A luna moth.

July 8.


P. M. — Down river in boat to the Holt.

The small globose white flower in muddy places by river and elsewhere.

The bass on Egg Rock is just ready to expand.

It is perhaps the warmest day yet.

We held on to the abutments under the red bridge to cool ourselves in the shade. No better place in hot weather, the river rippling away beneath you and the air rippling through beneath the abutments, if only in sympathy with the river, while the planks afford a shade, and you hear all the travel and the travellers' talk without being seen or suspected.

The bullfrog it is, methinks, that makes the dumping sound.

There is generally a current of air circulating over water, always, methinks, if the water runs swiftly, as if it put the air in motion. There is quite a breeze here this sultry day.

Commend me to the sub-pontean, the under-bridge, life.

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life, but it is surprising how indifferent some are to it.

What a coarse, foul, busy life we lead, compared even with the South-Sea-Islanders, in some respects.

Truant boys steal away to bathe, but the farmers, who most need it, rarely dip their bodies into the streams or ponds.

M was telling me last night that he had thought of bathing when he had done his hoeing, — of taking some soap and going down to Walden and giving himself a good scrubbing, — but something had occurred to prevent it, and now he will go unwashed to the harvesting, aye, even till the next hoeing is over.

Better the faith and practice of the Hindoos who worship the sacred Ganges.

We have not faith enough in the Musketaquid to wash in it, even after hoeing.

Men stay on shore, keep themselves dry, and drink rum.

Pray what were rivers made for? One farmer, who came to bathe in Walden one Sunday while I lived there, told me it was the first bath he had had for fifteen years.

Now what kind of religion could his be? Or was it any better than a Hindoo's? 

M said that Abel Heywood told him he had been down to the Great Meadows (river meadows) to look at the grass, and that there wasn't a-going to be much of a crop; in some places there wasn't any grass at all. The great freshet in the spring didn't do it any good. 

Under the Salix nigra var. falcata, near that handsomest one, which now is full of scythe-shaped leaves, the larger six inches long by seven eighths wide, with remarkably broad lunar leafy appendages or stipules at their base, I found a remarkable moth lying flat on the still water as if asleep (they appear to sleep during the day), as large as the smaller birds.

Five and a half inches in alar extent and about three inches long, something like the smaller figure in one position of the wings (with a remarkably narrow lunar-cut tail), of a sea-green color, with four conspicuous spots whitish within, then a red line, then yellowish border below or toward the tail, but brown, brown orange, and black above, toward head; a very robust body, covered with a kind of downy plumage, an inch and a quarter long by five eighths thick.

The sight affected me as tropical, and I suppose it is the northern verge of some species. It suggests into what productions Nature would run if all the year were a July.

By night it is active, for, though I thought it dying at first, it made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. When the day returns, it apparently drops wherever it may be, even into the water, and dozes till evening again.

Is it called the emperor moth? [The luna moth.] 

Yesterday I observed the arrow-wood at Saw Mill Brook, remarkably tall, straight, and slender. It is quite likely the Indians made their arrows of it, for it makes just such shoots as I used to select for my own arrows. It appears to owe its straightness partly to its rapid growth, already two feet from the extremities chiefly.

The pontederia begins to make a show now.

The black willow has branches horizontal or curving downward to the water first,  branching at once at the ground.

The Sium latifolium, water parsnip, — except that the calyx-leaves are minute and the fruit ribbed, — close to the edge of the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 8, 1852

I am inclined to think bathing almost one of the necessaries of life. See July 9, 1852  ("Bathing is an undescribed luxury. To feel the wind blow on your body, the water flow on you and lave you, is a rare physical enjoyment this hot day.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

  It made a great noise in its prison, a cigar-box, at night. Is it called the emperor moth? See July 26, 1852 ("Dr. Harris says that my great moth is the Attacus luna; may be regarded as one of several emperor moths. They are rarely seen, being very liable to be snapped up by birds. . . . The one I had, being put into a large box, beat itself — its wings, etc. — all to pieces in the night, in its efforts to get out, depositing its eggs, nevertheless, on the sides of its prison.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Luna Moth (Attacus luna)

The black willow hardly ceases to shed its down when it looks yellowish.

August 12 

August 12, 2020
8:14 PM

The river-bank is past height.

The button bush is not common now, though the clethra is in prime.

The black willow hardly ceases to shed its down when it looks yellowish.

Setaria glauca, some days.

Elymus Virginicus, some days.

Andropogon furcatus (in meadow); how long? Probably before scoparius.

Zizania several days. 

AUGUST 12, 2017
5:49 PM

River at 5 P. M. three and three quarters inches below summer level.

Panicum glabrum (not sanguinale? — our common); how long? The upper glume equals the flower, yet it has many spikes. 


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 12, 1860



The clethra is in prime. See August 19, 1851 ("The fragrance of the clethra fills the air by water sides.")


The black willow hardly ceases to shed its down. See August 2, 1860 ("The black willow down is even yet still seen here and there on the water. ") See also  A Book of Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Black Willow.

