The pulse of the River.

August 2. 

P. M. — To Hill. 

A green bittern comes, noiselessly flapping, with stealthy and inquisitive looking to this side the stream and then that, thirty feet above the water. This antediluvian bird, creature of the night, is a fit emblem of a dead stream like this Musketicook. 

This especially is the bird of the river. There is a sympathy between its sluggish flight and the sluggish flow of the stream, — its slowly lapsing flight, even like the rills of Musketicook and my own pulse sometimes.  

Very common now are the few green emerald leafets of the Bidens Beckii, which will ere long yellow the shallow parts. 

Acalypha, apparently not long. 

Dodder, not long (not out 27th of July at railroad bridge), say four or five days. 

A three-ribbed goldenrod by small apple, by wall at foot east side of Hill (S. gigantea ? or one of the two preceding), not nearly out. It differs from my gigantea apparently only in the leaves being perfectly smooth above and the stem smooth and pink (?) glaucous (excepting a little pubescence near the top). Very tall. Vide it by and by. 

The lower leaves of some catnep are now of that delicate lake or claret color. 

Some waxwork leaves have felt the heat and slight drought. Their green is spotted with yellow, distinct yellow and green; others a very delicate clear yellow; others faded quite white.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1856

A green bittern comes noiselessly flapping . . . See July 30, 1856 ("A green bittern. . .with heavy flapping flight").

A three-ribbed goldenrod . . . differs from my gigantea . . See July 31, 1856  ("The Solidago gigantea (?), three-ribbed, out a long time at Walden shore by railroad, more perfectly out than any solidago I have seen. I will call this S. gigantea, yet it has a yellowish-green stem, slightly pubescent above, and leaves slightly rough to touch above, rays small, about fifteen"); August 16, 1858 ("A three-ribbed goldenrod on railroad causeway, two to three feet high, abundantly out"); August 21, 1856 ("The prevailing solidagos now are . . .2d, the three-ribbed, of apparently several varieties, which I have called arguta or gigantea (apparently truly the last)")

Waxwork leaves have felt the heat . . . See August 9, 1854 ("Waxwork yellowing.")