At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke.

August 31. 

Warmer this morning and considerably hazy again. 

Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly. 

Ferris in his " Utah," crossing the plains in '52, says that, on Independence Rock near the Sweetwater, "at a rough guess, there must be 35,000 to 40,000" names of travellers. [Benjamin G. Ferris, Utah and the Mormons. New York, 1854.]

1 P. M. — To Lincoln. 

Surveying for William Peirce. He says that several large chestnuts appear to be dying near him on account of the drought. 

Saw a meadow said to be still on fire after three weeks; fire had burned holes one and a half feet deep; was burning along slowly at a considerable depth. 

P. brought me home in his wagon. Was not quite at his ease and in his element; i. e., talked with some reserve, though well behaved, unless I approached the subject of horses. Then he spoke with a will and with authority, betraying somewhat of the jockey. 

He said that this dry weather was "trying to wagons ; it loosened the tires," — if that was the word. He did not use blinders nor a check-rein. Said a horse's neck must ache at night which has been reined up all day. 

He said that the outlet of F[lint's] Pond had not been dry before for four years, and then only two or three days; now it was a month. 

Notwithstanding this unprecedented drought our river, the main stream, has not been very low. It may have been kept up by the reservoirs. Walden is unaffected by the drought, and is still very high. But for the most part silent are the watercourses, when I walk in rocky swamps where a tinkling is commonly heard. 

At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke, I think of burning meadows, in the air in the village. There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed. Is not the haze a sort of smoke, the sun parching and burning the earth?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1854

Wormwood pollen yellows my clothes commonly. See August 31, 1859 ("These weeds require cultivated ground, and... now that the potatoes are cared for, Nature is preparing a crop of chenopodium and Roman wormwood for the birds.")

This unprecedented drought. See July 13, 1854 (“In the midst of July heat and drought.”); July 24, 1854 ("A decided rain-storm to-day and yesterday, such as we have not had certainly since May."); August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought, some of whose phenomena I have referred to during several weeks past.”); August 22, 1854 (" Hundreds, if not thousands, of fishes have here perished on account of the drought."); September 10, 1854 ("The first fall rains after the long drought"). See also August 21, 2019 ("There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet., , , It is like the summer of '54.")

At nine this evening I distinctly and strongly smell smoke, I think of burning meadows . . .There must be more smoke in this haze than I have supposed. See August 25, 1854 ("Between me and Nawshawtuct is a very blue haze like smoke. Indeed many refer all this to smoke"): August 26, 1854 ("I hear of a great many fires around us, far and near, both meadows and woods; in Maine and New York also. There may be some smoke in this haze, but I doubt it."); August 28, 1854 ("I think that haze was not smoke;");  September 25, 1854 ("I think that if that August haze had been much of it smoke, I should have smelt it much more strongly, for I now smell strongly the smoke of this burning half a mile off,"); October 21, 1856 ("It is remarkably hazy , , , but when I open the door I smell smoke, which may in part account for it. .")

The persistent song

of the eastern wood pewee,

high on an oak snag.

Zphx August 31, 2019

The prevailing flowers at present time,

August 30.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

August 30, 2019

The river began to fall perhaps yesterday, after rising perhaps fourteen or fifteen inches. It is now about one foot higher than before the rain of the 25th. A rise of one foot only from low water gives an appearance of fullness to the stream, and though the meadows were dry before, it would now be difficult to work on them. 

The potamogetons, etc., are drowned, and you see a full rippling tide where was a sluggish and weedy stream but four or five days ago. Now, perhaps, will be the end of quite a number of plants which culminate in dry weather when the river is low, as some potamogetons, limnanthemum (in the river), etc. 

Sparganium and heart-leaf are washed up, and the first driftwood comes down; especially portions of bridges that have been re paired take their way slowly to the sea, if they are not saved by some thrifty boatman. 

The river is fuller, with more current; a cooler wind blows; the reddish Panicum agrostoides stands cool along the banks; the great yellow flowers of the Bidens chrysanthemoides are drowned, and now I do not see to the bottom as I paddle along. 

The pasture thistle, though past its prime, is quite common, and almost every flower (i. e. thistle), wherever you meet with it, has one or more bumblebees on it, clambering over its mass of florets. One such bee which I disturb has much ado before he can rise from the grass and get under weigh, as if he were too heavily laden, and at last he flies but low. 

Now that flowers are rarer, almost every one of whatever species has bees or butterflies upon it. 

Now is the season of rank weeds, as Polygonum Careyi, tall rough goldenrod, Ambrosia elatior, primrose, erechthites (some of this seven feet high), Bidens frondosa (also five feet high). 

The erechthites down has begun to fly. 

We start when we think we are handling a worm, and open our hands quickly, and this I think is designed rather for the protection of the worm than of ourselves. 

Acorns are not fallen yet. Some haws are ripe. 

How is it with the trilllium?