Zizania several days. See August 14, 1859 ("The zizania now makes quite a show along the river. "); August 18, 1854 ("The zizania on the north side of the river near the Holt, or meadow watering-place, is very conspicuous and abundant.")

Panicum sanguinale — our common. See September 4, 1858 ("P. sanguinale, crab grass, finger grass, or purple panic grass.")

The loud snap of a wood pewee's bill overhead.

August 2. 

The wing of the sugar maples is dry and ripe to look at, but the seed end and seed are quite green. I find, as Michaux did, one seed always abortive. 

P. M. — Up Assabet.

The young red maples have sprung up chiefly on the sandy and muddy shores, especially where there is a bay or eddy.

 At 2 P. M. the river is twelve and seven eighths above summer level, higher than for a long time, on account of the rain of the 31st.

 Seed of hop-hornbeam not ripe.

 The button-bush is about in prime, and white lilies considerably past prime. 

Mikania begun, and now, perhaps, the river's brink is at its height. 

The black willow down is even yet still seen here and there on the water. 

The river, being raised three or four inches, looks quite full, and the bur-reed, etc., is floating off in considerable masses.

See those round white patches of eggs on the upright sides of dark rocks.

There is now and of late a very thin, in some lights purplish, scum on the water, outside of coarser drift that has lodged, — a brown scum, somewhat gossamer like as it lies, and browner still on your finger when you take it up. What is it? The pollen of some plant? 

As we rest in our boat under a tree, we hear from time to time the loud snap of a wood pewee's bill overhead, which is incessantly diving to this side and that after an insect and returning to its perch on a dead twig. We hear the sound of its bill when it catches one. 

In huckle-berry fields I see the seeds of berries recently left on the rocks where birds have perched. How many of these small fruits they may thus disseminate!

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, August 2, 1860

We hear from time to time the loud snap of a wood pewee's bill overhead. See August 18, 1858 (“In the meanwhile, as it was perched on the twig, it was incessantly turning its head about, looking for insects, and suddenly would dart aside or downward a rod or two, and I could hear its bill snap as it caught one. Then it returned to the same or another perch. August 18, 1858”)

I see the seeds of berries recently left on the rocks where birds have perched. See August 2, 1854 (“Here are the seeds of some berries in the droppings of some bird on the rock.”) See also July 14, 1856 (“While drinking at Assabet Spring in woods, noticed a cherry-stone on the bottom. A bird that came to drink must have brought it half a mile. So the tree gets planted!”); August 19, 1852 ("The small fruits of most plants are now generally ripe or ripening, and this is coincident with the flying in flocks of such young birds now grown as feed on them.”); September 21, 1860 ("I suspect that ... those [seeds] the wind takes are less generally the food of birds and quadrupeds than the heavier and wingless seeds")

I keep dry by following this blue guide

June 26.

Still hazy and dogdayish.

Go to the menagerie in the afternoon.

At 5 P. M., — river ten and a half inches above summer level, — cross the meadow to the Hemlocks.

The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime, occupies the drier and harder parts of the meadow, where I can walk dry-shod, but where the coarser sedge grows and it is lower and wetter there is none of it.

I keep dry by following this blue guide, and the grass is not very high about it. You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast.

Under the Hemlocks, on the bare bank, apparently the Aira flexuosa, not long.

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders, etc. Leafets from one fortieth to one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter. When separated from the continuous film of down they have a tendency to sink.

The Canada naiad (?), which I gathered yesterday, had perhaps bloomed. Thought I detected with my glass something like stamens about the little balls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1860



Go to the menagerie in the afternoon. See June 26, 1851 ("Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always sur prised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia and also from South America, — on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard , — and their general similarity . All these wild animals — lions, tigers, chetas, leopards, etc . — have one hue, — tawny and commonly spotted or striped, — what you may call pard - color , a color and marking which I had not as sociated with America  These are wild beasts. What constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a tame one  How much more human the one than the other  Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or this leopard. They have the character and the importance of another order of men . The majestic lion, the king of beasts, he must retain his title ")

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage."); June 7, 1860  ("the bead-work of the hemlock"); June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.")

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders. See, June 26, 1859 ("The black willow down . . . rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white ");  June 27, 1860 ("The black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds."); June 29, 1857 ("The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it,. . ., — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler.")

The cool peep of the robin calling to its young.

June 10.

Friday.

June 10, 2016

Another great fog this morning.

Haying commencing in front yards.

P. M. – To Mason ‘s pasture in Carlisle.

Cool but agreeable easterly wind.

Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon.

By the way, I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window, through a spy glass, at the tops of the woods in the horizon.

It was pleasant to bring them so near and individualize the trees, to examine in detail the tree-tops which before you had beheld only in the mass as the woods in the horizon.

It was an exceedingly rich border, seen thus against (sic), and the imperfections in a particular tree-top more than two miles off were quite apparent.

I could easily have seen a hawk sailing over the top of the wood, and possibly his nest in some higher tree.

Thus to contemplate, from my attic in the village, the hawks circling about their nests above some dense forest or swamp miles away, almost as if they were flies on my own premises! I actually distinguished a taller white pine with which I am well acquainted, with a double top rising high above the surrounding woods, between two and three miles distant, which, with the naked eye, I had confounded with the nearer woods.

