Bathing at Flint's pond.

August 31, 2017

August 31.

Monday. P. M. — To Flint's Pond.

An abundance of fine high blackberries behind Britton's old camp on the Lincoln road, now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit? 

Our first muskmelon to-day. 

Lycopodium complanatum out, how long? 

I have seen for several days amphicarpaea with perfectly white flowers, in dense clusters. 

At Flint's Pond I wade along the edge eight or ten rods to the wharf rock, carrying my shoes and stockings. 

Am surprised to see on the bottom and washing up on to the shore many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. I see these at every step for more than a dozen rods and thought they must have been washed up from deeper waters. 

Examining very closely, I trace one long string through the sandy soil to the root of a ground-nut which grew on the edge of the bank, and afterwards see many more, whose tuberous roots lying in the sand are washed bare, the pond being unusually high. 

I could gather quarts of them. I pick up one string floating loose, about eighteen inches long, with as usual a little greenness and vitality at one end, which has thirteen nuts on it about the size of a walnut or smaller. I never saw so many ground-nuts before, and this makes on me the impression of an unusual fertility.

Bathing there, I see a small potamogeton, very common there, wholly immersed and without floating leaves, which rises erect from the sandy bottom in curving rows four or five feet long. On digging I find it to rise from a subterranean shoot which is larger than any part above ground. It may be one I have, whose floating leaves the high water has destroyed or prevented. The leaves of it have small bits of that fresh-water sponge, so strong-scented, on them.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 31, 1857

Many little farinaceous roots or tubers like very small potatoes, in strings. See August 16 1852 (“Apios tuberosa, ground-nut, a day or two.”)

An abundance of fine high blackberries . . . now in their prime there, which have been overlooked. Is it not our richest fruit? See August 10, 1853 ("August, royal and rich . . .It is glorious to see those great shining high blackberries, now partly ripe . . ."); August 15, 1852 ("The swamp blackberry begins."); August 17, 1853 ("The high blackberries are now in their prime; the richest berry we have.”); August 22, 1852 ("Is not the high blackberry our finest berry?"); August 23, 1856 ("Now for high blackberries, though the low are gone.” ); August 27, 1857 ("Detected a, to me, new kind of high blackberry on the edge of the cliff beyond Conant's wall . . ."); August 28, 1856 (“low blackberries done, high blackberries still to be had.”); August 31, 1858 (“High blackberries are abundant in Britton’s field. . . . The berries still not more than half black or ripe, keeping fresh in the shade. ”)  See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Raspberry

Botanizing Conantum

August 30. 

Sunday. P. M. – To Conantum. 

Small botrychium, not long. 

The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio. 

Collinsonia has been out apparently three or four days. 

Polygonum tenue at Bittern Cliff, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 30, 1857


The flower of Cicuta maculata smells like the leaves of the golden senecio. See June 6, 1851 ("Gathered to-night the Cicuta maculata, American hemlock, the veins of the leaflets ending in the notches and the root fasciculated.");  October 2, 1859 ("The Cicuta maculata, for instance, the concave umbel is so well spaced, the different um-bellets (?) like so many constellations or separate systems in the firmament.") See also June 3, 1851 ("It was the golden senecio (Senecio aureus) which I plucked a week ago in a meadow in Wayland. . . . Its bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable sweet odor, like I cannot think what.")

Collinsonia has been out . . .See August 11, 1852 ("The Collinsonia Canadensis just begun.");  August 23, 1857 ("To Conantum. . . .Collinsonia (very little left) not out")

Polygonum tenue at Bittern Cliff . . . See August 24, 1856 ("Polygonum tenue abundant and in bloom, on side of Money-Diggers' Hill, especially at south base, near apple tree. "); August 3, 1856 ("At Bittern Cliff again lucky enough to find Polygonum tenue, apparently out but a short time, say one week at most. Have marked the spot . . .")

To Owl-Nest Swamp and Indian Rock

August 29. 

Spotted coral-root
Mt. Pritchard August 2018
(Avesong)

"Nearby, north, is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant. Call that Corallorhiza Rocks.”

August 29, 1857

Saturday. P. M. —To Owl-Nest Swamp with C.

Gerardia tenuifolia, a new plant to Concord, apparently in prime, at entrance to Owl-Nest Path and generally in that neighborhood. Also on Conantum height above orchard, two or three days later. This species grows on dry ground, or higher than the purpurea, and is more delicate. 