  
The plants now decayed and decaying and withering are those early ones which grow in wet or shady places, as hellebore, skunk-cabbage, the two (and perhaps three) smilacinas, uvularias, polygonatum, medeola, Senecio aureus (except radical leaves), and many brakes and sarsaparillas, and how is it with trilliums and arums? 

The prevailing flowers, considering both conspicuous- ness and numbers, at present time, as I think now:

• Solidagos, especially large three-ribbed, nemoralis, tall rough, etc. 
• Asters, especially Tradescanti, puniceus, corymbosus, dumosus, Diplopappus umbellatus 
• Tansy 
• Helianthuses, as Helianthus decapetalus, divaricatus, annum, etc. 
• Eupatoriums, as perfoliatum, purpureum 
• Mikania 
• Polygonums, as P. Careyi, dumetorum, front-rank, Persicaria, sagittaium, etc. 
• Gnaphalium, as polycephalum and pearly 
• Bidens, as frondosa and chrysanthemoides
• Gerardias, as purpurea and pediculata 
• Hieraciums, as Canadense, scabra, and paniculatum 
• Vernonia 
• Polygala sanguinea, etc. 
• Liatris 
• Nabalus albus 
• Mints, as lycopuses, white mint, pycnanthemums 
• Hypericums, the small ones of all kinds 
• Leontodon autumnalis (prevailing, open in forenoon) 
• Pontederia 
• Sagittaria variabilis 
• Desmodiums 
• Spiranthes cernua 
• Lespedeza vidacea 
• Cuscuta 
• Rhexia 
• Lobelia cardinalis 
• Cirsium pumilum 
• Chenopodiums 
• Scutellaria lateriflora 
• Impatiens 
• Apios 
• Linaria vulgaris 
• Gratiola aurea

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1859

How is it with trilliums and arums? See August 19, 1852 ("The trillium berries, six-sided, one inch in diameter, like varnished and stained cherry wood, glossy red, crystalline and ingrained, concealed under its green leaves in shady swamps."); August 21, 1854 ("Trillium berries bright red.");  August 28, 1856 ("See the great oval masses of scarlet berries of the arum now in the meadows. Trillium fruit, long time."); September 1, 1851("The fruit of the trilliums is very handsome.. . .a dense crowded cluster of many ovoid berries turning from green to scarlet or bright brick color.") ; September 1, 1859 ("The scarlet fruit of the arum spots the swamp floor."); September 2, 1853 (" The dense oval bunches of arum berries now startle the walker in swamps. They are a brilliant vermilion on a rich ground.”); September 4, 1856 ("Splendid scarlet arum berries there now in prime.”); September 4, 1857 ("Arum berries ripe.”); September 24, 1856 ("Aarum berries still fresh"); September 28, 1856 ("The arum berries are still fresh and abundant, perhaps in their prime. A large cluster is two and a half inches long by two wide and rather flattish. . . . These singular vermilion-colored berries, about a hundred of them, surmount a purple bag on a peduncle six or eight inches long. ")

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun.

August 29. 

August 29, 2019

I hear in the street this morning a goldfinch sing part of a sweet strain.

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. But in this cooler weather I feel as if the fruit of my summer were hardening and maturing a little, acquiring color and flavor like the corn and other fruits in the field. 

When the very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights, then, too, the first cooler airs of autumn begin to waft my sweetness on the desert airs of summer. Now, too, poets nib their pens afresh. I scent their first-fruits in the cool evening air of the year. 

By the coolness the experience of the summer is condensed and matured, whether our fruits be pumpkins or grapes. 

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples. 

I find that the water-bugs (Gyrinus) keep amid the pads in open spaces along the sides of the river all day, and, at dark only, spread thence all over the river and gyrate rapidly. For food I see them eating or sucking at the wings and bodies of dead devil's-needles which fall on the water, making them too gyrate in a singular manner. If one gets any such food, the others pursue him for it. 

There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night. 

P. M. — To Easterbrooks Country. 

The vernonia is one of the most conspicuous flowers now where it grows, — a very rich color. It is some what past its prime; perhaps about with the red eupatorium. 

Botrychium lunarioides now shows its fertile frond above the shorn stubble in low grounds, but not shedding pollen. 

See the two-leaved Solomon's-seal berries, many of them ripe; also some ripe mitchella berries, contrasting with their very fresh green leaves. 

White cohush berries, apparently in prime, and the arum fruit. The now drier and browner (purplish- brown) looking rabbit's clover, whose heads collected would make a soft bed, is an important feature in the landscape; pussies some call them; more puffed up than before. 

The thorn bushes are most sere and yellowish-brown bushes now. 

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. 

The slate-colored spots or eyes — fungi — on several kinds of goldenrods are common now. 

