25 June 1860 – 1 July 1860

Still hazy and dogdayish. Go to the menagerie in the afternoon. At 5 p.M.,—river ten and a half inches above sum- mer level, — cross the meadow to the Hemlocks. The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime, occupies the drier and harder parts of the meadow, where I can walk dry-shod, but where the coarser sedge grows and it is lower and wetter there is none of it. I keep dry by following this blue guide, and the grass is not very high about it. You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts. The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast. Under the Hemlocks, on the bare bank, apparently the Azra flexuosa, not long. Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders, etc. Leafets from one fortieth to one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter. When separated from the continuous film of down they have a tendency to sink. The Canada naiad (?), which I gathered yesterday, had perhaps bloomed. Thought I detected with my glass something like stamens about the little balls.

— 2 p. mM. — Up Assabet to Farmer’s. See on the open grassy bank and shore, just this side the Hemlocks, a partridge with her little brood. Being in my boat, I went within three rods, and they were hardly scared at all. The young were but little bigger than chickens four or five days old, yet could fly two or three rods. The partridge now takes out her brood to feed, all the country over; and what an ex- tensive range they have! —not confined to a barn- yard. To-day it is cool and clear and quite windy, and the black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds; the river mostly swept of its dust and looking more sparkling. Farmer says that he found on the 24th a black snake laying her eggs on the side of the hill between his peach- orchard and the ledge in the woods. He showed me the place to-day. The hole was about three inches long by one wide and four or five inches deep, in a slanting direction. <= He found the snake lying with “a her head and tail both at once in the hole, occupied with laying; and she had then layed twelve eggs. He pressed out two more, — fourteen in all. They were not connected together, and were twice as large as the sternotherus’ egg; soft- shelled. He left them on the ground, but when he went there this morning he saw some crows devour them before his eyes. This hole was not in sand, but in rather lean pasture sod, and hard, freshly made. It bore a general resemblance to a turtle’s hole. Was close by where his uncle (?) tried to dig through to the other side of the world. Dug more or less for three years. Used to dig nights, as long as one candle lasted. Left a stone just between him and the other side, not to be removed till he was ready to marry Washington’s sister. The foxes now occupy his hole. Holcus lanatus, a week or ten days, Hosmer’s field on Assabet, north of Poke-logan. Juncus tenuis, three or four days. Farmer calls the flowering fern “staghorn;” says it is the common name with farmers. His bees are swarming, all collected over the outside of the hive. River at 6 p. M. seven and five eighths inches above summer level. The pine shoot which on the 19th had grown sixteen and a quarter inches is now twenty and three quarters long, or has grown four and a half inches in eight days, a little more than half an inch a day. It had evidently grown much faster before.’ Get from Farmer specimens of barley and wheat, and, in the former, apparently Bromus secalinus' (?); none of them yet out.

— Assabet Bath and Sunset Interval. On the 25th I first noticed that the black willows — the sterile ones, not whitened with down — were just begun to be handsome, with their light ethereal green against other trees. ‘They are now getting to be suffi- ciently thick. This month, it must be 85° at 2 p.m. and stu to make hot weather. 80° with wind is quite comfortable. June-grass is now generally browned atop, its spikes being out of bloom and old. Herd’s-grass out, two or three days. I now see and hear many young birds about; young barn swallows on telegraph-wire, etc. Farmer said yesterday that he thought foxes did not live so much in the depth of the woods as on open hill- -sides, where they lay out and overlooked the operations of men, — studied their ways, — which made them so cunning. The 21st I began to notice the Festuca ovina in dry pastures, prevailing and so marking a season. Fowl- meadow grass, though not quite in bloom, has now begun to make an impression on the inlands and in the meadows, with its dense-growing recurved or drooping green tops. Panicum latifoluum, how long? I see no tortoises laying nowadays, but I meet to-day with a wood tortoise which is eating the leaves of the. early potentilla, and, soon after, another in Hosmer’s sandy bank field north of Assabet Bridge, deliberately eating sorrel. It was evidently quite an old one, its back being worn quite smooth, and its motions pecul- iarly sluggish. It continued to eat when I was within a few feet, holding its head high and biting down at it, each time bringing away a piece of a leaf. It made you think of an old and sick tortoise eating some salutary herb to cure itself with, and reminded me of the stories of the ancients, who, I think, made the tortoises thus cure themselves with dittany or origanum when bitten by a venomous snake. That is, it impressed me as if it must know the virtues of herbs well and could select the one best suited [to] its condition of body. When I came nearer, it at once drew in its head. Its back was smooth and yellowish, — a venerable tortoise. When I moved off, it at once withdrew into the woods. See two of those remarkably brilliant beetles near the caving edge here, with copper and green reflections (head green), and blue ones. They are sluggish and can be transported on a leaf. On the alder leaves by the riverside in Sunset In- terval, I see countless small black miller-like insects three eighths of an inch and of this form: but all of them had not feelers. I think they were the same that hover in a swarm over the water at evening.