Got some ferns in the swamp and a small utricularia not in bloom, apparently different from that of Pleasant Meadow (vide August 18). 

The proserpinaca leaves are very interesting in the water, so finely cut. Polygonum arifolium in bloom how long? We waded amid the proserpinaca south of the wall and stood on a small bed of sphagnum, three or four feet in diameter, which rose above the surface. 

Some kind of water rat had its nest or retreat in this wet sphagnum, and being disturbed, swam off to the shore from under us. He was perhaps half as large again as a mole, or nearly, and somewhat grayish. 

The large and broad leafed sium which grows here is, judging from its seed, the same with the common. 

I find the calla going to seed, but still the seed is green. 

That large, coarse, flag-like reed is apparently Carex comosa; now gone to seed, though only one is found with seed still on it, under water. 

The Indian Rock, further west, is upright, or over hanging two feet, and a dozen feet high. Against this the Indians camped.

It has many very large specimens of the Umbilicaria Dillenii, some six or eight inches in diameter, dripping with moisture to-day, like leather aprons hanging to the side of the rock, olive-green (this moist day), curled under on the edges and showing the upper side; but when dry they curl upward and show the crocky under sides. 

Nearby, north, is a rocky ridge, on the east slope of which the Corallorhiza multiflora is very abundant. Call that Corallorhiza Rocks.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1857

Owl-Nest Swamp. See June 24, 1857 ("Went to Farmer's Swamp to look for the owl's nest Farmer had found. “)  Owl-Nest Swamp and Calla Swamp are the same, located south of Bateman’s Pond .

I find the calla going to seed. . . June 24, 1857 ("Found [in Owl-Nest Swamp] the Calla palustris, out of bloom") and note to July 2, 1857 ("Having found this in one place, I now find it in another. ")

Corallorhiza multiflora [spotted coral root]... See note to August 13, 1857

An old man named McDonald

August 28.

August 28, 2017

Polygonum Pennsylvanicum by bank, how long? 

R. W. E. says that he saw Asclepias tuberosa abundant and in bloom on Naushon last week; also a sassafras stump three feet across. The deer escape by running to the mainland, and in winter cross on the ice. The last winter they lost about one hundred and fifty sheep, whose remains have never been found. Perhaps they were carried off on the ice by the sea. Looking through a glass, E. saw vessels sailing near Martha's Vineyard with full sails, yet the water about them appeared perfectly smooth, and reflected the vessels. They thought this reflection a mirage, i. e. from a haze. 

As we were riding by Deacon Farrar's lately, E. Hoar told me in answer to my questions, that both the young Mr. Farrars, who had now come to man’s estate, were excellent young men, — their father, an old man of about seventy, once cut and corded seven cords of wood in one day, and still cut a double swath at haying time, and was a man of great probity, — and to show the unusual purity of one of them, at least, he said that, his brother Frisbie, who had formerly lived there, inquiring what had become of a certain hired man whom he used to know, young Mr. Farrar told him that he was gone, “that the truth was he one day let drop a prophane word, and after that he thought that he could not have him about, and so he got rid of him.” It was as if he had dropped some filthy thing on the premises, an intolerable nuisance, only to be abated by removing the source of it. 

I should like to hear as good news of the New England farmers generally. It to some extent accounts for the vigor of the father and the successful farming of the sons. 

I read the other day in the Tribune that a man apparently about seventy, and smart at that, went to the police in New York and asked for a lodging, having been left by the cars or steamboat when on his way to Connecticut. When they asked his age, native place, etc., he said his name was McDonald; he was born in Scotland in 1745, came to Plymouth, Mass., in 1760, was in some battles in the Revolution, in which he lost an eye; had a son eighty-odd years old, etc.; but, seeing a reporter taking notes, he was silent. 

Since then I heard that an old man named McDonald, one hundred and twelve years old, had the day before passed through Concord and was walking to Lexington, and I said at once he must be a humbug.

When I went to the post office to-night (August 28), G. Brooks asked me if I saw him and said that he heard that he told a correct story, except he said that he remembered Braddock’s defeat! He had noticed that Dr. Heywood’s old house, the tavern, was gone since he was here in the Revolution. Just then Davis, the postmaster, asked us to look at a letter he had received. It was from a Dr. Curtis of Newton asking if this McDonald belonged about Concord as he said, and saying that his story appeared to be a correct one. Davis had never heard of him, and, as we presumed him to be a humbug, we advised Davis to write accordingly. 

