June 24.
My lilies in the pan have revived with the cooler weather since the rain. (It rained a little last night.) This is what they require that they may keep.
Mayweed yesterday.
The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia.
The Gnaphalium uliginosum seems to be almost in blossom.
Gratiola out in mud near river, — those bare, rather hard, muddy tracts on the edge of the meadow next the river, where mint grows and the mud has wide cracks, some nearly an inch wide, produced by the sun since the water went down.
It is cooler and remarkably windy this afternoon, showing the under sides of the leaves and the pads, the white now red beneath and all green above.
Wind northwest.
Found what I take to be an Indian hoe at Hubbard Bathing - Place, sort of slate stone four or five eighths of an inch thick, semi circular, eight inches one way by four or more the other, chipped down on the edges.
At the Clamshell curve, great masses of a kind of fresh - water eel - grass have lodged against the potamogeton in mid - channel, as against a shore, half a foot deep, and stretch across the river, long, green, narrow, ribbon - like.
It is apparently the Vallisneria spiralis, eel-grass, tape - grass. It grows at the bottom in shallow places, slanting and waving down - stream.
But what has collected it here all at once? Is it this strong wind operating on shallow places at curves? Or is it that some animal — muskrat or what-not — has loosened it? Or have men been at work up-stream somewhere? Does it always happen at this season? By the botany it does not blossom till August.
There were piles of dried heart - leaf on shore at the bathing - place, a foot high and more.
Were they torn up and driven ashore by the wind? I suspect it is the wind in both cases.
As storms at sea tear up and cast ashore the seaweeds from the rocks. These are our seaweeds cast ashore in storms, but I see only the eel-grass and the heart leaf thus served.
Our most common in the river appears to be between the Potamogeton natans and pulcher; it answers to neither, but can be no other described.
See it in fruit.
I do not see the ranunculus flowers very abundant yet — will it not be this year? Then there is that long, somewhat cylindrical, fine - capillary and bladdery leaved plant which I had wrongly thought belonged to the Ranunculus.
Is it not a utricularia ? All these, but especially the R. Purshii, have a strong fresh - water marsh smell, rather agree able sometimes as a bottle of salts, like the salt marsh and seaweeds, invigorating to my imagination.
In our great stream of distilled water going slowly down to ocean to be salted.
Sparganium, some time.
Pontederia, just out.
The lower translucent, waved leaves of the potamogeton are covered with a sort of very minute black caddis-case.
The peat [?] - black petioles of these leaves are much like seaweed.
There are the heart-leaf ponds, but I cannot say the potamogeton rivers on account of the tautology, and, beside, I do not like this last name, which signifies that it grows in the neighborhood of rivers, when it is not a neighbor but an indweller.
You might as well describe the seaweeds as growing in the neighborhood of the sea.
The brown thrasher’s nest (vide 21st) has been robbed, probably by some other bird. It rested on a branch of a swamp-pink and some grape-vines, effectually concealed and protected by grape-vines and green briar in a matted bower above it.
The foundation of pretty stout twigs, eight or nine inches in diameter, surmounted by coarse strips of grape bark, giving form to the nest, and then lined with some harsh, wiry root-fibres ; within rather small and shallow, and the whole fabric of loose texture, not easy to remove.
Also got a blackbird’s nest whose inhabitants had flown, hung by a kind of small dried rush (?) between two button - bushes which crossed above it of meadow grass and sedge, dried Mikania scandens vine, horse tail, fish-lines, and a strip apparently of a lady’s bathing-dress, lined with a somewhat finer grass; of a loose and ragged texture to look at.
Green mikania running over it now.
A yellowbird’s nest (vide 21st ) in a fork of a willow on Hubbard’s Causeway, resting chiefly on the leading branch; of fine grass, lined with hair, bottom outside puffing out with a fine, light, flax - like fibre, perhaps the bark of some weed, by which also it is fastened to the twigs.
It is surprising that so many birds find hair enough to line their nests with.
If I wish for a horsehair for my compass sights I must go to the stable, but the hair-bird, with her sharp eyes, goes to the road.
The small white (perhaps sometimes violet or puplis) aster-like flower of Hubbard’s meadow, for some days.
If an aster, then the earliest one.
H. D. Thoreau, Journal , June 24, 1853
The calopogon is a more bluish purple than the pogonia. See June 21, 1853 ("Calopogon out. I think it surpasses the pogonia, though the latter is sometimes high colored and is of a handsome form; "); June 23, 1853 ("Pogonias are now very abundant in the meadow-grass, and now and then a calopogon is mixed with them .The last is broader and of more singular form, commonly with an unopened bud above on one side."); July 5, 1852 (The calopogon, or grass-pink, now fully open, . . — its four or five open purple flowers — . . . makes a much greater show than the pogonia. It is of the same character with that and the arethusa. "); July 7, 1852 ("The Arethusa bulbosa, " crystalline purple;" Pogonia ophioglossoides, snake-mouthed arethusa, "pale purple;" and the Calopogon pulchellus, grass pink, "pink purple," make one family in my mind, — next to the purple orchis, or with it, — being flowers par excellence, all flower, all color, with inconspicuous leaves, naked flowers,")
The brown thrasher’s nest (vide 21st) has been robbed. See June 21, 1853 ("The nest of a brown thrasher with three eggs, on some green- riar, perfectly concealed by a grape-vine running over it ; eggs greenish -brown; nest of dry sticks, lined with fibres of grape bark and with roots.") See also May 23, 1858 ("Brown thrasher's nest on ground, under a small tree, with four eggs"); May 27, 1855 ("A thrasher’s nest on the bare open ground with four eggs which were seen three days ago. The nest is as open and exposed as it well can be, lined with roots, on a slight ridge where a rail fence has been, some rods from any bush."); June 5, 1856 ("A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres."); June 6, 1857("A brown thrasher's nest, with two eggs, on ground, near lower lentago wall and toward Bittern Cliff. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Brown Thrasher
A yellowbird’s nest in a fork of a willow on Hubbard’s Causeway. See . June 21,1853 ("I saw a yellowbird's nest in the willows on the causeway this afternoon and three young birds, nearly ready to fly, overflowing the nest, all holding up their inute or more, on noise of my approach") See also e.g. June 5, 1859 ("A yellowbird's nest; four eggs, open bills and keeping them steadily open for a mdeveloped. ")June 7, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest on a willow bough against a twig, ten feet high, four eggs."); June 9, 1855 ("A yellowbird’s nest eight feet from ground in crotch of a very slender maple"); June 9, 1856 ("A yellowbird’s nest in a poplar on Hubbard’s Bridge; four fresh eggs; ten feet high, three rods beyond fence."); . June 20, 1855 ("A summer yellowbird’s, saddled on an apple, of cotton-wool, lined with hair and feathers, three eggs, white with flesh-colored tinge and purplish-brown and black spots") and A Book of the Seasons,: the Summer Yellowbird
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