But to return, as C. and I go through the town, we hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly.

The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness, but it is more agreeable to my eye than my nose.

The curled dock out.

The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (?) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface.

By the 30th of May, at least, white maple keys were falling. How early, then, they had matured their seed!

Cow-wheat out, and Iris Virginica, and the grape.

The mountain laurel will begin to bloom to-morrow.

The frost some weeks since killed most of the buds and shoots, except where they were protected by trees or by themselves, and now new shoots have put forth and grow four or five inches from the sides of what were the leading ones.

It is a plant which plainly requires the protection of the wood. It is stunted in the open pasture.

We continued on, round the head of “Cedar Swamp,” and may say that we drank at the source of it or of Saw Mill Brook, where a spring is conducted through a hollow log to a tub for cattle.

Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green ‘s, and then across the road through the woods to the Paul Adams house by Bateman‘s Pond.

Saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs and a shelter for them at night, a half-mile east of the last house, — something rare in these days here abouts.

What shall this great wild tract over which we strolled be called?

Many farmers have pastures there, and wood-lots, and orchards. It consists mainly of rocky pastures.

It contains what I call the Boulder Field, the Yellow Birch Swamp, the Black Birch Hill, the Laurel Pasture, the Hog-Pasture, the White Pine Grove, the Easterbrooks Place, the Old Lime-Kiln, the Lime Quarries, Spruce Swamp, the Ermine Weasel Woods; also the Oak Meadows, the Cedar Swamp, the Kibbe Place, and the old place northwest of Brooks Clark‘s.

Ponkawtasset bounds it on the south.

There are a few frog-ponds and an old mill-pond within it, and Bateman‘s Pond on its edge.

What shall the whole be called?

The old Carlisle road, which runs through the middle of it, is bordered on each side with wild apple pastures, where the trees stand without order, having, many if not most of them, sprung up by accident or from pomace sown at random, and are for the most part concealed by birches and pines.

These orchards are very extensive, and yet many of these apple trees, growing as forest trees, bear good crops of apples.

It is a paradise for walkers in the fall.

There are also boundless huckleberry pastures as well as many blueberry swamps.

Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? It would make a princely estate in Europe, yet it is owned by farmers, who live by the labor of their hands and do not esteem it much.

Plenty of huckleberries and barberries here.

A second great uninhabited tract is that on the Marlborough road, stretching westerly from Francis Wheeler‘s to the river, and beyond about three miles, and from Harrington‘s on the north to Dakin‘s on the south, more than a mile in width.

A third, the Walden Woods.

A fourth, the Great Fields.

These four are all in Concord.

There are one or two in the town who probably have Indian blood in their veins, and when they exhibit any unusual irascibility, their neighbors say they have got their Indian blood roused.

C. proposes to call the first-named wild the Melvin Preserve, for it is favorite hunting-ground with George Melvin. It is a sort of Robin Hood Ground.

Shall we call it the Apple Pastures?

Now, methinks, the birds begin to sing less tumultuously, with, as the weather grows more constantly warm, morning and noon and evening songs, and suitable recesses in the concert.

High blackberries conspicuously in bloom, whitening the side of lanes.

Mention is made in the Town Records, as quoted by Shattuck, page 33, under date of 1654, of “the Hogepen-walke about Annursnake," and reference is at the same time made to “the old hogepen.” The phrase is “in the Hogepen-walke about Annursnake," i. e. in the hog-pasture.

There is some propriety in calling such a tract a walk, methinks, from the habit which hogs have of walking about with an independent air and pausing from time to time to look about from under their flapping ears and snuff the air.

The hogs I saw this afternoon, all busily rooting without holding up their heads to look at us, — the whole field looked as if it had been most miserably plowed or scarified with a harrow, — with their shed to retreat to in rainy weather, affected me as more human than other quadrupeds.

They are comparatively clean about their lodgings, and their shed, with its litter bed, was on the whole cleaner than an Irishman ‘s shanty.

I am not certain what there was so very human about them.

In 1668 the town had a pasture near Silas Holden‘s and a herd of fifty cattle constantly watched by a “herdsman,” etc. (page 43).

In 1672 there is an article referring to the “crane field and brickil field.”

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 10, 1853

Streets now beautiful with verdure and shade of elms, under which you look, through an air clear for summer, to the woods in the horizon. See May 27, 1853 ("A new season has commenced - summer - leafy June. The elms begin to droop and are heavy with shade."); June 2, 1852 ("The elms now hold a good deal of shade and look rich and heavy with foliage. You see darkness in them"); June 4, 1860 ("The foliage of the elms over the street impresses me as dense and heavy already."); June 9, 1856 ("Now I notice where an elm is in the shadow of a cloud,—the black elm-tops and shadows of June. It is a dark eyelash which suggests a flashing eye beneath")

I amused myself yesterday afternoon with looking from my window, through a spy glass. See June 9, 1853 ("I have come with a spy-glass to look at the hawks.")

