A Book of the Seasons: August 29 (first fall rain and falling leaves, cooler mornings, clear air, the warmth of the sun, elder-berries, swallows, sunflowers, the scent of grapes, the ripening year)

 

The year is but a succession of days,

and I see that I could assign some office to each day

which, summed up, would be the history of the year.

Henry Thoreau, August 24, 1852

August 29.

Rain-storm in the night.

The first leaves begin to fall –

blown off by the wind.

August 29, 1852

How sudden a change

this clear cool autumnal air

in which all things shine.

Now the air is cool

genial nature provides

the warmth of the sun.

August 29, 1854

 So cool a morning

 that for the first time I move 

 to sit in the sun. 

August 29, 1859

August 29, 2019

Heavy rain in the night and this forenoon. August 29, 1856
 

The first leaves begin to fall; a few yellow ones lie in the road this morning, loosened by the rain and blown off by the wind. The ground in orchards is covered with windfalls; imperfect fruits now fall. August 29, 1852

It is so cool that we are inclined to stand round the kitchen fire.  August 29, 1854

It is so cool a morning that for the first time I move into the entry to sit in the sun. August 29, 1859

It is a great pleasure to walk in this clearer atmosphere, though cooler. How great a change, and how sudden, from that sultry and remarkably hazy atmosphere to this clear, cool autumnal one, in which all things shine, and distance is restored to us! August 29, 1854

Might I not walk a little further, till I hear new crickets, till their creak has acquired some novelty, as if they were a new species whose habitat I had reached? August 29, 1851

I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool, and Nature seems really more genial. August 29, 1854

My mistress is at a more respectful distance, for, by the coolness of the air, I am more continent in my thought and held aloof from her, while by the genial warmth of the sun I am more than ever attracted to her. August 29, 1854

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. August 29, 1859

We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured. August 29, 1858

The cymes of elder-berries, black with fruit, are now conspicuous.
August 29, 1854

See the two-leaved Solomon's-seal berries, many of them ripe; also some ripe mitchella berries, contrasting with their very fresh green leaves. August 29, 1859

Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen. Hence you see the green cymes perfectly erect, the half-ripe drooping, and the perfectly ripe hanging straight down on the same bush. August 29, 1859

Many birds nowadays resort to the wild black cherry tree, as here front of Tarbell's. I see them continually coming and going directly from and to a great distance, — cherry birds, robins, and kingbirds. August 29, 1854

I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen. August 29, 1858

I hear in the street this morning a goldfinch sing part of a sweet strain. August 29, 1859

I see more snakes of late, methinks, both striped and the small green. August 29, 1859

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. August 29, 1859

At Clamshell Bank the barn swallows are very lively, filling the air with their twittering now, at 6 p.m. They rest on the dry mullein-tops, then suddenly all start off together as with one impulse and skim about over the river, hill, and meadow. Some sit on the bare twigs of a dead apple tree. Are they not gathering for their migration? August 29, 1854

Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate. August 29, 1858

An apparent white vervain with bluish flowers, as blue as bluets even or more so, roadside beyond Farmer's barn.  August 29, 1856

The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled, and broader-leaved than that of August 12th, quite ovate with a tapering point, with ciliate petioles, thin but quite rough beneath and above, stem purple and smoothish.  August 29, 1856

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? August 29, 1858

Gerardia glauca (quercifolia, says one), tall gerardia, one flower only left; also Corydalis glauca. August 29, 1851

Gerardia tenuifolia, a new plant to Concord, apparently in prime, at entrance to Owl-Nest Path and generally in that neighborhood . . . This species grows on dry ground, or higher than the purpurea, and is more delicate. August 29, 1857

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

Spotted coral-root

Mt. Pritchard August 2018

(Avesong)

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. August 29, 1858

Fragrant everlasting in prime and very abundant, whitening Carter's pasture. August 29, 1856

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off. August 29, 1853

The air is filled with mist, yet a transparent mist, a principle in it you might call flavor, which ripens fruits. August 29, 1851  