The knife-shaped fruit of the ash has strewn the paths of late.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1859

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. See August 29, 1854 ("It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire .") See also September 4, 1860 ("It is cooler these days and nights, and I move into an eastern chamber in the morning, that I may sit in the sun"); September 17, 1858 (“Cooler weather now for two or three days, so that I am glad to sit in the sun on the east side of the house mornings.”); September 18, 1852("In the forenoons I move into a chamber on the east side of the house, and so follow the sun round.”)

The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights. See August 29, 1853 ("Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off."); August 27, 1859 ("The first notice I have that grapes are ripening is by the rich scent at evening from my own native vine against the house");August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first.");

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples.See November 14, 1853. ("October answers to that period in the life of man when . . . all his experience ripens into wisdom, but every root, branch, leaf of him glows with maturity. What he has been and done in his spring and summer appears. He bears his fruit".)

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. See September 3, 1858 ("See a small striped snake, some fifteen or eighteen inches long, swallowing a toad"); September 13, 1858 (""Saw a striped snake run into the wall, and just before it disappeared heard a loud sound like a hiss") October 18, 1857 (" Snakes lie out now on sunny banks, amid the dry leaves, now as in spring. They are chiefly striped ones.")

There was a remarkable red aurora all over the sky last night. .See also Wikipedia (Solar Cycle 10 beginning in December 1855 and the Solar storm ( Carrington Event.) of September 1–2, 1859) and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Northern Lights

The flowers I see at present are autumn flowers..

August 28. 

P. M. — To Walden.

A cool day; wind northwest. Need a half -thick coat. Thus gradually we withdraw into winter quarters. It is a clear, flashing air, and the shorn fields now look bright and yellowish and cool, tinkled and twittered over by bobolinks, goldfinches, sparrows, etc. 

You feel the less inclined to bathing this weather, and bathe from principle, when boys, who bathe for fun, omit it. 

Thick fogs these mornings. We have had little or no dog-days this year, it has been so dry.

Pumpkins begin to be yellow. 

White cornel berries mostly fallen. 

The arrowhead is still a common flower and an important one. I see some very handsome ones in Cardinal Ditch, whose corollas are an inch and a half in diameter. The greater part, however, have gone to seed. 

The flowers I see at present are autumn flowers, such as have risen above the stubble in shorn fields since it was cut, whose tops have commonly been clipped by the scythe or the cow; or the late flowers, as asters and goldenrods, which grow in neglected fields and along ditches and hedgerows. 

The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now. I should have looked ten days ago. Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. It grows there in large patches with hardhack. 

I hear that some of the villagers were aroused from their sleep before light by the groans or bellowings of a bullock which an unskillful butcher was slaughtering at the slaughter-house. What morning or Memnonian music was that to ring through the quiet village ? What did that clarion sing of? What a comment on our village life! Song of the dying bullock! But no doubt those who heard it inquired, as usual, of the butcher the next day, "What have you got to-day?" "Sirloin, good beefsteak, rattleran," etc. 

I saw a month or more ago where pine-needles which had fallen (old ones) stood erect on low leaves of the forest floor, having stuck in, or passed through, them. They stuck up as a fork which falls from the table. Yet you would not think that they fell with sufficient force. 

The fruit of the sweet-gale is yellowing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1859


Thick fogs these mornings. See July 22, 1851 ("The season of morning fogs has arrived. A great crescent over the course of the river, the fog retreats, and I do not see how it is dissipated, leaving this slight, thin vapor to curl over the surface of the still, dark water, still as glass. These are our fairest days, which are born in a fog."); August 7, 1860 ("If we awake into a fog it does not occur to us that the inhabitants of a neighboring town may have none)

White cornel berries mostly fallen. See August 28, 1856 ("The panicled cornel berries are whitening, but already mostly fallen."); August 28, 1852 ("The berries of the alternate leaved cornel have dropped off mostly.")

The rhexia in Ebby Hubbard's field is considerably past prime, and it is its reddish chalices which show most at a distance now.Still it is handsome with its large yellow anthers against clear purple petals. See.August 27, 1856 (“The rhexia greets me in bright patches on meadow banks.”); October 2, 1856 (“The scarlet leaves and stem of the rhexia, some time out of flower, makes almost as bright a patch in the meadow now as the flowers did,”)

There are various ways in which you can tell if a watermelon is ripe

August 27

See Late Blackberries

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1859

All our life is a persistent dreaming awake. See November 12, 1859 ("I do not know how to distinguish between our waking life and a dream. Are we not always living the life that we imagine we are?"); October 29, 1857 ("There are some things of which I cannot at once tell whether I have dreamed them or they are real"); August 8, 1852 ("When the play - it may be the tragedy of life - is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.") May 24, 1851 ("I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place”).

I often see yarrow with a delicate pink tint. See July 5, 1856 ("Pink-colored yarrow.")