Crossed on to the old Carlisle road by the house north of Isaiah Green ‘s, and then across the road through the woods . . . saw a hog-pasture of a dozen acres in the woods, with thirty or forty large hogs. See September 19, 1851 ("Mr. Isaiah Green of Carlisle. . .spoke of one old field, now grown up, which [we] were going through, as the "hog-pasture.");  October 3, 1859 ("Looking from the hog-pasture over the valley of Spencer Brook westward, we see the smoke rising from a huge chimney above a gray roof amid the woods, at a distance, where some family is preparing its evening meal.")

Shall we call it the Easterbrooks Country? See October 20, 1857 (“What a wild and rich domain that Easterbrooks Country . . . the miles of huckleberries, and of barberries, and of wild apples, so fair, both in flower and fruit,”); October 15, 1859 (“Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. . . All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field”)

We hear the cool peep of the robin calling to its young, now learning to fly. See June 9, 1856 ("A young robin abroad. ");  June 18, 1854 ("I think I heard the anxious peep of a robin whose young have just left the nest.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,  Robins in Spring

The locust bloom is now perfect, filling the street with its sweetness. See June 7, 1854 ("The locusts so full of pendulous white racemes five inches long, filling the air with their sweetness and resounding with the hum of humble and honey bees"); June 9, 1852 ("The locust in bloom"); June 11, 1856 ("The locust in graveyard shows but few blossoms yet.")

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

The cool peep of the 

robin calling to its young

now learning to fly.

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The cool peep of the

robin calling to its young

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 © 2009-2025

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-530610

Blackbird singing all alone.

September 20. 

P. M. — To White Pond. 

The button-bushes by the river are generally overrun with the mikania. This is married to the button-bush as much as the vine to the elm, and more. I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be. 

I get quite near to a blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note very earnestly and not minding me. He is all alone. Has a (rustyish) brown head and shoulders and the rest black. I think it is a grackle. 

Where are the red-wings now? I have not seen nor heard one for a long time. 

Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 20, 1859



I suspect that the button-bushes and black willows have been as ripe as ever they get to be. See July 9, 1859 ("The button-bush and black willow generally grow together, especially on the brink of the stagnant parts of the river."); August 15, 1854 ("The button-bush is now nearly altogether out of bloom, so that it is too late to see the river's brink in its perfection. It must be seen between the blooming of the mikania and the going out of bloom of the button bush, before you feel this sense of lateness in the year.");August 15, 1858 (“The black willows are already being imbrowned."); August 22, 1858 ("As for the beauty of the river’s brim: now that the mikania begins to prevail the button-bush has done . . . and the willows are already some what crisped and imbrowned , , , So perhaps I should say that the brim of the river was in its prime about the 1st of August this year"); September 24, 1854 (The button-bushes, which before had attained only a dull mixed yellow, are suddenly bitten, wither, and turn brown, all but the protected parts. . . . The button-bushes thus withered suddenly paint with a rich brown the river’s brim. "); October 4, 1857 ("The button-bushes are generally greenish-yellow now; only the highest and most exposed points brown and crisp in some places. The black willow, rising above them, is crisped yellowish-brown, so that the general aspect of the river's brim now is a modest or sober ripe yellowish-brown"); See also  October 8, 1858 ("The button-bushes and black willows are rapidly losing leaves, and the shore begins to look Novemberish"); October 10, 1858 ("November has already come to the river with the fall of the black willow and the button-bush, . . . letting in the autumn light to the water")

A blackbird on an apple tree, singing with the grackle note.  See September 20, 1854 ("See to-day quite a flock of what I think must be rusty grackles about the willows and button-bushes."); September 20, 1855 ("See blackbirds (grackle or red-wing or crow blackbird?)"); October 14, 1857 ("I see a large flock of grackles, probably young birds, quite near me on William Wheeler's apple trees, pruning themselves and trying to sing."); October 28, 1857 ("On a black willow, a single grackle with the bright iris")

Where are the red-wings now? See July 29, 1859 ("See large flocks of red-wings now, the young grown."); August 12, 1853 ("You now see and hear no red-wings along the river as in spring."); August 16, 1859 ("A large flock of red-wings goes tchucking over"); September 4, 1859 ("Where are the robins and red-wing blackbirds of late?"); October 16, 1858 (" I have not seen red-wings [for] a long while."); October 29, 1859 (''Also a flock of blackbirds fly eastward over my head from the top of an oak, either red-wings or grackles"); November 14, 1855 ("Two red-wing blackbirds alight on a black willow.")

Is this a grackle come from its northern breeding-place? See September 30, 1858 ("A large flock of grackles amid the willows by the riverside, or chiefly concealed low in the button bushes . . .These are the first I have seen, and now for some time, I think, the red wings have been gone. These are the first arrivers from the north where they breed."); October 16, 1858 See a large flock of grackles . . . [T]hese birds, which went so much further north to breed, are still arriving from those distant regions, fetching the year about."); 

Another hot day with blue haze.

July 11. 

July 11, 2015

Another hot day with blue haze, and the sun sets red, threatening still hotter weather, and the very moon looks through a somewhat reddish air at first. 