So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples. August 29, 1853

This haziness seems to confine and concentrate the sunlight, as if you lived in a halo. It is August. August 29, 1851

Man, too, ripens with the grapes and apples.  August 29, 1859

The moss rose hips will be quite ripe in a day or two. August 29, 1854

[Farmer] hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron. August 29, 1858

Hear the night-warbler and whip-poor-will. August 29, 1860

I find a wasp in my window, which already appears to be taking refuge from winter and unspeakable fate. August 29, 1851

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Cricket in August

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Helianthus

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Aromatic Herbs

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Partridge-berry (Mitchella Repens)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White-bellied Swallow

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Cherry-bird (cedar waxwing)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Eastern Kingbird

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Golden Robin

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Blue Heron

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August Moods

*****

August 29, 2022

April 23, 1857 ("All nature is my bride.")

August 1, 1852 ("The small rough sunflower (Helianthus divaricatus) tells of August heats”)
August 10, 1856 ("Fragrant everlasting, maybe some days.”)
August 11, 1858 ("I smell the fragrant everlasting concealed in the higher grass and weeds there, some distance off. It reminds me of the lateness of the season");
August 11, 1856 ("A new sunflower at Wheeler's Bank, this side Corner Spring, which I will call the tall rough sunflower; . . . It does not correspond exactly to any described.”)
August 11, 1858 (“See a small variety of helianthus growing with the divaricatus, on the north side of Peter’s path, two rods east of bars southeast of his house. It is an imperfect flower, but apparently answers best to the H. tracheliifolius.”)
August 12, 1856 (“Am surprised to see still a third species or variety of helianthus (which may have opened near August 1st). . . I cannot identify it.")

August 13, 1852 ("I hear that the Corallorhiza odontorhiza, coral-root, is out.)
August 13, 1857 ("Corallorhiza multiflora . . . how long")
August 18, 1853 ("Many leaves of the cultivated cherry are turned yellow, and a very few leaves of the elm have fallen.")

August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system.")

August 21, 1856 ("Rains still all day, and wind rises, and shakes off much fruit and beats down the corn.")

August 20, 1851 ("The golden robin is now a rare bird to 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 25, 1852 ("A fall rain, coincident with a different mood or season of the mind. ")

August 26, 1851 ("The ground is strewn with windfalls, and much fruit will consequently be lost.")

August 26, 1858 ("Hips of moss rose not long scarlet.")

August 26, 1859   ("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 . . . sparrows and bobolinks fly in flocks more and more. ")

August 27, 1852 ("Hips of the early roses are reddening.")
August 27, 1856 ("The large depressed globular hips of the moss rose begin to turn scarlet in low ground")

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 27, 1859 ("Elder-berry clusters swell and become heavy and therefore droop, bending the bushes down, just in proportion as they ripen.")

August 28, 1853 ("A cool, white, autumnal evening. ")

August 28, 1858("When the wind stirs after the rain, leaves that were prematurely ripe or withered begin to strew the ground on the leeward side.")

August 28, 1858 ("When . . . I see these bright leaves strewing the moist ground . . . I am reminded that I have crossed the summit ridge of the year and have begun to descend the other slope.")

August 28, 1859 ("A cool day; wind northwest.")

The pleasure

of bread

and butter

20220829

August 30, 1853 ("Grapes are already ripe; I smell them first.")

August 30, 1858 ("I hear behind me a singular loud stertorous sound . . . twice sounded. Looking round, I saw a blue heron flying low, about forty rods distant, and have no doubt the sound was made by him. Probably this is the sound which Farmer hears.")

August 31, 1853 ("Great black cymes of elder berries now bend down the bushes.")

August 31, 1858 ("I see to-day one golden robin.")

September 1, 1860 ("Now see many birds about E. Hubbard's elder hedge, —  bobolinks, kingbirds, pigeon woodpeckers, — and not elsewhere.")

September 3, 1859 ("A strong wind, which blows down much fruit. R. W. E. sits surrounded by choice windfall pears.")