But I afterward remembered reading nearly a year ago of a man of this name and age in St. Louis, who said he had married a wife in Concord before the Revolution, and then began to think that his story might be all true. So it seems that a veteran of a hundred and twelve, after an absence of eighty-seven years, may come back to the town where he married his wife in order to hunt up his relatives, and not only have no success, but be pronounced a humbug!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 28, 1857

Naushon. See June 27, 1856 ("Saw all the Elizabeth Isles, going and coming. They are mostly bare, except the east end of Naushon. This island is some seven miles long, by one to two wide. I had some two and a half hours there. . . .Naushon is said to. . .belong to Mr. Swain of New Bedford and Forbes of Boston. . .")

A new blackberry on the edge of the cliff.

August 27.

Thursday. P. M. – To Conantum, high blackberrying.

Detected a, to me, new kind of high blackberry on the edge of the cliff beyond Conant's wall on Lee's ground, – a long-peduncled (or pedicelled), leafy-racemed (somewhat panicled), erect blackberry. It has the aspect of R. Canadensis become erect, three or four feet high.

The racemes (or panicles?) leafy, with simple ovate and broad-lanceolate leaves; loose, few flowered (ten or twelve); peduncles (or pedicels) one to two or more inches long, often branched, with bracts midway, in fruit, at least, drooping. Perhaps the terminal flowers open first.

Stem angular and furrowed much like that of R. villosus, leaf-stalks more prickly; leaves broader, thinner, and less pointed, smooth above; beneath, as well as young branches, much smoother than R. villosus; lower leaves ternate and, if I remember, some times quint.

Berries of good size, globular, of very few, large grains, very glossy, of a lively flavor, when young of a peculiar light pink; sepals less recurved when ripe than those of villous.

It is apparently Bigelow’s R. frondosus made a variety by Gray; but see flowers.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 27, 1857

Up Assabet with Bradford and Hoar.

August 26. 

Wednesday. P. M. — Up Assabet with Bradford and Hoar. 

B. tells me he found the Malaxis liliifolia on Kineo. Saw there a tame gull as large as a hen, brown dove color. A lumberer called some timber “frowy.” 

B. has found Cassia Chamoacrista by the side of the back road between Lincoln and Waltham, about two miles this side of Waltham.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 26, 1857

B. tells me he found the Malaxis liliifolia on Kineo. See August 24, 1857 (“We came down northward to the Boston and Worcester turnpike, by the side of which the Malaxis liliifolia grows, though we did not find it. ”)

B. has found Cassia Chamoacrista by the side of the back road . . . See August 11, 1856 ("Mr. Bradford . . .gives me a sprig of Cassia Marilandica, wild senna, found by Minot Pratt just below Leighton's by the road side.")

A Lilium Canadense at three-ribbed goldenrod wall.

August 25. 

Tuesday. P. M. – To Hill and meadow. 

August 25, 2017

Plucked a Lilium Canadense at three-ribbed goldenrod wall, six and eight twelfths feet high, with a pyramid of seed-vessels fourteen inches long by nine wide, the first an irregular or diagonal whorl of six, surmounted by a whorl of three. The upper two whorls of leaves are diagonal or scattered.

It agrees with Gray's L. Canadense except in size, also with G.'s superbum except that the leaves of my specimen are rough on the edges and veins beneath (but I have not the flowers!). 

Bigelow says that the leaves of the L. superbum are twice as long as the internodes. These are only as long. 

This, as well as most that I saw on the Penobscot, is probably only a variety of the L. Canadense.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 25, 1857

Three-ribbed goldenrod wall. See August 2, 1856 ("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.")

Most that I saw on the Penobscot, is probably only a variety of the L. Canadense. See July 31, 1857 ("I got one (apparently) Lilium superbum flower, , with strongly revolute sepals and perfectly smooth leaves beneath, otherwise not large nor peculiar.")

Mt. Washington is 6285 feet above high water mark at Portland.

August 24. 

A. M. – Ride to Austin Bacon’s, Natick.

On the left hand, just this side the centre of Wayland, I measure the largest, or northernmost, of two large elms standing in front of an old house. At four feet from the ground, where, looking from one side, is the smallest place between the ground and the branches, it is seventeen feet in circumference, but there is a bulge on the north side for five feet upward. At five feet it divides to two branches, and each of these soon divides again. 

A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also microscopes and many glasses for them which he made. 