The position of the button-bushes determines the width of the river, no less than the width or depth of the water determines the position of the button-bushes. We call that all river between the button-bushes, though sometimes they may have landed or sprung up in a regular brink fashion three or four rods further from, or nearer to, the channel. 

That mass (described on the 9th, seen the 10th) in the Wayland meadows above Sherman's Bridge was, I think, the largest mass drifted or growing at all on that great meadow. So this transplantation is not on an insignificant scale when compared with [the] whole body that grows by our river. The largest single mass on the Wayland meadows, considering both length and breadth, was the recently drifted one. 

To-day the farmer owns a meadow slightly inclined toward the river and generally (i. e. taking the year together) more or less inundated on that side. Tomorrow it is a meadow quite cut off from the river by a fence of button-bush and black willow, a rod or more in width and four to seven or eight feet high, set along the inundated side and concealing the river from sight.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 11, 1859

Another hot day with blue haze, and the sun sets red, threatening still hotter weather. See July 11, 1857 ("Looking off into the vales from Fair Haven Hill  . . . a thin blue haze now rests almost universally . . . Thermometer at 93°+ this afternoon.")

That mass (described on the 9th, seen the 10th) in the Wayland meadows above Sherman's Bridge. See July 9, 1859 ("I see, just above Sherman's Bridge, on the east side, a piece, some eight rods long by one rod wide, arranged as a brink separating a meadow from the river in the same manner, and, a quarter of a mile higher up on the same side, a more or less broken piece which I estimated by my eye to be five rods by twelve, the largest mass or collection of the kind moved together that I ever saw.”)

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

The black willow down.

June 26. 

Sunday. P. M. — Up Assabet. 

The black willow down is now quite conspicuous on the trees, giving them a parti-colored or spotted white and green look, quite interesting, like a fruit. It also rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white as to remind me of a dense mass of hoar-frost crystals.

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

The black willow down is now quite conspicuous. See March 11, 1861 ("The seed of the willow is exceedingly minute, . . .- and is surrounded at base by a tuft of cotton - like hairs about one fourth of an inch long rising around and above it, forming a kind of parachute. These render it the most buoyant of the seeds of any of our trees, and it is borne the furthest horizontally with the least wind. . . . Each of the numerous little pods, more or less ovate and beaked, which form the fertile catkin is closely packed with down and seeds. At maturity these pods open their beaks, which curve back, and gradually discharge their burden like the milkweed."); June 15, 1854 ("Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weeds."); June 27, 1860 ("To-day it is cool and clear and quite windy, and the black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds, and the river looking more sparkling."); July 9, 1857 ("There is now but little black willow down left on the trees.")

Willow gone to seed, its down covers the water – white amid the weeds.

June 15. 

5.30 a. m. — To Island and Hill. 

A young painted tortoise on the surface of the water, as big as a quarter of a dollar, with a reddish or orange sternum. 

I suppose that my skater insect is the hydrometer. 

Found a nest of tortoise eggs, apparently buried last night, which I brought home, ten in all, — one lying wholly on the surface, — and buried in the garden. 

The soil above a dark virgin mould about a stump was unexpectedly hard.

1 P. M. — Up Assabet to Garlic Wall. 

That tall grass opposite the Merrick Swimming-Place is getting up pretty well, and blossoming with a broad and regular spike, for some time. 

June 15, 2024

This is the third afternoon that we have had a rumbling thunder-cloud arise in the east, — not to mention the west, — but all signs have failed hitherto, and I resolve to proceed on my voyage, knowing that I have a tight [roof] in my boat turned up. 

The froth on the alders, andromeda, etc., — not to speak of the aphides, — dirties and apparently spots my clothes, so that it is a serious objection to walking amid these bushes these days. I am covered with this spittle-like froth. 

At the Assabet Spring I must have been near a black and white creeper's nest. It kept up a constant chipping. 

Saw there also, probably, a chestnut-sided warbler. A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings. 

A red oak there has many large twigs drooping withered, apparently weakened by some insect. May it not be the locust of yesterday? 

Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weeds. 

The swamp-pink apparently two or even three days in one place. 

Saw a wood tortoise, about two inches and a half, with a black sternum and the skin, which becomes orange, now ochreous merely, or brown. The little painted tortoise of the morning was red beneath. Both these young tortoises have a distinct dorsal ridge. 

The garlic not in flower yet. 

I observed no Nuphar lutea var. Kalmiana on the Assabet. 

7 p. m. — To Cliff by railroad. 

Cranberry. Prinos Icevigatus, apparently two days.

Methinks the birds sing a little feebler nowadays. The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare. 

The sun has set, or is at least concealed in a low mist. 

As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I feel the leaves in the sprout-land oak, hickory, etc., cold and wet to my hand with the heavy dew that is falling. They look dry, but when I rub them with my hand, they show moist or wet at once. Probably I thus spread minute drops of dew or mist on their surface. It cannot be the warmth of my hand, for when I breathe on them it has no effect. 

I see one or two early blueberries prematurely turning. 

