feet above summer level), and has eaten out a channel to that depth, so near the bank (some twelve feet) that you could jump from the bank into the deepest place in the river proper in the town. Thence it shoals regularly to the opposite shore. The bottom exactly in the deepest holes of this last description is not muddy but sandy. In each of these three instances there is a muddy, stagnant ex- pansion on the opposite side just below (or else about opposite), betraying a reaction to this force. There is also a low meadow or point on the opposite side where the river has flowed at a comparatively recent period. The river is not particularly swift at these places. Calling all places which are four or less feet deep at summer level shallows, there are at least seven such be- tween Fair Haven Pond and Ball’s Hill. Potamogetons begin to prevail below four and a half [feet] (five and a half in sluggish water), and reach quite across the river at three feet. They invariably occupy these shoals, except the one below ash tree with a bottom of shifting sand, though they are densest on broad sand- bars occupying the midstream, on which there is one to two and a half or three feet [of] water and a clearer chan- nel on one or both sides or in the middle. With one exception (2. e. Barrett’s Bar) these shoals are just below (?) considerable bends. Also the river is generally narrower than the average at the shoals. The river (in Concord) is much more variable in depth below the junction of the two rivers than above it. The great bends in Concord above Ball’s Hillare about nine. The only remarkable, or Great, Bend in Concord is the Holt, where a new channel might be cut, saving nearly two thirds the distance. All these bends in C. (except perhaps the Holt in part (?) are occasioned by the river striking firmer land or a hill or cliff and being turned by it. It is like the wriggling of a snake controlled between two fences. It is not so with the Sudbury Meadow bends. From a rude estimate I should say about one mile, or say one eighth (?) part the river in Concord, is weedy. There is a peculiarly long, sluggish, wide, deep, and lake-like reach, muddy in the broadest parts (for Con- cord), from Fair Haven Pond to Nut Meadow Brook. Though in meadows, it is pretty straight. Not enough current to make a meander.

My English cress (Nasturtium officinale) at Depot Field Brook is in bloom, and has already be- gun to go to seed, turning purplish, as it withers (from white). P. M. — To Lee’s Chiff. The fields are now purplish with the anthers of the herd’s-grass, which is apparently at its height. Grass now for a week or more has been seriously in the way of the walker, but already I take advantage of the few fields that are mowed. It requires skillful tack- ing, a good deal of observation, and experience to get across the country now. At Lee’s Cliff, pellitory apparently not long, yet I see small green fruit. The gymnostichum grass just begun.

P. M. — To Great Meadows. P. Hutchinson says he once found a wood duck’s nest in a hollow maple by Heywood’s meadow (now by rail- road), and tried to get the young as soon as hatched, but they were gone too soon for him. On the first, or westerly, part of the Great Meadows, 1. é. the firmer parts and the bank, I find, mixed with sedges of different kinds, much red-top (coloring the surface extensively), fowl-meadow (just begun to bloom and of a purplish lead-color, taller than the red-top), the slender purple-spiked panic, Agrostis (perennans ? or scabra??). In the wet, or main, part, beside various other sedges, — as [Carez’] stellulata, lanuginosa, stricta, etc., etc., — wool-grass, now in flower, a sedge (appar- ently C’. ampullacea var. utriculata toward Holbrook’s) thicker-culmed than wool-grass, but softer and not round, with fertile spikes often three inches long, and slender. A great part of the meadow is covered with, I think, either this or wood grass (not in flower). I am not certain which prevails, but I think wool-grass, which does not flower. Also, mixed with these and lower, dulichium, Eleocharis palustris, etc., etc.* First notice pontederia out; also tephrosia, how long? The note of the bobolink has begun to sound rare? Do not young nighthawks run pretty soon after being hatched? I hear of their being gone very soon. Bathing at Barrett’s Bay, I find it to be composed in good part of sawdust, mixed with sand. There is a nar- row channel on each side, deepest on the south. The potamogeton is eight feet long there in eighteen inches of water. I learn from measuring on Baldwin’s second map that the river (2. e. speaking of that part below Fra- mingham) is much the straightest in the lower part of its course, or from Ball’s Hill to the Dam. It winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows. From upper end of Sudbury Canal to Sherman’s Bridge direct is 558 rods (1 mile 238 rods); by thread of river, 1000 rods (3 miles 40 rods), or nearly twice as far. But, though meandering, it is straighter in its general course than would be believed. These nearly twenty- three miles in length (or 16+ direct) are contained within a breadth of two miles twenty-six rods; 2. ¢., so much it takes to meander in. It can be plotted by the scale of one thousand feet to an inch on a sheet of paper seven feet one and one quarter inches long by eleven inches wide.

Friday. I see an emperor moth (Attacus Cecropia), which came out the 6th. P. M. — To Clamshell by river. The Carex Muhlenbergit is common on Clamshell slope, just beyond the ravine. * Thimble-berries have begun. The islands of the river, below the Assabet especially, — as Hosmer’s, and the one just below French’s Rock, —are now covered with canary grass, which has al- most entirely done and closed up; fowl-meadow (Poa serotina), now fairly begun to bloom (first noticed the middle of June its slender green panicles shaped like a green red-top); Glyceria fluitans, going out of bloom; also the sensitive fern (the “hand leaf” of haymakers) ; pipes; (and sedges, which might be named as soon as any, as the crinita which overhangs the water). I judge that in a freshet the water rises higher as you go down the river, both from the height to which it rose last March, as shown me at several bridges, and from the height of the bridges themselves, which the builders have been gradually compelled to raise, for the most part just above high-water mark.

Paddle up river and sound a little above Fair Haven Pond. See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twit- tering. : The water having gone down, I notice a broad red base to the bayonet rush, apparently the effect of the water, even as the maples (of both kinds) and the poly- gonums are reddened. The bayonet rush is not quite out.

Water ten and a half inches above summer — level. 8 a. M.— Take boat at Fair Haven Pond and pad- dle up to Sudbury Causeway, sounding the river. To-day, like yesterday, is very hot, with a blue haze concealing the mountains and hills, looking like hot dust in the air. Hearing a noise, I look up and see a pigeon wood- pecker pursued by a kingbird, and the former utters loud shrieks with fear.