Dogdayish and showery, with thunder. At 6 p.m. 91°, the hottest yet, though a thunder- shower has passed northeast and grazed us, and, in con- sequence, at 6.30 or 7, another thunder-shower comes up from the southwest and there is a sudden burst from it with a remarkably strong, gusty wind, and the rain for fifteen minutes falls in a blinding deluge. I think I never saw it rain so hard. The roof of the depot shed is taken off, many trees torn to pieces, the garden flooded at once, corn and potatoes, etc., beaten flat." You could not see distinctly many rods through the rain. It was the very strong gusts added to the weight of the rain that did the mischief. There was little or no wind before the shower; it belonged wholly to it. Thus our most violent thunder-shower followed the hottest hour of the month.

Try the temperature of the springs and pond. At 2.15 p.m. the atmosphere north of house is 83° above zero, and the same afternoon, the water of the Boiling Spring, 45°; our well after pumping, 49°; Brister’s Spring, 49°; Walden Pond (at bottom, in four feet water), 71°; river at one rod from shore, 77°.2 I see that the temperature of the Boiling Spring on the 6th of March, 1846, was also 45°, and I suspect it varies very little throughout the year. If you paw into sand, both by day and night, you find the heat to be permanently greatest some three inches (to-day) below the surface, and this is about [the] depth at which the tortoises place their eggs. Where the tem- 2 2p. M., the Ist of July, the air is 77° and the river 75°.

2 p.m.— To Well Meadow. River three and seven eighths above summer level. Rattlesnake grass is just beginning. The slender and leafy panic of the meadows (tall for size), say a week. Saw a large black and blue (edged) butterfly yesterday. Fowl-meadow grass. Notice those slate-colored spots on a rough goldenrod leaf, answering to the crimson on red maples, surrounded by a light ring and centred with greenish. The hellebore fall is now conspicuous and fairly under weigh. The cabbage but just begun to fall. I see one leaf of the last fully eighteen inches by thirteen. Brachyelytrum grass, apparently just begun, or a day. While reclining on the sedge at end of town-bound path, by the scoparia, I see a warbler deliberately in- vestigating the smooth sumachs and their old berry- bunches, in various positions. It is a slaty blue above, with a bright-yellow front-head and much yellow on the wings (at angle, etc.), a very distinct black throat, triangularwise, with a broad black line through the V7 eyes or side-head, a forked tail which is dark beneath; belly and vent white or whitish. It is undoubtedly the Sylvia chrysoptera, or golden-winged warbler, which I think must be breeding here. I see young partridges not bigger than robins fly three or four rods, not squatting fast, now. Returning over the causeway, the light of the sun was reflected from the awns of a grain-field (probably wheat) ' by Abiel Wheeler’s house so brightly and in such a solid mass as to far surpass in amount of light the densest whiteweed thereabouts, and at first impress you as if it were whiter than whiteweed, but in fact it was not white, but a very bright sunny gleam from the waving phalanx of awns, more calculated to reflect the light than any object in the landscape.