Showed me an exotic called “cypress,” which he said had spread from the cemetery over the neighboring fields. Did not know what it was. Is it not Euphorbia Cyparissias? and does it not grow by the north roadside east of Jarvis's [Also at J. Moore's front yard]?

I measured a scarlet oak northeast of his house, on land of the heirs of John Bacon, which at seven feet from the ground, or the smallest place below the branches, was ten feet eight inches in circumference, at one foot from ground sixteen and one fourth feet in circumference. It branched at twelve feet into three. Its trunk tapered or lessened very gradually and regularly from the ground to the smallest place, after the true Eddystone Lighthouse fashion. It has a large and handsome top, rather high than spreading (spreads about three and a half rods), but the branches often dead at the ends. This has grown considerably since Emerson measured; vide his account. Bacon says that E. pronounced it the largest oak in the State. 

Showed us an elm on the north side of the same field, some ten feet in circumference, which he said was as large in 1714, his grandmother having remembered it nearly so long. There was a dead Rhus radicans on it two inches in diameter.

In the meadow south of this field, we looked for the Drosera filiformis, which formerly grew there, but could not find it. Got a specimen of very red clover, said to be from the field of Waterloo, in front of the house near the schoolhouse on the hill. Returned eastward over a bare hill with some walnuts on it, formerly called Pine Hill, from whence a very good view of the new town of Natick. 

On the northeast base of this hill Bacon pointed out to me what he called Indian corn-hills, in heavy, moist pasture ground where had been a pine wood. The hillocks were in irregular rows four feet apart which ran along the side of the hill, and were much larger than you would expect after this lapse of time. I was confident that if Indian, they could not be very old, perhaps not more than a century or so, for such could never have been made with the ancient Indian hoes, – clamshells, stones, or the like, — but with the aid of plows and white men's hoes. Also pointed out to me what he thought the home site of an Indian squaw marked by a buckthorn bush by the wall. 

These hillocks were like tussocks with lichens thick on them, and B. thought that the rows were not running as a white man's with furrow.

We crossed the road which runs east and west, and, in the low ground on the south side, saw a white oak and a red maple, each forty or fifty feet high, which had fairly grown together for three or more feet upward from the ground. Also, nearby, a large white ash which though healthy bore a mark or scar where a branch had been broken off and stripped down the trunk. 

B. said that one of his ancestors, perhaps his grandfather, before the Revolution, went to climb this tree, and reached up and took hold of this branch, which he stripped down, and this was the scar!

Under the dead bark of this tree saw several large crickets of a rare kind. They had a peculiar naked and tender look, with branched legs and a rounded incurved front. 

Red cohosh grows along a wall in low ground close by. We ascended a ridge hill northeast of this, or east by south of Bacon’s house, on the north end of which Squaw Poquet, as well as her father, who was a powwow, before her, lived. Bacon thought that powwows commonly withdrew at last to the northeast side of a hill and lived alone. We saw the remains of apple trees in the woods, which she had planted.

B. thought apple trees did not now grow so large in New England as formerly, that they only grew to be one foot in diameter and then began to decay, whereas they formerly grew to be two or three and even sometimes four feet in diameter. 

The Corallorhiza multiflora was common in these woods, and out. 

The Galium circæzans  leaves taste very much like licorice and, according to B., produce a great flow of water, also make you perspire and are good for a cold. 

We came down northward to the Boston and Worcester turnpike, by the side of which the Malaxis liliifolia grows, though we did not find it. 

We waded into Coos Swamp on the south side the turnpike to find the ledum, but did not succeed. B. is sure it grows there. This is a large swamp with a small pond, or pond-hole, in the midst and the usual variety of shrubs. I noticed small spruces, high blueberry, the water andromeda, rhodora, Vaccinium dumosum (hairy) ripe, Kalmia glauca, Decodon verticillatus, etc. 

B. says that the arbor-vitae grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham; that Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed, yet it has been called even ten miles long.

B. gave me a stone with very pretty black markings like jungermannias, from a blasting on the aqueduct in Natick. Some refer it to electricity. 

According to Guizot at the Montreal meeting the other day, Mt. Washington is 6285 feet above high water mark at Portland.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 24, 1857

The Corallorhiza multiflora was common in these woods. . . See note to August 13, 1857.