The children have done bringing huckleberries to sell for nearly a week. See July 13, 1852 ("It is impossible to say what day — almost what week — the huckleberries begin to be ripe, unless you are acquainted with, and daily visit, every huckleberry bush in the town"); August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 4, 1854 ("On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. ...Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans inter mixed."); August 4. 1856 ("This favorable moist weather has expanded some of the huckleberries to the size of bullets"); August 28, 1856 ("Huckleberries are about given up")

Perfectly fresh and large low blackberries, peculiarly sweet and soft, in the shade of the pines at Thrush Alley,-- so much sweeter, tenderer, and larger. See July 31, 1856 (“How thick the berries — low blackberries, Vaccinium vacillans, and huckleberries — on the side of Fair Haven Hill! ”) August 4, 1852 (“Most huckleberries and blueberries and low blackberries are in their prime now.”); August 19, 1856 ("What countless varieties of low blackberries! Here, in this open pine grove, I pluck some large fresh and very sweet ones when they are mostly gone without. So they are continued a little longer to us"); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); 

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. See   August 22, 1852 ("The elder bushes are weighed down with fruit partially turned, and are still in bloom at the extremities of their twigs."); August 23, 1856  ("Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance."); August 29, 1854 ("The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.")

I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time

August 26. 

The dust is laid, the streets washed, the leaves — the first ripe crop — fallen, owing to yesterday's copious rain. It is clearer weather, and the creak of the crickets is more distinct, just as the air is clearer. 

The trees look greener and fresher, not only because their leaves are washed and erected, but because they have for the most part shed their yellow and sere leaves. 

The front-rank polygonum is now perhaps in its prime. Where it forms an island in the river it is surmounted in the middle or highest part by the P. hydropiperoides. 

P. M. — To Fair Haven Hill. 

Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe, as also the Cornus sericea berries, and the dull-reddish leaves of the last begin to be conspicuous. 

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound.

 Potato vines are generally browning and rank. Roman wormwood prevails over them; also erechthites, in new and boggy ground, and butterweed. These lusty natives prevail in spite of the weeding hoe, and take possession of the field at last. Potato vines have taken a veil of wormwood. 

The barn-yard grass and various panics (sanguinale, capillare, and bottle-grass) now come forward with a rush and take possession of the cultivated fields, partly abandoned for the present by the farmer and gardener. 

How singular that the Polygonum aviculare should grow so commonly and densely about back doors where the earth is trodden, bordering on paths ! Hence properly called door-grass. I am not aware that it prevails in any other places. 

The pontederia leaves are already slightly imbrowned, though the flowers are still abundant. 

The river is a little cooled by yesterday's rain, and considerable heart-leaf (the leaves mainly) is washed up. 

I begin to think of a thicker coat and appreciate the warmth of the sun. I see sun-sparkles on the river, such as I have not seen for a long time. At any rate, they surprise me. There may be cool veins in the air now, any day. 

Now for dangle-berries. 

Also Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. 

I saw a cherry-bird peck from the middle of its upright (vertical) web on a bush one of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders within a rod of me. It dropped to the ground, and then the bird picked it up. It left a hole or rent in the middle of the web. The spider cunningly spreads his net for feebler insects, and then takes up his post in the centre, but perchance a passing bird picks him from his conspicuous station. 

I perceived for the first time, this afternoon, in one place, a slight mouldy scent. There are very few fungi in a dry summer like this.

The Uvularia sessilifolia is for the most part turned yellow, with large green fruit, or even withered and brown. 

Some medeola is quite withered. Perhaps they are somewhat frost-bitten. 

I see a goldfinch eating the seeds of the coarse barn yard grass, perched on it. It then goes off with a cool twitter. 

Notice arrowhead leaves very curiously eaten by some insect. They are dotted all over in lines with small roundish white scales, — which your nail will remove, and then a scar is seen beneath, — as if some juice had exuded from each puncture and then hardened. 

The first fall rain is a memorable occasion, when the river is raised and cooled, and the first crop of sere and yellow leaves falls. The air is cleared; the dog- days are over; sun-sparkles are seen on water; crickets sound more distinct; saw-grass reveals its spikes in the shorn fields; sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. Farmers feel encouraged about their late potatoes and corn. Mill-wheels that have rested for want of water begin to revolve again. Meadow-haying is over. 

The first significant event (for a long time) was the frost of the 17th. That was the beginning of winter, the first summons to summer. Some of her forces succumbed to it. The second event was the rain of yesterday. 

My neighbor told me yesterday that about four inches of rain had fallen, for he sent his man for a pail that was left in the garden during the rain, and there was about four inches depth of water in it. I inquired if the pail had upright sides. "No," he said, "it was flaring ! ! " However, according to another, there was full four inches in a tub. 

Leersia or cut-grass in prime at Potter's holes. 

That first frost on the 17th was the first stroke of winter aiming at the scalp of summer. Like a stealthy and insidious aboriginal enemy, it made its assault just before daylight in some deep and far-away hollow and then silently withdrew. Few have seen the drooping plants, but the news of this stroke circulates rapidly through the village. Men communicate it with a tone of warning. The foe is gone by sunrise, but some fearful neighbors who have visited their potato and cranberry patches report this stroke. The implacable and irresistible foe to all this tender greenness is not far off, nor can we be sure, any month in the year, that some scout from his low camp may not strike down the tenderest of the children of summer. 