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 11, 1852 ("These fall rains are a peculiarity of the season")
September 11, 1853 ("Cool weather. Sit with windows shut, and many by fires. . . .The air has got an autumnal coolness which it will not get rid of again.")

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.”)

September 19, 1852 ("The fall dandelion and the fragrant everlasting abound")

December 1, 1856 ("I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow . . . I felt a positive yearning toward one bush this afternoon. There was a match found for me at last. I fell in love with a shrub oak.”)

And I know she's living there

And she loves me to this day

I still can't remember when

Or how I lost my way . . .

August 29, 2016

If you make the least correct 

observation of nature this year,

 you will have occasion to repeat it

 with illustrations the next, 

and the season and life itself is prolonged.

  April 7, 1853 

August 28  <<<<<    August 29    >>>>> August 30

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, August 29

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 © 2009-2022

tinyurl.com/HDT29August

Two green-winged teal

 

August 29. 

Saw two green-winged teal, somewhat pigeon-like, on a flat low rock in the Assabet.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1855

  

Saw two green-winged teal. See September 20, 1851 ("I see ducks or teal flying silent, swift, and straight, the wild creatures.") September 22, 1852 ("Has been a great flight of blue-winged teal this season. "); September 20, 1856 ("Melvin says that there are many teal about the river now.")

Tall gerardia, one flower only left

August 29.

Though it is early, my neighbor's hens have strayed far into the fog toward the river.

I find a wasp in my window, which already appears to be taking refuge from winter and unspeakable fate.

Might I not walk a little further, till I hear new crickets, till their creak has acquired some novelty, as if they were a new species whose habitat I had reached?

The air is filled with mist, yet a transparent mist, a principle in it you might call flavor, which ripens fruits This haziness seems to confine and concentrate the sunlight, as if you lived in a halo. It is August.

A flock of forty-four young turkeys with their old, half a mile from a house on Conantum by the river, the old faintly gobbling, the half-grown young peeping. Turkey-men

Gerardia glauca (quercifolia, says one), tall gerardia, one flower only left; also Corydalis glauca

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1851

A stream meanders as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

August 29.

The 25th and 26th I was surveying Tuttle's farm.

The northeast side bounds on the Mill Brook and its tributary and is very irregular.

I find, after surveying accurately the windings of several brooks and of the river, that their meanders are not such regular serpentine curves as is commonly supposed, or at least represented. 

They flow as much in a zigzag as serpentine manner.

The eye is very much deceived when standing on the brink, and one who had only surveyed a brook so would be inclined to draw a succession of pretty regular serpentine curves.

But, accurately plotted, the regularity disappears, and there are found to be many straight lines and sharp turns.

I want no better proof of the inaccuracy of some maps than the regular curving meanders of the streams, made evidently by a sweep of the pen.

No, the Meander no doubt flowed in a very crooked channel, but depend upon it, it was as much zigzag as serpentine.

This last brook I observed was doubly zigzag, or compoundly zigzag; i. e., there was a zigzag on a large scale including the lesser.

To the eye this meadow is perfectly level.

Probably all streams are (generally speaking) far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths, where they flow slowly, than in high and rugged ground which offers more obstacles.

The meadow being so level for long distances, no doubt as high in one direction as another, how, I asked myself, did the feeble brook, with all its meandering, ever find its way to the distant lower end?

What kind of instinct conducted it forward in the right direction?

How unless it is the relict of a lake which once stood high over all these banks, and knew the different levels of its distant shores?

How unless a flow which commenced above its level first wore its channel for it?

Thus, in regard to most rivers, did not lakes first find their mouths for them, just as the tide now keeps open the mouths of sluggish rivers?

And who knows to what extent the sea originally channelled the submerged globe?

Walking down the street in the evening, I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off; though they are concealed behind his house, every passer knows of them.