The Amelanchier Botryapium berries are already reddened two thirds over, and are somewhat palatable and soft, — some of them, — not fairly ripe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 15, 1854

A young painted tortoise . . . as big as a quarter of a dollar. See April 21, 1855 ("Saw a painted turtle not two inches in diameter. This must be more than one year old."); April 24, 1856 ("A young Emys picta, one and five eighths inches long and one and a half wide. I think it must have been hatched year before last. "); August 28, 1856 ("I open the painted tortoise nest of June 10th, and find a young turtle partly out of his shell . . . The upper shell is fifteen sixteenths of an inch plus by thirteen sixteenths. He is already wonderfully strong and precocious."). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta)

Found a nest of tortoise eggs. . . which I brought home . . . and buried in the garden. See September 9, 1854 ("This morning I find a little hole, three quarters of an inch or an inch over, above my small tortoise eggs, and find a young tortoise coming out (apparently in the rainy night) just beneath. It is the Sternotherus odoratus"). See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus)

This is the third afternoon that we have had a rumbling thunder-cloud arise in the east. . . I resolve to proceed on my voyage, knowing that I have a tight [roof] in my boat turned up. See June 13, 1854 (''I hear the muttering of thunder and see a dark cloud in the west-southwest horizon; am uncertain how far up-stream I shall get. An opposite cloud rises fast in the east-northeast, and now the lightning crinkles and I hear the heavy thunder. "); June 16, 1854 (" Three days in succession, — the 13th, 14th, and 15th, — thunder-clouds, with thunder and lightning, have risen high in the east, threatening instant rain, and yet each time it has failed to reach us. Thus it is almost invariably, methinks, with thunder-clouds which rise in the east; they do not reach us."). See also June 14, 1855 (" It suddenly begins to rain with great violence, and we in haste draw up our boat on the Clamshell shore, upset it, and get under, sitting on the paddles, and so are quite dry while our friends thought we were being wet to our skins. "); June 15, 1860 ("A thunder-shower in the north goes down the Merrimack. ");June 16, 1860  (" Thunder-showers show themselves about 2 P.M. in the west, but split at sight of Concord and go past on each side")

My skater insect. See March 25, 1858 ("Large skaters (Hydrometra) on a ditch"); March 29, 1853 (“Tried several times to catch a skater. Got my hand close to him; grasped at him as quick as possible; was sure I had got him this time; let the water run out between my fingers; hoped I had not crushed him; opened my hand; and lo! he was not there. I never succeeded in catching one.”); September 1, 1852 ("the surface of the pond is perfectly smooth except where the skaters dimple it, for at equal intervals they are scattered over its whole extent, and, looking west, they make a fine sparkle in the sun."); October 11, 1852 ("I could detect the progress of a water-bug over the smooth surface in almost any part of the pond, for they furrow the water slightly,. . . but the skaters slide over it without producing a perceptible ripple. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Water-bug (Gyrinus) and Skaters (Hydrometridae)

Saw probably, a chestnut-sided warbler. A yellow crown, chestnut stripe on sides, white beneath, and two yellowish bars on wings. See May 24, 1854 ("In woods the chestnut-sided warbler, with clear yellow crown and yellow on wings and chestnut sides. It is exploring low trees and bushes, often along stems about young leaves, and frequently or after short pauses utters its somewhat summer-yellowbird like note, say, tchip tchip, chip chip (quick), tche tche ter tchéa, —— sprayey and rasping and faint.”); May 20, 1856 ("I now see distinctly the chestnut-sided warbler (of the 18th and 17th), by Beck Stow’s. It is very lively on the maples, birches, etc., over the edge of the swamp. Sings eech eech eech | wichy wichy | tchea or itch itch itch | witty witty |tchea "); May 23, 1857 (“The chestnut-sided warbler . . .appears striped slate and black above, white beneath, yellow-crowned with black side-head, two yellow bars on wing, white side-head below the black, black bill, and long chestnut streak on side. Its song lively and rather long, about as the summer yellowbird, but not in two bars; tse tse tse \ te tsah tsah tsah \ te sak yer se is the rhythm.”)  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Chestnut-sided Warbler

Black willow is now gone to seed, and its down covers the water, white amid the weed.   See  June 10, 1853 ("The fuzzy seeds or down of the black (?) willows is filling the air over the river and, falling on the water, covers the surface.");   June 29, 1857  (""The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it,. . ., — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler."); July 9, 1857 ("There is now but little black willow down left on the trees. . . . I think I see how this tree is propagated by its seeds." )See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Propogation of the Willow.

The swamp-pink apparently two or even three days in one place. June 19, 1852 ("Is not this the carnival of the year when the swamp rose and wild pink are in bloom the last stage before blueberries come?") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Swamp-pink

Methinks the birds sing a little feebler nowadays. See June 25, 1854 (“Through June the song of the birds is gradually growing fainter.”)