From the New York Times August 12, 1861 ("In 1851, Prof. GUYOT established the height of Mount Washington at 6,291 feet, by the most careful barometrical observations; and subsequently, in the same year or next succeeding one, the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad Company caused a measurement by the spirit level, by W.A. GOODWIN, Esq., Civil Engineer, who fixed the height at 6,285 feet. The engineers of the Coast Survey, in 1853, found the height of Mount Washington 6,293 feet, by a similar measurement. These slight differences arose from a variation of the base line or the different methods of ascertaining the sea level. The mean of the two measurements by GUYOT and GOODWIN, 6,288 feet, has been adopted as the true height of the summit of Mount Washington.")

B. says Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed. See November 7, 1851 ("It must be the largest lake in Middlesex."). See also   Annual Report of the Cochituate Water Board For 1851. ( The Pond within the towns of Framingham , Wayland and Natick is nearly three and one half miles long. It naturally discharges into the Sudbury River about 14 miles above Concord where the Sudbury joins the Assabet to form the Concord River.)

 

The mole cricket nowadays.

August 23.

P. M. – To Conantum. 

Hear the mole cricket nowadays. 

Collinsonia (very little left) not out

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 23, 1857

The mole cricket nowadays. See  August 6, 1855 ("The mole cricket creaks along the shore."); August 22, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket is heard along the shore.");August 26, 1859 ("The creak of the mole cricket has a very afternoon sound");September 20, 1855 ("Tried to trace by the sound a mole cricket, —- thinking it a frog, — advancing from two sides and looking where our courses intersected, but in vain."); September 27, 1855 ("I traced the note of what I have falsely thought the Rana palustris, or cricket frog, to its true source [and] I found a mole cricket (Gryllotalpa brevipennis).");  September 27, 1856 ("The creak of the mole cricket sounds late along the shore.")

A tree growing in Windsor, Vt., which they call the pepperidge.

August 22.

Saturday. 

Channing has brought me from Plymouth and Watson Drosera filiformis, just out of bloom, from Great South Pond, Solidago tenuifolia in bloom, Sabbatia chloroides, and Coreopsis rosea. 

Edward Hoar shows me Lobelia Kalmii, which he gathered in flower in Hopkinton about the 18th of July. (I found the same on the East Branch and the Penobscot); staphylea (in fruit) from Northampton, plucked within a week or so (Bigelow says it grows in Weston); also the leaves of a tree growing in Windsor, Vt., which they call the pepperidge, quite unlike our tupelo. Is it not the Celtis crassifolia? 

He says he found the Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road, he thinks within Concord bounds.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 22, 1857

I found the same on the East Branch and the Penobscot. See August 1, 1857 ("Lobelia Kalmii, . . .on bare rocks just below the falls.")

The Uvularia perfoliata on the Stow road.  Thoreau’s only references to Concord occurrence of the perfoliate bellwort  are two that are second-hand, August 22, 1857,  and  September 22, 1852 (noting Sophia finds this in Concord with no date or locale given,)~ Ray Angelo, Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusetts

I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker's tapping.

August 20. 

Thursday. 

P. M. – To Hubbard's Close. 

July 31, 2019

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain (Goodyera pubescens) leaves overlapping one another. The flower is now apparently in its prime. 

As I stand there, I hear a peculiar sound which I mistake for a woodpecker's tapping, but I soon see a cuckoo hopping near suspiciously or inquisitively, at length within twelve feet, from time to time uttering a hard, dry note, very much like a woodpecker tapping a dead dry tree rapidly, its full clear white throat and breast toward me, and slowly lifting its tail from time to time. Though somewhat allied to that throttled note it makes by night, it was quite different from that. 

I go along by the hillside footpath in the woods about Hubbard's Close. The Goodyera repens grows behind the spring where I used to sit, amid the dead pine leaves. Its leaves partly concealed in the grass. It is just done commonly. 

Helianthus, strumosus-like, at the south end of Stow's cold pool; how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 20, 1857

The hillside at Clintonia Swamp is in some parts quite shingled with the rattlesnake-plantain . . . See August 27, 1856 (“Goodyera pubescens, rattlesnake-plantain, is apparently a little past its prime. It is very abundant on Clintonia Swamp hillside. . .”)

A hard, dry note, very much like a woodpecker tapping. . .See May 29, 1856 (“A cuckoo’s note, loud and hollow, from a wood-side.”)

Helianthus, strumosus-like, at the south end of Stow's cold pool. . . See note to August 12, 1856 ("Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus . . . At edge of the last clearing south of spring. I cannot identify it. . . .In some respects it is most like H. strumosus, but not downy beneath.”)

