That swamp is a singularly wild place

September 6.

 6 A. M. — To Merrick’s shore. 

Hear a warbling vireo, sounding very rare and rather imperfect. I think this is what I have mistaken for the young purple finch note. 

Also hear apparently a yellow-throated vireo. 

That fine spreading-panicled dark-purple grass, now rising all along the river near the waterside, is Panicum agrostoides; in prime. That finer and narrower-panicled, now out of bloom, is red-top, or else white bent; with the former.

River risen still higher, and weeds covered.

 P. M. — To Ledum Swamp. 

Going over Clamshell Plain, I see a very large flock of a hundred or more cowbirds about some cows. They whirl away on some alarm and alight on a neighboring rail fence, close together on the rails, one above another. Then away they whirl and settle on a white oak top near me. Half of them are evidently quite young birds, having glossy black breasts with a drab line down middle. The heads of all are light-colored, perhaps a slaty drab, and some apparently wholly of this color. 

On the hillside above Clamshell Ditch, grows that handsome grass of Sept. 1st (vide September 4th), evidently Sorghum nutans (Andropogon of Bigelow), chestnut beard grass, Indian grass, wood grass. It is much larger than what I saw before; is still abundantly in flower; four and a half feet high; leaves, perhaps arundinaceous, eighteen inches long; panicle, nine inches long. It is a very handsome, wild-looking grass, well enough called Indian grass, and I should have named it with the other andropogons, August 26th. 

With its narrow one-sided panicle of bright purple and yellow (I include the yellow anthers) often waving [?], raised high above the leaves, it looks like a narrow banner. It is of more vivid colors than its congeners, and might well have caught an Indian’s eye. These bright banners are now advanced on the distant hillsides, not in large armies, but scattered troops or single file, like the red men themselves. They stand thus fair and bright in our midst, as it were representative of the race which they are named after, but for the most part unobserved. It stands like an Indian chief taking a last look at his beloved hunting grounds. 

The expression of this grass haunted me for a week after I first passed and noticed it, like the glance of an eye. 

Aster patens past prime at Money-Diggers’ Hill. Polygonum tenue, how long? 

Solidago nemoralis is apparently in prime on Lupine Hill; some of it past. It is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it. 

At Ledum Pool edge, I find the Woodwardia Virginica fern, its fruit mostly turned deep reddish-brown. It appears to grow only close to the pool, part of the fruit forming two lines parallel with the midrib. A third part of the nesaea there is turned scarlet. Kalmia glauca is again in bloom. The hairy huckleberries are rather scarce and soft. They are in sipid and leave a hairy skin in the month. 

That swamp is a singularly wild place, without any natural outlet. I hear of a marsh hawk’s nest there this summer. I see great spiders there of an uncommon kind, whose webs —the main supporting line — stretch six feet in the clear from spruce to spruce, as high as my head, with a dense web of the usual form some fifteen inches in diameter beneath. 

Stopped and talked with W. W. and ate a watermelon with him on the grass. Once his senseless democracy appeared. He spoke with an ignorant pride of Buchanan’s telegraphic message, of which most of us were ashamed; said he supposed he had more learning than Victoria! But the less said about them the better. 

Seeing a stake-driver flying up the river, he observed that when you saw that bird flying about it was a never failing sign of a storm approaching. How many of these sayings like this arise not from a close and frequent observation of the phenomena of nature, but from a distant and casual one!

I find very common in prime by roadsides, in dry ground, etc., Vilfa vaginaeflora, rush grass, hidden-flowered vilfa; also by Corner roadside, beyond brooks, Panicum filiforme with and like P. sanguinale, apparently in prime, and with last fills the old mullein-field in front of Bear Garden Hill. 

Is that narrowly-linear-leaved potamogeton, all immersed and now forming dense beds in the Assabet, a distinct species, or only the immersed leaves of one? Vide pressed. 

A year ago last spring I gave to Edith Emerson and to Sophia some clasping hound’s-tongue seeds, it being very rare hereabouts, wishing to spread it. Now and for a long time it has been a pest in the garden (it does not bloom till the second year), by its seeds clinging to our clothes. Mrs. E. has carried it to Boston thus, and I have spent twenty minutes at once in clearing myself of it. So it is in a fair way to be dispersed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 6, 1858


Hear a warbling vireo, sounding very rare and rather imperfect. I think this is what I have mistaken for the young purple finch note. See note to  September 6, 1859 ("I hear occasionally a half-warbled strain from a warbling vireo in the elm-tops, as I go down the street nowadays"); also  September 3, 1858 ("I hear a faint warble from time to time from some young or old birds, from my window these days. Is it the purple finch again, — young birds practicing?"); August 25, 1858 ("The note of a warbling vireo sounds very rare")


Now and for a long time it has been a pest in the garden. See June 5, 1858 ("Clasping hound's-tongue in garden.")