The note of the bobolink begins to sound somewhat rare. See May 12, 1856 ("How much life the note of the bobolink imparts to the meadow! "); June 19, 1853 ("The strain of the bobolink now begins to sound a little rare. It never again fills the air as the first week after its arrival.") A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Bobolink

I see one or two early blueberries prematurely turning. The Amelanchier Botryapium berries are already red. See May 17, 1853 (“The petals have already fallen from the Amelanchier Botryapium, and young berries are plainly forming.”); May 30, 1854 (" I see now green high blueberries, and gooseberries in Hubbard's Close, as well as shad-bush berries and strawberries. "); June 7, 1854 ("I am surprised at the size of green berries. It is but a step from flowers to fruit.")

June 15. See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, June 15

Willow gone to seed

its down covers the water –

white amid the weeds.

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, Willow gone to seed

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 ©  2009-2024

https://tinyurl.com/hdt-540615

The vertebrae and talons of a partridge in the dry excrement of a fox, left on a rock.

June 11 

Saturday. Another fog this morning. 

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. 

On the river at dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs. 

The black willow, having shed its fuzzy seeds and expanded its foliage, now begins to be handsome, so light and graceful. 

The upland fields are already less green where the June-grass is ripening its seeds. They are greenest when only the blade is seen. 

In the sorrel-fields, also, what lately was the ruddy, rosy cheek of health, now that the sorrel is ripening and dying, has become the tanned and imbrowned cheek of manhood. 

Probably blackbirds were never less numerous along our river than in these years. They do not depend on the clearing of the woods and the cultivation of or chards, etc. Streams and meadows, in which they delight, always existed. Most of the towns, soon after they were settled, were obliged to set a price upon their heads. In 1672, according to the town records of Concord, instruction was given to the selectmen, "That incorigment be given for the destroying of blackbirds and jaies." (Shattuck, page 45.) 

Murder will out. I find, in the dry excrement of a fox left on a rock, the vertebrae and talons of a partridge (?) which he has consumed. They are memoires pour servir. 

I remember Helen's telling me that John Marston of Taunton told her that he was on board a vessel during the Revolution, which met another vessel, — and, as I think, one hailed the other, — and a French name being given could not be understood, whereupon a sailor, probably aboard his vessel, ran out on the bowsprit and shouted "La Sensible,"  and that sailor's name was Thoreau. 

["La Sensible," was] the vessel in which John Adams was being brought back from or carried out to France. My father has an idea that he stood on the wharf and cried this to the bystanders.] 

My father tells me that, when the war came on, my grandfather, being thrown out of business and being a young man, went a-privateering. I find from his Diary that John Adams set sail from Port Louis at L'Orient in the French frigate Sensible, Captain Chavagnes, June 17th, 1779, the Bonhomme Richard, Captain Jones, and four other vessels being in company at first, and the Sensible arrived at Boston the 2d of August. 

On the 13th of November following, he set out for France again in the same frigate from Boston, and he says that a few days before the 24th, being at the last date "on the Grand Bank of Newfoundland," "we spoke an American privateer, the General Lincoln, Captain Barnes." If the above-mentioned incident occurred at sea, it was probably on this occasion.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1853

The mosquitoes first troubled me a little last night. At dusk I hear the toads still, with the bullfrogs.  See June 7, 1858 "Mosquitoes quite troublesome here."); June 7, 1854 ("[M]osquitoes are very troublesome in the woods."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome."); June 16, 1852 ("The sonorous note of bullfrogs is heard a mile off in the river, the loudest sound this evening"). See also June 16, 1860 ("It appears to me that these phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12th . . .")


A partridge which he has consumed.  See January 27, 1855 ("What a life is theirs, venturing forth only at night for their prey, ranging a great distance, trusting to pick up a sleeping partridge or a hare, and at home again before morning!”); January 1, 1856 (“In the other direction you trace the retreating steps of the disappointed fox until he has forgotten this and scented some new game, maybe dreams of partridges or wild mice.”); June 25, 1860 ("What an unfailing supply of small game it secures that its excrement should be so generally of fur! ")

The French frigate Sensible sailed from L'Orient, France to Boston, Ma between June 17-August 2, 1779, carrying John Adams and his son, and also the french minister to the U.S., Chevalier Anne-Cesar de La Luzerne. See John Adams Journals.  The ship sailed from Boston, MA destination France on November 14, 1779, but a storm damaged the hull and she ended up in Ferrol, Spain on December 8, 1779. John Adams and two suns were traveling with it.  see link.  From Adam's diary:

November 24 1779

We were on the Grand Bank of Newfound Land, and about this time, We spoke with an American Privateer, The General Lincoln Captain Barnes. He came on board and our Captain supplied him with some Wood and other Articles he wanted. 

Jean Thoreau, grandfather of Henry, born at St. Helier's, Jersey, April, 1754, was a sailor on board the American privateer General Lincoln, November, 1779

It will alter the map of the river in one year.

July 9. 

Paddle up river and sound a little above Fair Haven Pond. 

See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows,
--- the airy bird, lively, twittering.


The water having gone down, I notice a broad red base to the bayonet rush, apparently the effect of the water, even as the maples (of both kinds) and the polygonums are reddened. The bayonet rush is not quite out. 