Water milfoil.

August 16.

Myriophyllum ambiguum, apparently var. limosum, except that it is not nearly linear-leafed but pectinate, well out how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 16, 1857

See July 29, 1859 ("The water milfoil (the ambiguum var. nutans), otherwise not seen, shows itself. This is observed only at lowest water.") and August 16, 1856 ("Am frequently surprised to find how imperfectly water-plants are known")

August 16. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  August 16

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Lycopodiums

August 15. 

Lycopodium lucidulum, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 15, 1857

See September 4, 1853 ("The lycopodium now sheds its pollen commonly."); October 12, 1859 ("Now for lycopodiums . . . — how vivid a green ! — lifting their heads above the moist fallen leaves."); October 17, 1857 ("The Lycopodium lucidulum looks suddenly greener amid the withered leaves."); November 27, 1853 ("I observe the Lycopodium lucidulum still of .a fresh, shining green."); December 7, 1853 ("L. lucidulum of the swamps, forming broad, thick patches of a clear liquid green "). See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Lycopodiums

Sailing lightly on Bateman's Pond.

August 13. 

J. Farmer saw some days ago a black headed gull, between a kingfisher and common gull in size, sailing lightly on Bateman's Pond. It was very white beneath and bluish-white above. 

Corallorhiza multiflora and Desmodium rotundifolium, how long?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 13, 1857



Corallorhiza multiflora [spotted coral-root (Corallorhiza maculate) -- a saprophytic orchid]... See August 24, 1857 ("The Corallorhiza multiflora was common in these [Natick] woods, and out.")  See also Vascular Flora of Concord, Massachusettscompiled by Ray Angelo ("There are about 10 references to this in Thoreau’s Journal. On August 20, 1852 he refers to Emerson finding this at Brister’s Spring on August 12, and again at Brister’s Hill on July 29, 1853. On August 1, 1854 he refers to it at Fair Haven Pond. On August 29, 1857 he finds it in the vicinity of Bateman’s Pond and names the rocky ridge where it was abundant as Corallorhiza Rocks")

Desmodium rotundifolium, how long? See August 6, 1856 (“Desmodium rotundifolium, some days at least.”); August 7, 1856 (“At Blackberry Steep . . . D. rotundifoliumis there abundant;. . . as also at Heywood Peak. All these plants seem to love a dry open hillside, a steep one.”);  August 19, 1856 (“I feel an agreeable surprise as often as I come across a new locality for desmodiums. Rarely find one kind without one or two more species near, their great spreading panicles, yet delicate, open, and airy, occupying the August air. Like raking masts with countless guys slanted far over the neighboring plants”); August 26, 1856 (“The desmodium flowers are pure purple, rose-purple in the morning when quite fresh, excepting the two green spots. The D. rotundifolium also has the two green (or in its case greenish) spots on its very large flower. . . . The round-leafed desmodium has sometimes seven pods and large flowers still fresh”)

August 13. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, August 13.

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-202

Red cohosh berries well ripe

August 11. 

Tuesday. 

Red cohosh berries well ripe in front of Hunt's, perhaps a week or more, - a round, conical spike, two and a half inches long by one and three quarters, of about thirty cherry-red berries. The berries oblong, seven sixteenths of an inch by six sixteenths, with a seam on one side, on slender pedicels about five eighths of an inch long.

H. D.  Thoreau, Journal, August 11, 1857


Red cohosh berries well ripe. See July 31, 1857 ("I also saw here [the East Branch] the red cohosh berries, ripe, (for the first time in my life")

August 11.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 11

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor?

August 10. 

Monday. 

P. M. —In Clintonia Swamp I see a remarkable yellow fungus about the base of some grass growing in a tuft. It is a jelly, shaped like a bodkin or a pumpkin’s stigma, two inches long, in vesting the base of the grass blades, a quarter to a half inch thick, tapering to the grass each way and covered _ with a sort of moist meal. It was strong-scented and disagreeable. 

Cat-tail commonly grows in the hollows and boggy places where peat has' been dug. 

How meanly and miserably we live for the most part!

We escape fate continually by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is. We are practically desperate. But as every man, in respect to material wealth, aims to be come independent or wealthy, so, in respect to our spirits and imagination, we should have some spare capital and superfluous vigor, have some margin and leeway in which to move. 

