Have I not commonly noticed them dead after rain?

July 12.

P. M. — Down Turnpike to Red Lily Meadow. 

Hear the plaintive note of young bluebirds, a reviving and gleaming of their blue ray. 

In Moore's meadow by Turnpike, see the vetch in purple patches weighing down the grass, as if a purple tinge were reflected there. 

White vervain. Smooth sumach, apparently yesterday. Rue is beginning now to whiten the meadows on all hands. 

The Ranunculus aquatilis appears to be about done, though it may have been submerged by the rain of yesterday. I see hardly one freshly open, and it  quite moist and lowering yet. 

By the myosotis ditch there, is an abundance of Galium trifidum (apparently obtusum or latifolium, in press). It is densely massed and quite prickly, with three corolla-lobes. As yet I think I have observed only two varieties of G. trifidum, smooth and rough. 

Lactuca sanguinea, some time, with dark-purple stem, widely branched. Pycnanthemum muticum and the narrow-leaved, not long.

(short tail shrew dead in the trail

avesong September 17, 2023)

In the still wet road on the hill, just beyond Lincoln bound, a short-tailed shrew (Sorex brevicaudus of Say), dead after the rain. I have found them thus three or four times before. It is 4 1/2 inches long; tail 1 +; head and snout, 1 +. Roundish body. Lead-color above, somewhat lighter beneath, with a long snout, 3/8  inch beyond lower jaw, incisors black, delicate light-colored (almost silvery) mustachial bristles, and also from lower lip; nose emarginate; nails long and slender, a purple bar across each; ears white and concealed in the fur; the nostrils plainly perforated, though Emmons says that in the specimens of Sorex he had seen he could detect no perforations with a microscope. It has a peculiar but not very strong muskiness. There was an insect-wing in its mouth. Its numerous teeth distinct. 

Have I not commonly noticed them dead after rain? I am surprised to read in Emmons that it was first observed in Missouri, and that he has "not been able to meet with it" and doubts its existence in the State; retains it on the authority of former catalogues; says it nests on the surface and is familiar with water. 

In spirits. [Given to Agassiz]

Red lilies in prime, single upright fiery flowers, their throats how splendidly and variously spotted, hardly two of quite the same hue and not two spotted alike, —leopard-spotted, — averaging a foot or more in height, amid the huckleberry and lambkill, etc., in the moist, meadowy pasture. 

Apparently a bluebird's egg in a woodpecker's hole in an apple tree, second brood, just laid. In collection. 

Parsnip at Bent's orchard; how long? Also on July 5th, almost out. Agrimony well out. Chestnut in prime. 

See Lysimachia quadrifolia with from three to five (or six?) leaves in a whorl. 

Iberis umbellata, candytuft, roadside, Turtle's, naturalized; how long? New plant.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 12, 1856

A short-tailed shrew dead after the rain. I have found them thus three or four times before. See May 1, 1857 ("Apparently a skunk has picked up what I took to be the dead shrew in the Goose Pond Path."); July 31, 1856 ("Another short-tailed shrew dead in the wood-path.")

Emmons doubts its existence in the State.. See Ebenezer Emmons, Report on the Quadrupeds of Massachusetts 13 (1840) ("The Shrews are remarkable for their glandular apparatus, which gives them the strong musky odor . . . I have not been able to meet with it, and I have some doubts of the existence of this species Within the limits of this State.. . . From the fact, that in the summer many are found dead without any external injury, it is supposed that an annual mortality prevails among them. It is suggested, however, that it may arise from a deficiency of food produced in a dry season by the escape of worms on which they feed, . . .In the specimens of Sorex which have fallen under my observation, I have not been able to discover, even with the microscope, any nostrils, the termination, or the extremity, of the nose being apparently an imperforate membrane.")

July 12. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, July 12

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021