So, too, ever and anon I pass through a little region possessed by the fragrance of ripe apples.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1853

Probably all streams are far more meandering in low and level and soft ground near their mouths. See July 18, 1852 ("Thus by a natural law a river, instead of flowing straight through its meadows, meanders from side to side and fertilizes this side or that. . . The river has its active and its passive side, its right and left breast."); March 24, 1855 ("Rivers appear to have traveled back and worn into the meadows of their creating, and then they become more meandering than ever. Thus in the course of ages the rivers wriggle in their beds, till it feels comfortable under them. "); July 7, 1859 ("I learn from measuring on Baldwin's second map that the river . . . winds most in the broad meadows. The greatest meander is in the Sudbury meadows."); July 22, 1859 ("It is remarkable how the river, even from its very source to its mouth, runs with great bends or zigzags regularly recurring and including many smaller ones, first northerly, then northeasterly, growing more and more simple and direct as it descends, like a tree; as if a mighty current had once filled the valley of the river, and meandered in it according to the same law that this small stream does in its own meadows. ")


I detect my neighbor’s ripening grapes by the scent twenty rods off. See August 29, 1859 ("The very earliest ripe grapes begin to be scented in the cool nights "); see also  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."); September 8, 1854 ("The grapes would no doubt be riper a week hence, but I am compelled to go now before the vines are stripped. I partly smell them out.");  September 8, 1858 (“Gather half my grapes, which for some time have perfumed the house.”); September 12, 1851 ("How autumnal )is the scent of ripe grapes now by the roadside!");September 13, 1856 ("Up Assabet. Gather quite a parcel of grapes, quite ripe.. . . the best are more admirable for fragrance than for flavor. Depositing them in the bows of the boat, they fill all the air with their fragrance, as we row along against the wind, as if we were rowing through an endless vineyard in its maturity.");October 9, 1853 ("I smell grapes, . . . their scent is very penetrating and memorable."

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 . . .I enjoy the warmth of the sun now that the air is cool") 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

So cool a morning 

that for the first time I move 

to sit in the sun.

My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication.

August  29. 

I hear this morning one eat it potter from a golden robin. They are now rarely seen. 

The ghost-horse (Spectrum) is seen nowadays, — several of them. 

All these high colors in the stems and leaves and other portions of plants answer to some maturity in us. I presume if I am the wiser for having lived this season through, such plants will emblazon the truth of my experience over the face of nature, and I shall be aware of a beauty and sweetness there. 

Has not the mind, too, its harvest? Do not some scarlet leaves of thought come scatteringly down, though it may be prematurely, some which, perchance, the summer’s drought has ripened,and the rain loosened? Are there my mind ?

 I remember when boiled green corn was sold piping hot on a muster-field in this town, and my father says that he remembers when it used to be carried about the streets of Boston in large baskets on the bare heads of negro women, and gentlemen would stop, buy an ear, and eat it in the street. 

Ah! what a voice was that hawk’s or eagle’s of the 22d! Think of hearing, as you walk the earth, as usual in leaden shoes, a fine, shrill scream from time to time, which you would vainly endeavor to refer to its truje source if you had not watched the bird in its upward flight. It comes from yonder black spot on the bosom of a cloud. I should not have suspected that sound to have issued from the bosom of a cloud if I had not seen the bird. What motive can an eagle have for screaming among the clouds, unobserved by terrestrial creatures? We walk invested by sound, -— the cricket in the grass and the eagle in the clouds. And so it circled over, and I strained my eyes to follow it, though my ears heard it without effort. ,

Almost the very sands confess the ripening influence of the August sun, and, methinks, with the slender grasses waving over them, reflect a purple tinge. The empurpled sands. Such is the consequence of all this sun shine absorbed into the pores of plants and of the earth. All sap or blood is wine-colored. The very bare sands, methinks, yield a purple reflection. At last we have not only the purple sea, but the purple land

P. M. — To J. Farmer’s via Assabet. 

As, standing up in my boat, I am watching some minnows at the Prichard bend steadily stemming the current in the sunny water between the waving potamogeton, right under my face, I see a musquash gliding along above the sand directly beneath them, a perfect denizen of the water as much as they. This rat was a pale brown, as light as pale-brown paper or perfectly withered white oak leaves. Its coat is never of this color out of water, and I suppose it was because it was completely coated with air. This makes it less visible on a sandy bottom. 