August 10, 2019, 8:41 PM

What kind of gift is life unless we have spirits to enjoy it and taste its true flavor? 

if, in respect to spirits, we are to be forever cramped and in debt? In our ordinary estate we have not, so to speak, quite enough air to breathe, and this poverty qualifies our piety; but we should have more than enough and breathe it carelessly. Poverty is the rule. 

We should first of all be full of vigor like a strong horse, and beside have the free and adventurous spirit of his driver; i. e., we should have such a reserve of elasticity and strength that we may at any time be able to put ourselves at the top of our speed and go beyond our ordinary limits, just as the invalid hires a horse. 

Have the gods sent us into this world, — to this muster, — to do chores, hold horses, and the like, and not given us any spending money? 

The poor and sick man keeps a horse, often a hostler; but the well man is a horse to himself, is horsed on himself; he feels his own oats. Look at the other’s shanks. How spindling! like the timber 'of his gig! 

First a sound and healthy life, and then spirits to live it with. 

I hear the neighbors complain sometimes about the peddlers selling their help false jewelry, as if they themselves wore true jewelry; but if their help pay as much for it as they did for theirs, then it is just as true jewelry as theirs, just as becoming to them and no more; for unfortunately it is the cost of the article and not the merits of the wearer that is considered. The money is just as well spent, and perhaps better earned. I don’t care how much false jewelry the peddlers sell, nor how many of the eggs which you steal are rotten. What, pray, is true jewelry? The hardened tear of a diseased clam, murdered in its old age. Is that fair play? If not, it is no jewel. The mistress wears this in her ear, while her help has one made of paste which you cannot tell from it. False jewelry! Do you know of any shop where true jewelry can be bought? I always look askance at a jeweller and wonder what church he can belong to. 

I heard some ladies the other day laughing about some one of their help who had helped herself to a real hoop from off a hogshead for her gown. I laughed too, but which party do you think I laughed at? Isn’t hogshead as good a word as crinoline?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 10, 1857

August 10. See A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau , August 10

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Signs of fall.

August 9. 

Sunday. 

I see the blackbirds flying in flocks (which did not when I went away July 20th) and hear the shrilling of my alder locust.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 9, 1857

Blackbirds flying in flocks.  See August 18, 1858 ("See large flocks of blackbirds, blackish birds with chattering notes. It is a fine sight when you can look down on them just as they are settling on the ground with outspread wings, — a hovering flock.");   September 7, 1857 ("I see a small round flock of birds, perhaps blackbirds, dart through the air, as thick as a charge of shot, — now comparatively thin, with regular intervals of sky be tween them, like the holes in the strainer of a watering-pot, now dense and dark, as if closing up their ranks when they roll over one another and stoop downward."); October 29, 1859 (''Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the to
p of an oak, either red-wings or grackles"). See also October 6, 1860 ("The crow, methinks, is our only large bird that hovers and circles about in flocks in an irregular and straggling manner, filling the air over your head and sporting in it as if at home here. They often burst up above the woods where they were perching, like the black fragments of a powder-mill just exploded.")

The shrilling of my alder locust. See August 9, 1851 ("Among the pines and birches I hear the invisible locust.") and August 4, 1851 ("I hear the note of a cricket, and am penetrated with the sense of autumn. . . ."); August 4, 1856 ( "Have heard the alder cricket some days. The turning-point is reached.");  August 10, 1853 ("Saw an alder locust this morning."); August 11, 1852 ("The autumnal ring of the alder locust.");   August 12, 1858 (“Hear what I have called the alder locust (?) as I return over the causeway, and probably before this.”); August 13, 1860 ("Hear the steady shrill of the alder locust."); August 15, 1852 ("That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.")

August 9. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  August 9

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

A phosphorescent coincidence.

August 8. 

Saturday. Get home at 8.30 A. M. 

I find that B. M. Watson sent me from Plymouth, July 20th, six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped. He says they were found by his family on the evenings of the 18th and 19th of July. “ They are very scarce, these being the only "ones we have found as yet. They were mostly found on the way from the barn to James’s cottage, under the wild cherry trees on the right hand, in the grass where it was very dry, and at considerable distance from each other. We have had no rain for a month.” 

Examining them by night, they are about three quarters of an inch long as they crawl. Looking down on one, it shows two bright dots near together on the head, and, along the body, nine transverse lines of light, succeeded by two more bright dots at the other extremity, wider apart than the first. There is also a bright dot on each side opposite the transverse lines. It is a greenish light, growing more green as the worm is brought into more light. A slumbering, glowing, inward light, as if shining for itself inward as much as outward. 