I see, at length, where the floated meadow (on Hubbard's meadow) came from last spring, — from opposite Bittern Cliff, and some below. There is a pond created in the meadow there, some five rods by four and three to three and a half feet deep, water being eleven and a half inches above summer level, — a regular oval pond, where nothing rises above water, but I see pontederia grass-like leafets springing up all over the bottom. The piece taken out here probably contained no button-bushes. So much of the meadow which has been moved [?] is thus converted into a pool. 

Close by, south, are still larger scars, where masses of button-bush thicket have been ripped up. No doubt some of those on Hubbard's meadow came from here. The water where they stood is about the same depth as in the other place. 

I see a piece of floated button-bush on the south side of Fair Haven Pond, west of the old boat place of Baker Shore, which is twelve rods long by one rod wide, and, in two or three pieces [sic] where it is several thicknesses, it is full three feet thick of solid earth. The whole is set in a straight line separating the meadow in the rear from the pond, forming, in fact, just such a brink there as exists in perfection on the west side of the pond. 

This might be called brink-bush, or drift-bush, river-fence. It is the floating fencing-stuff of the river. Possibly that (in the spring) island south of the mouth of Well Meadow Brook, and even the large island in the pond, had its beginning thus, not only willows but maples and alders having at length sprung up on it and built it up. 

The next day (10th) I see, just above Sherman's Bridge, on the east side, a piece, some eight rods long by one rod wide, arranged as a brink separating a meadow from the river in the same manner, and, a quarter of a mile higher up on the same side, a more or less broken piece which I estimated by my eye to be five rods by twelve, the largest mass or collection of the kind moved together that I ever saw. I have seen six pieces moved last March, or spring, which contained all together more than half an acre. There was more than a quarter of an acre in the last piece alone. 

The button-bush and black willow generally grow together, especially on the brink of the stagnant parts of the river. (Very little comparatively in the great Sudbury meadow and in our Great Meadows.) Perhaps they are there carried off by the ice. They stand generally in line (sometimes half a dozen rods wide) on the brink of the river, separating it from some (commonly narrow) meadow behind, and at high water are a distinct line of separation, rising above the surface and indicating the summer boundary. 


The best example is at Fair Haven Pond, west side. It is often pretty deep water quite up to the bushes, or there are pads, etc., outside them. There they stand in massive and regular straight or curving lines, and you suppose that they have stood there for ages. But I have seen twelve rods together (i. e. in one piece) of such fence, the whole width of it transplanted half a mile to some shore where there was none, and forming a fence to the pond or river there.


We are accustomed to refer changes in the shore and the channel to the very gradual influence of the current washing away and depositing matter which was held in suspension, but certainly in many parts of our river the ice which moves these masses of bushes and meadow is a much more important agent. It will alter the map of the river in one year. 


The whole shore for forty rods on the east side below Bittern Cliff was stripped of its button-bushes and willows, etc., etc., last spring, and as I floated over the river there to-day, I could not at first account for the remarkable breadth of the river there, like a bay. I got a very novel impression of the size of the river, though it is now low water. In fact the width of the river has been increased fully three or four rods for more than forty rods in length, and is three to four feet deep on that side now. 

You cannot tell, of any clump or row of button-bushes, whether it grew up where it stands or was thus set out there. I have seen these masses, sunk in midstream, produce a small weedy spot the same year, and possibly a large mass might thus form an extensive shallow and weedy place or island. 

Potamogetons begin to prevail at five and a half feet in sluggish water (at summer level), though they will still be visible when the water rises higher, rising with it. They appear at four and a half, if more rapid, and are densest at three feet, if the stream is not exceedingly rapid. The kalmiana lily grows to seven and a half feet (summer level) where it is sluggish (and is still atop when it is a foot or two deeper), and you see this, the heart-leaf, utricularia, and potamogeton, all together, in five feet [of] water (also in same place when a foot or two higher). 

The front-rank polygonum grows outside the pontederia, next to the potamogeton, and, near the causeway bridge, in Wayland, reaches (except four or five feet) quite across the river (three feet [of] water). 

We have not only the Assabet uniting with the main stream about in the middle of the township, but three highways thus raying out in different directions, — as great an amount of river within these limits as could well be. Neither stream runs direct through the town. The main stream runs first northerly or northwesterly and then northeasterly, and perhaps this is as convenient for sailing in flat-bottomed boats as any arrangement could be, the prevailing winds being northwest and southwest, but sailing is much affected by hills, woods, etc. 

To-day, July 9th, water is eleven and a half inches above summer level.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 9, 1859

See young kingbirds which have lately flown perched in a family on the willows, — the airy bird, lively, twittering. See July 5, 1856 ("A kingbird’s nest in fork of a button-bush five feet high on shore (not saddled on); three young just hatched and one egg."); August 6, 1858 ("If our sluggish river, choked with potamogeton, might seem to have the slow-flying bittern for its peculiar genius, it has also the sprightly and aerial kingbird to twitter over and lift our thoughts to clouds as white as its own breast.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,the Eastern Kingbird

The ice which moves these masses of bushes and meadow is a much more important agent. It will alter the map of the river in one year. See February 28, 1855 ("This is a powerful agent at work.”); June 22, 1859 ("One who is not almost daily on the river will not perceive the revolution constantly going on.”)

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