The earliest and latest frosts are not distinguishable. This foe will go on steadily increasing in strength and boldness, till his white camps will be pitched over all the fields, and we shall be compelled to take refuge in our strongholds, with some of summer's withered spoils stored up in barns, maintaining ourselves and our herds on the seeds and roots and withered grass which we have embarned. Men in anticipation of this time have been busily collecting and curing the green blades all the country over, while they have still some nutriment in them. Cattle and horses have been dragging homeward their winter's food.

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum, Hubbard's meadow-side, Drosera Flat, not out.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1859


Elder-berries have fairly begun to be ripe. See note to August 23, 1856 (Elder-berries, now looking purple, are weighing down the bushes along fences by their abundance. ")
  
Cornus sericea berries See August 28, 1856 ("The bright china-colored blue berries of the Cornus sericea begin to show themselves along the river. .”)

The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound. See August 23, 1857 ("The mole cricket nowadays"); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore."); September 11, 1855 ("Loudly the mole cricket creaks by mid-afternoon.")

Viburnum nudum fruit has begun. See August 25, 1854 ("The Viburnum nudum berries, in various stages, — green, deep-pink, and also deep-blue, not purple or ripe, — are very abundant at Shadbush Meadow. They appear to be now in their prime and are quite sweet, but have a large seed. Interesting for the various colors on the same bush and in the same cluster.")

One of those large (I think yellow-marked) spiders. See September 12, 1858 ("They are the yellow-backed spider, commonly large and stout but of various sizes. I count sixty-four such webs there, and in each case the spider occupies the centre, head downward.")

A new plant, apparently Lycopodium inundatum. See August 28, 1860 ("The Lycopodium inundatum common by Harrington's mud-hole, Ministerial Swamp.") 

[Northern bog-clubmoss is by far the most common species of bog-clubmoss in New England.  The tops of the erect shoots are distinctively widened. Its diminutive size, thin horizontal shoots, and entire trophophylls (sterile leaves) quickly distinguish most populations; it frequently occurs in the absence of other species or hybrids. ~ GoBotany]

See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

When the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air,

August 25. 

Copious rain at last, in the night and during the day.

A. M. — Mountain-ash berries partly turned. Again see, I think, purple finch eating them. 

I see, after the rain, when the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air, quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1859

Copious rain at last, in the night and during the day. See August 25. 1852 ("One of those serious and normal storms ~ not a shower which you can see through, not a transient cloud that drops rain ~ something regular, a fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind. ")

Quite a flock of (apparently) Fringilla socialis in the garden. See April 27, 1852 (“Heard also a chipping sparrow (F. socialis)”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chipping Sparrow

When the leaves are rustling and glistening in the cooler breeze and clear air. See August 15, 1853 ("now it is cooler and beautifully clear at last after all these rains, and. . .I see a distinct, dark shade under the edge of the woods, the effect of the luxuriant foliage seen through the clear air."); August 19, 1853 ("After more rain, with wind in the night, it is now clearing up cool. There is a broad, clear crescent of blue in the west, slowly increasing, and an agreeable autumnal coolness"); August 20, 1853 ("This day, too, has that autumnal character. I am struck by the clearness and stillness of the air, "); August 30, 1854 ("The clearness of the air makes it delicious to gaze in any direction.")

Corner road, by brook.

August 24.

P. M. — To Conantum.

The small sempervirens blackberry in prime in one place. 

Aster puniceus and Diplopappus umbellatus, how long? 

Calamagrostis coarctata not quite, end of Hubbard's meadow wood-path. 

Panicum virgatum, say two or three weeks. 

Leersia, or cut-grass, some time, roadside, Corner road, by brook.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1859

The small sempervirens blackberry in prime in one place. August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins."); August 23, 1856 ("At the Lincoln bound hollow, Walden, there is a dense bed of the Rubus hispidus, matting the ground seven or eight inches deep, and full of the small black fruit, now in its prime. It is especially abundant where the vines lie over a stump. Has a peculiar, hardly agreeable acid."); September 7, 1858 ("J. Farmer calls those Rubus sempervirens berries, now abundant, 'snake blackberries.'") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries

Aster puniceus how long? See August 11, 1856 ("Aster puniceus a day or more."); August 30, 1856 (" The Aster puniceus is hardly yet in prime; its great umbel-shaped tops not yet fully out."); October 7, 1857 ("Crossing Depot Brook, I see many yellow butterflies fluttering about the Aster puniceus, still abundantly in bloom there.”); November 5. 1855 ("Crossing the Depot Field Brook, I observe the downy, fuzzy globular tops of the Aster puniceus. They are slightly tinged with yellow, compared with the hoary gray of the goldenrod.")