Is not that Eleocharis tenuis, long since out of bloom, growing in the water along the Merrick shore, near the oak; round culms, fifteen inches to two feet high? A spiked rush, without a leaf, and round. I can hardly find a head left on it. Yet Flint says this blooms in August! It grows in dense fields like pipes. Did I find it before this year? 

The mikania is apparently in prime or a little past. Perhaps the front-rank polygonum is in prime now, for there is apparently more than before.

I look along Mantatuket Field hedge to see if there are hazelnuts there, but am surprised to find that thereabouts the bushes have been completely stripped by squirrels already and the rich brown burs are strewn on the ground beneath. What a fine brown these dried burs have already acquired, — not chestnut nor hazel! I fear it is already too late for me, though I find some yet quite green in another place. They must have been very busy collecting these nuts and husking them for a fortnight past, climbing to the extremities of the slender twigs. Who witnesses the gathering of the hazelnuts, the hazel harvest? Yet what a busy and important season to the striped squirrel! Now, if ever, he needs to get up a bee. Every nut that I could find left in that field was a poor one. By more frequented paths the squirrels have not worked yet. Take warning from the squirrel, which is already laying up his winter store.

I see some Cornus sericea berries turning. 

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? 

Small botrychium in the bobolink meadow, not yet. 

Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.

Before bathing at the Pokelogan, I see and hear a school of large suckers, which have come into this narrow bay and are swiftly dashing about and rising to the surface, with a bubbling sound, as if to snatch something from the surface. They agitate the whole bay. They [are] great ruddy-looking fellows, limber with life. How intelligent of all watery knowledge! They seem to measure the length, breadth, and depth of that cove — which perhaps they never entered before — with every wave of their fins. They feel it all at once. With what superfluous vigor they seem to move about restlessly in their element! Lift them but six inches, and they would quirk their tails in vain. They are poor, soft fish, however, large as they are, and taste when cooked at present much like boiled brown, paper. 

The wild Monarda fistulosa is apparently nearly done. 

Cicuta maculata, apparently generally done. 

J. Farmer shot a sharp-shinned hawk this morning, which was endeavoring to catch one of his chickens. I bring it home and find that it measures seventeen inches in length and thirty in alar extent, and the tail extends four inches beyond the closed wings. It has a very large head, and the wing is six and a half inches wide at the secondaries. It is dark-brown above, skirted with ferruginous; scapulars, with white spots; legs, bright-yellow; iris, yellow. Has those peculiar pendulous lobes to the feet, which Farmer thinks are to enable it to hold a small bone of its prey between the nail and the lobe, as it feeds, while perching. The breast and belly feathers are shafted with dark-brown pointed spots. Vent white. There are three obvious slate-colored bars to tail, alternating with the black.

F. says that he has seen the nest of a smaller hawk, the pigeon hawk, heretofore, on an oak (in Owl-Nest Swamp), made of sticks, some fifteen feet from ground. R. Rice says that he has found the nest of the pigeon hawk hereabouts. 

We go to see a bittern nest by Spencer Brook. F. says they call the cardinal-flower “ slink-weed,” and say that the eating it will cause cows to miscarry. He calls the Viburnum nudum “withe-wood,” and makes a withe by treading on one end and twisting by the other till he cracks it and makes it flexible so that it will bend without breaking. 

The bittern’s nest was close to the edge of the brook, eighteen inches above the water, and was made of the withered sedge that had grown close by (i. e. wool-grass, etc.) and what I have called pages back Eleocharis tenuis. It was quite a deep nest, like and as big as a hen’s nest, deep in the grass. He or his son saw the young about it a month ago. 

He hears — heard a week ago — the sound of a bird flying over, like cra-a-ack, cr-r-r-a-k, only in the night, and thinks it may be a blue heron.

We saw where many cranberries had been frost-bitten, F. thinks the night of the 23d. They are much injured. 

