We notice near and small objects.

August 4.

P.M. — Via Turnpike to Smith's Hill. 

A still, cloudy day with from time to time a gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon and we notice near and small objects.

Purple gerardia, by brook. 

The autumnal dandelion is now more common. Ranunculus aquatilis var. fluviatilis, white petals with a yellow claw, small flowers on surface of Hosmer's ditch, west end, by Turnpike. A new plant.

The swamp blackberry on high land, ripe a day or two. I hear the pigeon woodpecker still, — wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, wickoff, from a neighboring oak. See a late rose still in flower. 

On this hill (Smith's) the bushes are black with huckleberries. They droop over the rocks with the weight and are very handsome. Now in their prime. Some glossy black, some dull black, some blue; and patches of Vaccinium vacillans intermixed.

It is already fall in low swampy woods where the cinnamon fern prevails. There are the sight and scent of beginning decay. I see a new growth on oak sprouts, three to six inches, with reddish leaves as in spring. Some whole trees show the lighter new growth at a distance, above the dark green. Cannabis sativa.

After sunset, a very low, thick, and flat white fog like a napkin, on the meadows, which ushers in a foggy night.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal,  August 4, 1854

Purple gerardia, by brook. See August 20, 1852 ("The purple gerardia is very beautiful now in green grass.")
A gentle August rain. Rain and mist contract our horizon See August 4, 1852 ("A pleasant time to behold a small lake in the woods is in the intervals of a gentle rain-storm at this season,. . . as the atmosphere is so shallow and contracted, being low-roofed with clouds, the lake as a lower heaven is much larger in proportion to it.”)