Calamagrostis coarctata not quite, end of Hubbard's meadow wood-path. See August 13, 1860 ("Calamagrostis coarctata, not quite.")

Panicum virgatum, say two or three weeks. See September 7, 1858 ("In Shad-bush Meadow the prevailing grasses (not sedges) now are the slender Panicum clandestinum, whose seeds are generally dropped now, Panicum virgatum, in large tufts, and blue-joint")

Leersia, or cut-grass, some time, roadside, Corner road, by brook. See September 1, 1858 ("At the pool by the oaks behind Pratt’s . . . Leersia oryzoides, false rice, or rice cut-grass, is abundant and in prime on the shore there. Also find it on the shore of Merrick’s pasture. It has very rough sheaths.")

The effect of the frost of the 17th.

August 23.

August 23, 2019

P. M. — To Laurel Glen to see the effect of the frost of the 17th (and perhaps 18th). 

As for autumnal tints, the Smilacina racemosa is yellowed, spotted brown in streaks, and half withered; also two-leaved Solomon's-seal is partly yellowed and withered. 

Birches have been much yellowed for some time; also young wild cherry and hazel, and some horse- chestnuts and larches on the street. 

The scarlet lower leaves of the choke-berry and some brakes are the handsomest autumnal tints which I see to-day. 

At Laurel Glen, these plants were touched by frost, in the lowest places, viz., 

• the very small white oaks and hickories; 
• dogsbane very generally; 
• ferns generally, — especially Aspidium Thelypteris (?), the revolute one at bottom of hollow, — including some brakes; 
• some little chinquapin oaks and chestnuts; 
• some small thorns and blueberry (Vaccinium vacillans shoots); 
• aspen, large and tender leaves and shoots; 
• even red maple; 
• many hazel shoots; 
• geraniums;
• indigo-weed; 
• lespedeza (the many-headed) and 
• desmodium (one of the erect ones); 
• a very little of the lowest locust leaves. 

These were very small plants and low, and commonly the most recent and tender growth. The bitten part, often the whole, was dry and shrivelled brown or darker. 

In the river meadows the blue-eyed grass was very generally cut off and is now conspicuously black, — I find but one in bloom, — also small flowering ferns. 

The cranberries (not vines) are extensively frost-bitten and spoiled. 

In Moore's Swamp the potatoes were extensively killed, the greenest or tenderest vines. One says that the driest part suffered the most. They had not nearly got ripe. 

One man had his squash vines killed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1859

It is very dry now.

August 22. 

Monday. 

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. 

Blue vervain (Verbena hastata)

The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? 

WOOD ASTER AUGUST 20, 2017

Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. 

Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. 

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots close by them, but they are rather feeble and late. 

Riding to the factory, I see the leaves of corn, planted thick for fodder, so rolled by the drought that I mistook one row in grass for some kind of rush or else reed, small and terete. 

At the factory, where they were at work on the dam, they showed large and peculiar insects which they were digging up amid the gravel and water of the dam, nearly two inches long and half an inch wide, with six legs, two large shield-like plates on the forward part of the body, — under which they apparently worked their way through wet sand, — and two large claws, some what lobster-like, forward. The abdomen long, of many rings, and fringed with a kind of bristles on each side. 

The other day, as I was going by Messer's, I was struck with the pure whiteness of a tall and slender buttonwood before his house. The southwest side of it for some fifty or more feet upward, as far as the outer bark had recently scaled off, was as white, as distinct and bright a white, as if it had been painted, and when I put my finger on it, a white matter, like paint not quite dry, came off copiously, so that I even suspected it was paint. When I scaled off a piece of bark, the freshly exposed surface was brown. This white matter had a strong fungus-like scent, and this color is apparently acquired after a little exposure to the air. Nearly half the tree was thus uninterruptedly white as if it had been rounded and planed and then painted. No birch presents so uniformly white a surface. 

It is very dry now, but I perceive that the great star-shaped leaves of the castor bean plants in Mr. Rice's garden at twilight are quite cold to the touch, and quite shining and wet with moisture wherever I touch them. Many leaves of other plants, as cucumbers, feel quite dry.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1859

The circles of the blue vervain flowers, now risen near to the top, show how far advanced the season is. See August 6, 1852 ("Blue vervain is now very attractive to me, and then there is that interesting progressive history in its rising ring of blossoms. It has a story."); August 20, 1851 ("The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes."); August 21, 1851 ("It is very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute time, but the true time of the season.");August 23, 1851 ("The Verbena hastata at the pond has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are adhering.")


The savory-leaved aster (Diplopappus linariifolius) out; how long? See August 3, 1858 ("Savory-leaved aster."); September 18, 1856 ("Diplopappus linariifolius in prime.")

