1 August 1859 – 7 August 1859

6 a. mM. — River is at summer level. This being Monday morning, the river is probably lower than at any other time in the week. Am surprised to see in water opposite between Mon- roe’s and Dodd’s the Myriophyllum ambiguum var. na- tans, amid the Bidens Becki. It must have been out (under water) a fortnight. A pretty sprig of pectinate leafets above the capillary-leafed and slimy mass. The B. Beckit (just beginning to bloom) just shows a few green leafets above its dark and muddy masses, now that the river is low. Evidently the above two and lilies, cardinal-flowers, etc., depend on the state of the river in June. After a very wet June I think there is less bloom on them. Some years the first two are not noticed at all. We have now got down to the water milfoil and the B. Beckii. These might be called low-water plants." The bottom is occasionally — though quite rarely in Concord — of soft shifting sand, ripple-marked, in which the paddle sinks, under four or five feet of water (as below the ash tree hole), and few weeds grow on such a shallow. Evidently the hill at Hemlocks would be a flowing sand-hill, if it were not held together by the hemlocks. The common cat-tail (about five feet high by rail- road, beyond the South Bridge) has no interval between the two kinds of flowers, but mine of yesterday (vide [six] pages back) has, and yet it is much larger than the common. Can it, then, be the Typha angustifo- lia, which is described as smaller and rare ? I see a kingbird hovering within six inches above the potamogetons, front of Cheney’s, and repeatedly snap- ping up some insects, perhaps a devil’s-needle.* The west edge of the Rock above Island is eleven and a half inches above summer level. Now, at 5 p. M., the river has risen an inch and a half since 6 A. M., though we have not had a drop of rain for three days, and then but a few drops, and it fell three quarters of an inch between yesterday (Sunday) morning and this morning. Is this rise owing to the water let on from various mill-ponds this Monday morn- ing ?

I try the current above Dodd’s. There is a southwest breeze. A loose board moves faster than one with a sunk box, but soon drifts diago- nally across and lodges at fifty feet. The box, sunk fourteen inches below the board, floats one hundred feet in nine minutes; sunk two and a half feet, in nine and a quarter minutes; sunk five and a half feet, it is not half-way in thirteen minutes, or, allowing for its starting this time a little out of the wind and cur- rent, say it is twenty minutes in going a hundred feet.

6 A.M. — River fallen one inch since 2.30 P.M. yesterday; 2.¢., it is now a quarter of an inch above summer level. Juncus Greenei grows in river meadow opposite Dodd’s; long done. I saw (the 31st wit.) that the river was narrowed to a third its width by a large mass of button-bushes sunk in the middle of it above the Sudbury causeway. The low water reveals a mass of meadow sunk under the railroad bridge. Both this and Lee’s Bridge are thus obstructed this year. I should say the origin of these holes was that the river, being shallow and therefore crowded, runs swiftly and digs into the bank and so makes a deep hole and a bend. The three large lakes may perhaps be considered as three deep holes made by a larger river or ocean current in former ages. The almost constant occurrence of a bay, or stagnant expansion, on the convex side at the bends is remark- able. It seems to be a place where the river has for- merly flowed, but which, by wearing into the opposite bank, it has left.

See many yellowed peach leaves and butter- nut leaves, which have fallen in the wind yesterday and the rain to-day. The lowest dark-colored rocks near the water at the stone bridge (7. e. part of the bridge) are prettily marked with (apparently) mosses, which have adhered to them at higher water and [are] now withered and bleached on, —in fact are transferred, — and by their whitish color are seen very distinctly on the dark stone and have a very pretty effect. They are quite like sea- mosses in their delicacy, though not equally fine with many. These are very perma- nently and closely fastened to the rock. This is a phenomenon of low water. Also see them transferred to wood, as pieces of bridges.