20 August 1860 – 26 August 1860

Soaking rains, and in the night. A few fireflies still at night.

P. M. — Row to Bittern Cliff. Now, when the mikania is conspicuous, the bank is past prime,’ for lilies are far gone, the pontederia is past prime, willows and button-bushes begin to look the worse for the wear thus early, —the lower or older leaves of the willows are turned yellow and decaying, — and many of the meadows are shorn. Yet now is the time for the cardinal-flower. The already, methinks, yellow- ing willows and button-bushes, the half-shorn meadows, the higher water on their edges, with wool-grass stand- ing over it, with the notes of flitting bobolinks and red- wings of this year, in rustling flocks, all tell of the fall.

This and yesterday very foggy, dogdayish days. Yesterday the fog lasted till nine or ten, and to-day, in the afternoon, it amounts to a considerable drizzling rain. P. M. — To Walden to get its temperature. The air is only 66 (in the mizzling rain the 23d it was 78); the water at top, 75° (the 23d also 75). What I had sunk to the bottom in the middle, where a hundred feet deep by my line, left there half an hour, then pulled up and poured into a quart dipper, stood at 53°.” I tried the same experiment yesterday, but then in my haste was uncertain whether it was not 51°; certain that a little later it was 54°. So 53° it must be for the present. I may have been two or more minutes pulling up the line so as to prevent its snarling. Therefore I think the water | must have acquired a temperature two or three degrees higher than it had at the bottom by the time I tried it. So it appears that the bottom of Walden has, in fact, the temperature of a genuine and cold spring, or probably is of the same temperature with the average mean tem- perature of the earth, and, I suspect, the same all the year. This shows that springs need not come from a very great depth in order to be cold. What various tem- peratures, then, the fishes of this pond can enjoy! They require no other refrigerator than their deeps afford. They can in a few moments sink to winter or rise to summer. Walden, then, must be included among the springs, but it is one which has no outlet, — is a well rather. It reaches down to where the temperature of the earth is unchanging. It is not a superficial pond, — not in the mere skin of the earth. It goes deeper. How much this varied temperature must have to do with the distribution of the fishes in it! The few trout must oftenest go down below in summer. At the bottom of the deep cove I see much black birch and red maple just sprung up, and their seeds have evi- dently been drifted to this shore. The little birches are already fragrant.

2. mM. — To Clamshell. See a large hen-hawk sailing over Hubbard’s meadow and Clamshell, soaring at last very high and toward the north. At last it returns southward, at that height im- pelling itself steadily and swiftly forward with its wings set in this wise: 2. €. more curved, or, as it were, trailing be- (An hind, without ap- parent motion. It thus moves half a mile directly. The front-rank polygonum is apparently in prime; low, solid, of a pinkish rose-cofor. Notice the small botrychium’s leaf.

2. M.— To White Pond. The leersia or cut-grass in the old pad ditch by path beyond Hubbard’s Grove. As I cross the upland sprout-land south of Ledum Swamp, I see that the fine sedge there is half withered and brown, and it is too late for that cheerful yellow gleam. Thread my way through the blueberry swamp in front of Martial Miles’s. The high blueberries far above your head in the shade of the swamp retain their freshness and coolness a long time. Little blue sacks fullof swampy nectar and ambrosia commingled, like schnapps or what-not, that you break with your teeth. Is not this the origin of the German name as given by Gerard? But there is far the greatest show of choke-berries there, rich to see. I wade and press my way through endless thick- ets of these untasted berries, their lower leaves now fast reddening. Yet they have an agreeable juice, — though the pulp may be rejected, — and perhaps they might be made into wine. The shrilling of the alder locust is the solder that welds these autumn days together. All bushes (arbusta) resound with their song, and you wade up to your ears in it. Methinks the burden of their song is the countless harvests of the year, — berries, grain, and other fruits. I am interested by the little ridge or cliff of foam which the breeze has raised along the White Pond shore, the westerly breeze causing the wavelets to lapse on the shore and mix the water with the air gradually. Though this is named White Pond from the whiteness of its sandy shore, the line of foam is infinitely whiter, far whiter than any sand. This reminds me how far a white pond-shore, 2. e. the sand, may be seen. I saw from Monadnock the north shore of a large pond in Nelson which was some eight miles north by the map, very distinct to every one who looked that way. Perhaps in such cases a stronger light is reflected from the water on to the shore. The highest ridge of foam is where it is held or retained and so built up gradually behind some brush or log on the shore, by additions below, into a little cliff, like a sponge. In other places it is rolled like a muff. It is all light and trembling in the air. Thus we are amused with foam, a hybrid between two elements. A breeze comes and gradually mingles some of the water with the air. It is, as it were, the aspiration of the pond to soar into the air. The debatable ground between two oceans, the earth, or shore, being only the point of resistance, where they are held to mingle. See nowadays the pretty little Castile-soap galls on the shrub oaks. Their figure “~<K@\ Is like the In- dian girdle of triangular points. er) Also other galls, yellowish and red on dif- ferent sides. The pussy clover heads were most interesting, large, and puffy, say ten days ago. I notice milkweed in a hollow in the field by the cove at White Pond, as if the seed had settled there, owing to the lull of the wind.