Saw the Aster corymbosus on the 19th. See August 9, 1856 ("What I have called Aster corymbosus out a day, above Hemlocks.. It has eight to twelve white rays, smaller than those of the macrophyllus, and a dull-red stem commonly."); August 11, 1852 ("Aster corymbosus, path beyond Corner Spring and in Miles Swamp.");  September 1, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, in prime, or maybe past."); September 6, 1856 ("For the first time distinguish the Aster cordifolius, a prevailing one in B[rattleboro] and but just beginning to flower"); September 9, 1856 [at Brattleboro] ("High up the mountain the Aster macrophyllus as well as corymbosus.");September 22, 1858 [from Salem to Cape Ann on foot] ("saw A. corymbosus, which is a handsome white wood aster"); September 24, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, still fresh though probably past prime."); October 8, 1856 ("A. corymbosus, looks fresh! . . . of asters, only corymbosus, undulatus,Tradescanti, and longifolius . . .are common. ")

Aster corymbosus . now known as Eurybia divaricata , commonly known as the white wood aster, can be found in dry open woods as well as along wood-edges and clearings. Its flower heads have yellow centers and white rays that are arranged in flat-topped corymbiform arrays (growing in such a fashion that the outermost are borne on longer pedicels than the inner, bringing all flowers up to a common level. to flattish top superficially resembling an umbel,). It flowers in the late summer through fall. Other distinguishing characteristics include its serpentine stems and sharply serrated narrow heart-shaped leaves. ~Wikipedia


Have seen where squirrels have eaten, i.e. stripped, many white pine cones, for a week past, though quite green. See September 9, 1857 ("How fast I could collect cones, if I could only contract with a family of squirrels to cut them off for me!"); September 16, 1857 ("I see green and closed cones beneath, which the squirrels have thrown down. On the trees many are already open. Say within a week have begun. In one small wood, all the white pine cones are on the ground, generally unopened, evidently freshly thrown down by the squirrels, and then the greater part have already been stripped.");September 24, 1857 ("The ground was completely strewn with white pine cones, apparently thrown down by the squirrels, still generally green and closed, but many stripped of scales, about the base of almost every pine, sometimes all of them. Now and for a week a good time to collect them.")

That young pitch pine whose buds the crossbills (?) plucked has put out shoots. See March 8, 1859 ("I see, under the pitch pines on the southwest slope of the hill, the reddish bud-scales scattered on the snow . . . and, examining, I find that in a great many cases the buds have been eaten by some creature and the scales scattered about. . .I am inclined to think that these were eaten by the red squirrel; or was it the crossbill? for this is said to visit us in the winter. Have I ever seen a squirrel eat the pine buds?")

There is quite a drought.

August 21.

Sunday. P. M. — Walk over the Great Meadows and observe how dry they are. 

There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet. It is much drier than it was three weeks ago there. It is like the summer of '54. 

Almost all the grass has been cut and carried off. It is quite dry crossing the neck of the Holt. 

In many holes in the meadow, made by the ice, the water having dried up, I see many small fishes — pouts and pickerel and bream — left dead and dying. In one place there were fifty or one hundred pouts from four to five inches long with a few breams, all dead and dry. It is remarkable that these fishes have not all been devoured by birds or quadrupeds. 

The blue herons must find it easy to get their living now. Are they not more common on our river such years as this?

In holes where the water has just evaporated, leaving the mud moist, I see a hundred little holes near together, with occasionally an indistinct track of a bird between. Measuring these holes, I find them to be some two inches deep, or about the length of a snipe's bill, and doubtless they were made by them. I start one snipe. 

People now (at this low stage of water) dig mud for their compost-heaps, deepen wells, build bank walls, perchance, along the river, and in some places make bathing-places by raking away the weeds. Many are ditching.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 21, 1859

There is quite a drought, and I can walk almost anywhere over these meadows without wetting my feet. It is much drier than it was three weeks ago there. It is like the summer of '54.. See August 19, 1854 ("There is now a remarkable drought, some of whose phenomena I have referred to during several weeks past.”); August 22, 1854 ("I go again to the Great Meadows, to improve this remarkably dry season and walk where in ordinary times I cannot go.")

The blue herons must find it easy to get their living now. See August 22, 1854 ("Thus the drought serves the herons, etc., confining their prey within narrower limits, and doubtless they are well acquainted with suitable retired pools far in the marshes to go a-fishing in. "

In holes where the water has just evaporated, leaving the mud moist, I see a hundred little holes near together, with occasionally an indistinct track of a bird between. . . .I start one snipe.  See August 3, 1859 (". To-day I can walk dry over the greater part of the meadows, . . . many think it has not been so dry for ten years! Goodwin is there after snipes. I scare up one in the wettest part.")

People now (at this low stage of water) dig mud for their compost-heaps. See August 28, 1854 ("The farmers improve this dry spell to cut ditches and dig mud in the meadows and pond-holes. I see their black heaps in many places. ")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed

August 20. 

2 p. m. — To Lee's Bridge via Hubbard's Wood, Potter's field, Conantum, returning by Abel Minott's house, Clematis Brook, Baker's pine plain, and railroad.