The other worm, which was at first curled up still and emitted a duller light, was one and one twentieth inches in length and also showed two dots of light only on the forward segment. When stretched out, as you look down on them, they have a square-edged look, like a row of buns joined together. Such is the ocular illusion. But whether stretched out or curled up, they look like some kind of rare and precious gem, so regularly marked, far more beautiful than a uniform mass of light would be. 

Examining by day, I found the smallest to be seven eighths to one inch long, and the body about one sixth of an inch wide and from one thirteenth to one twelfth of an inch deep, convex above, pointed at head, broader at tail; head about one twentieth of an inch wide. Yet these worms were more nearly linear, or of a uniform breadth (being perhaps broadest at forward extremity), than the Lampyre represented in my French book, which is much the broadest behind and has also two rows of dots down the back. They have six light-brown legs within a quarter of an inch of the forward extremity. The worm is composed of twelve segments or overlap ping scales, like the abdominal plates of a snake, and has a slight elastic projection (?) beneath at tail. It has also six short antennae-like projections from the head, the two outer on each side the longest, the two inner very short. 

The general color above was a pale brownish yellow or buff; the head small and dark brown; the antenna: chestnut and white; white or whitish on sides and beneath. You could see a faint dorsal line. They were so transparent that you could see the internal motions when looking down on them. 

I kept them in a sod, supplying a fresh one each day. They were invariably found underneath it by day, next the floor, still and curled up in a ring, with the head within or covered by the tail. Were apt to be restless on being exposed to the light. One that got away in the yard was found again ten feet off and down cellar. 

What kind are these? 

In the account of the Glow-worm in Rees’s Cyclopaedia it is said, “The head is small, flat, hard, and black, and sharp towards the mouth; it has short antennae, and six moderately long legs; the body is flat and is composed of twelve rings, whereas the body of the male consists only of five; it is of a dusky color, with a streak of white down the back.” 

Knapp, in “Journal of a Naturalist,” speaks of “the luminous caudal spot” of the Lampyris noctiluca." 

Speaking with Dr. Reynolds about the phosphorescence which I saw in Maine, etc., etc., he said that he had seen the will-o'-the-wisp, a small blue flame, like burning alcohol, a few inches in diameter, over a bog, which moved when the bog was shaken.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 8, 1857

Six glow-worms, of which two remain, the rest having escaped . .  See June 25, 1852 ("Nature loves variety in all things, and so she adds glow-worms to fireflies. . ."); October 28, 1852 ("The dew in the withered grass reflects the moonlight like glow-worms.")

The phosphorescence which I saw in Maine. See July 24, 1857 (". . . a perfectly regular elliptical ring of light . . . phosphorescent wood, which I had so often heard of, but never chanced to see.")

August 8. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 8

 

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality."

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021

Heading home from Maine by boat and train.

August 7. 

August 7, 2017

Friday. P. M. — Take cars for Portland, and at evening the boat for Boston. 

A great deal of cat-tail flag by railroad between Penobscot and Kennebec. 

Fine large ponds about Belgrade.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 7, 1857

Trout fishing in Maine.

August 6. 

Thursday. A. M. — To the high hill and ponds in Bucksport, some ten or more miles out.

AUGUST 6, 2017

 A withdrawn, wooded, and somewhat mountainous country. There was a little trout-pond just over the highest hill, very muddy, surrounded by a broad belt of yellow lily pads. 

Over this we pushed with great difficulty on a rickety raft of small logs, using poles thirty feet long, which stuck in the mud. The pond was about twenty-five feet deep in the middle, and our poles would stick up there and hold the raft.

There was no apparent inlet, but a small outlet. The water was not clear nor particularly cold, and you would have said it was the very place for pouts, yet T. said that the only fish there caught were brook trout, at any time of day. You fish with a line only, sinking twenty feet from the raft. 

The water was full of insects, which looked very much like the little brown chips or bits of wood which make coarse sawdust, with legs, running over the submerged part of the raft, etc. 

I suppose this pond owed its trout to its elevation and being fed by springs. It seems they do not require swift or clear water, sandy bottom, etc. Are caught like pouts without any art. 

We had many bites and caught one.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 6, 1857

I suppose this pond owed its trout to its elevation and being fed by springs. Compare August 24, 1860 ("How much this varied temperature must have to do with the distribution of the fishes”)

August 6. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 6

 

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.” 

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021