Spiranthes cemua, how long? 

Near the bittern-nest, grows what F. calls blue-joint grass; out of bloom. 

Returning, rather late afternoon, we saw some forty martins sitting in a row and twittering on the ridge of his old house, apparently preparing to migrate. He had never seen it before. Soon they all took to flight and filled the air in the neighborhood. 

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, though the colors, etc., etc., appear to be essentially the same. Yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me, but is at least half an inch longer. The toes, especially, are longer and more slender, but I am not sure whether Farrar’s hawk has those pendulous lobes, the foot is so dry, nor if it had sharp-edged shin, it being eaten away by worms. The inner vanes of the primaries of Farrar’s bird are brighter white with much narrower bars of blackish. The longest primary of Farrar’s bird is about ten inches; that of to day, about eight inches. I find the outside tail-feathers of to-day’s bird much harder to pull than the inside ones!‘

Our black willow is of so peculiar and light a green, so ethereal, that, as I look back forty rods at those by the Heron Rock, their outlines are seen with perfect distinctness against the darker green of maples, etc., three or four rods behind them, as if they were a green cloud or smoke blown by. They are seen as distinctly against these other trees as they would be against the sky. 

Rice tells me a queer story. Some twenty-five years ago he and his brother William took a journey in their wagon into the northwest part of Maine, carrying their guns and fishing-tackle with them. At Fryeburg they visited the scene of Lovewell’s Fight, and, seeing some trout in the stream there, they tried to dig some fishworms for bait, but they could not find any. So they asked a boy where they got fishworms, but he did not know what they meant. “Long, slender worms, angle worms,” said they; but he only answered that he had seen worms in their manure-heap (which were grubs). On inquiring further, they found that the inhabitants had never seen nor heard of angleworms, and one old settler, who had come from Massachusetts and had lived there thirty years, declared that there was no such worm in that neighborhood. 

Mr. Farmer gave me a turtle-shaped bug found by Melvin on a board by the river, some time ago. 

I hear A. W. complained of for overworking his cattle and hired men, but there is this to be said in his favor, that he does not spare himself. They say that he made his horse “Tom” draw twenty-nine hundred of hay to Boston the other day, — or night, — but then he put his shoulder to the wheel at every hill. I hear that since then the horse has died, but W. is alive and working.

How hard one must work in order to acquire his language,—-words by which to express himself! I have known a particular rush, for instance, for at least twenty years, but have ever been prevented from describing some [of] its peculiarities, because I did not know its name nor any one in the neighborhood who could tell me it. With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. 

That shore is now more describable, and poetic even. My knowledge was cramped and confined before, and grew rusty be cause not used, — for it could not be used. My knowledge now becomes communicable and grows by communication. I can now learn what others know about the same thing.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 29, 1858

The Assabet helianthus (apparently variety of decapetalus), well out some days at least. Are not the petals peculiarly reflexed? See August 29, 1856 ("To J. Farmer's by river. The Helianthus decapetalus, apparently a variety, with eight petals, about three feet high, leaves petioled, but not wing-petioled")

The sharp-shinned hawk of to-day is much larger than that of July 21st, yet its leg is not so stout as that which Farrar gave me. See July 21, 1858 ("A young man killed one of the young hawks, and I saw it. It was the Falco fuscus, the American brown or slate-colored hawk"); October 11, 1856 (“Farrar gave me a wing and foot of a hawk which he shot about three weeks ago . . . . This foot has a sharp shin and stout claws")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the sharp-shinned hawk.

With the knowledge of the name comes a distincter recognition and knowledge of'the thing. See August 20, 1851 ("Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its terms, — to learn the value of words and of system."); March 1, 1852 (""There is a certain advantage in these hard and precise terms, such as the lichenist uses.); January 15, 1853 ("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, and it has suggested less to me and I have made less use of it. I now first feel as if I had got hold of it."); March 23, 1853 ("One studies books of science merely to learn the language of naturalists , — to be able to communicate with them.")

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