 I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed, — for I pull away the withered grass with my hands, — uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. 

They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other's song? It would be a curious ear, indeed, that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. 

Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one's song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth's axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night or day.

The Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco, meets me at every turn. At first I suspect some new bluish flower in the grass, but stooping see the inflated pods. Tasting one such herb convinces me that there are such things as drugs which may either kill or cure.[A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it, be cause it makes him slobber badly.]

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. 

How copious and precise the botanical language to describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant! Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. It is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe a flower's leaf, compared for instance with the care that is taken in describing a psychological fact. 

Suppose as much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in making a language to express the sentiments! We are armed with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field, or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to describe a human character. With equally wonderful indistinctness and confusion we describe men. The precision and copiousness of botanical language applied to the description of moral qualities! 

The neottia, or ladies'-tresses, behind Garfield's house. 

The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. 

Here are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they are not commonly eaten. 

The grasshoppers seem no drier than the grass.

In Lee's field are two kinds of plantain. Is the common one found there? 

The willow reach by Lee's Bridge has been stripped for powder. None escapes. This morning, hearing a cart, I looked out and saw George Dugan going by with a horse-load of his willow toward Acton powder-mills, which I had seen in piles by the turnpike. Every traveller has just as particular an errand which I might like wise chance to be privy to. 

Now that I am at the extremity of my walk, I see a threatening cloud blowing up from the south, which however, methinks, will not compel me to make haste. 

Apios tuberosa, or Glycine Apios, ground-nut. 

The prenanthes now takes the place of the lactucas, which are gone to seed. 

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to concede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon, as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck it. 

Scutellaria lateriflora, side-flowering skullcap, here. 

This brook deserves to be called Clematis Brook (though that name is too often applied), for the clematis is very abundant, running over the alders and other bushes on its brink. Where the brook issues from the pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five or six feet each way, with its red berries now ripe. It grows, too, at the upper end of the pond. But if it is the button-bush that grows in the now low water, it should rather be called the Button-Bush Pond. Now the tall rush is in its prime on the shore here, and the clematis abounds by this pond also. 

I came out by the leafy-columned elm under Mt. Misery, where the trees stood up one above another, higher and higher, immeasurably far to my imagination, as on the side of a New Hampshire mountain. . 

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far apart, with a wiry grass between, and goldenrod and hardhack and St. John's-wort and blackberry vines, each tree merely keeping down the grass for a space about itself, meditating to make a forest floor; and here and there younger pines are springing up. Further in, you come to moss-covered patches, dry, deep white moss, or almost bare mould, half covered with pine needles. Thus begins the future forest floor.

 The sites of the shanties that once stood by the railroad in Lincoln when the Irish built it, the still remaining hollow square mounds of earth which formed their embankments, are to me instead of barrows and druidical monuments and other ruins. It is a sufficient antiquity to me since they were built, their material being earth. Now the Canada thistle and the mullein crown their tops. I see the stones which made their simple chimneys still left one upon another at one end, which were sur mounted with barrels to eke them out ; and clean boiled beef bones and old shoes are strewn about. Otherwise it is a clean ruin, and nothing is left but a mound, as in the graveyard. 

Sium lineare, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom resembles the Cicuta maculata. The flowers of the blue vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their spikes.

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1851

The song of the crickets fails not in its season, night or day. See August 20. 1858 (" the creak of the cricket sounds cool and steady"); August 18, 1856 (" I hear the steady (not intermittent) shrilling of apparently the alder cricket, clear, loud, and autumnal, a season sound. Hear it, but see it not. It reminds me of past autumns and the lapse of time, suggests a pleasing, thoughtful melancholy,")

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present. See July 18, 1852 ("The petals of the rhexia have a beautiful clear purple with a violet tinge."); and note to August 5, 1858 ("I cannot sufficiently admire the rhexia, one of the highest-colored purple flowers, but difficult to bring home in its perfection, with its fugacious petals.")

Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. See March 1, 1852 (" I can see that there is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses"); January 15, 1853 ("Science suggests the value of mutual intelligence. I have long known this dust, but, as I did not know the name of it, i. e . what others called it, I therefore could not conveniently speak of it.");  August 29, 1858 ("With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of the thing. . . . My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.")

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott's house that was, I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding me of soldiers. See August 27, 1856 ("The cardinals in this ditch make a splendid show now, though they would have been much fresher and finer a week ago. . . . They look like slender plumes of soldiers advancing in a dense troop, . . .the most splendid show of cardinal flowers I ever saw.")

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed. Compare August 6, 1851 ("How often it happens that the traveller's principal distinction is that he is one who knows less about a country than a native! "); April 16, 1852 ("Many a foreigner who has come to this town has worked for years on its banks without discovering which way the river runs"); September 21, 1856 ("I have within a week found in Concord two of the new plants I found up-country. Such is the advantage of going abroad, — to enable to detect your own plants. I detected them first abroad, because there I was looking for the strange.")