July 17
Found a great many insects in white lilies which opened in pan this forenoon, which had never opened before. What regular and handsome petals! regularly concave toward the inside, and calyx hooked at tip.
P. M. — To Water Dock Meadow and Linnaea Hill side.
Hear a new note from bank swallows when going over the Hosmer pastures, a sort of screep screep, shrill and like what I have referred to the barn swallow. They are probably out with young.
Ludwigia palustris and ilysanthes have been out apparently some time on the flat Hosmer shore or meadow, where the surface has been laid bare by the ice.
There, too, the Hypericum Sarothra has pushed up abundantly.
I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long; also young frogs a little larger.
Horse-mint out at Clamshell, apparently two or three days.
Bathed at Clamshell. See great schools of minnows, apparently shiners, hovering in the clear shallow next the shore. They seem to choose such places for security. They take pretty good care of themselves and are harder to catch with the hands than you expect, darting out of the way at last quite swiftly. Caught three, however, between my hands.
They have brighter golden irides, all the abdomen conspicuously pale-golden, the back and half down the sides pale-brown, a broad, distinct black band along sides (which methinks marks the shiner), and comparatively transparent beneath behind vent.
When the water is gone I am surprised to see how they can skip or spring from side to side in my cup-shaped two hands for a long time. This to enable them to get off floating planks or pads on the shore when in fright they may have leaped on to them. But they are very tender, and the sun and air soon kill them. If there is any water in your hand they will pass out through the smallest crack between your fingers. They are about three quarters of an inch long generally, though of various sizes.
Half a dozen big bream come quite up to me, as I stand in the water. They are not easily scared in such a case.
The large skunk-cabbage fruit looks quite black now where the haymakers have passed.
Stooping to drink at the Hosmer Spring, I saw a hundred caddis-cases, of light-colored pebbles, at the bottom, and a dozen or twenty crawled half-way up the side of the tub, apparently on their way out to become perfect insects.
Cows in their pasture, going to water or elsewhere, make a track four or five inches deep and frequently not more than ten inches wide.
The great water dock has been out some days at least. Its valves are quite small at first, but lower leaves pointed.
I hear in the meadow there a faint incessant z-ing sound, as of small locusts in the meadow-grass.
Under the oak in Brown's moraine pasture, by Water Dock Meadow, a great arum more than three feet high, like a tropical plant, in open land, with leafets more than a foot long. There is rich-weed there, apparently not quite out.
Going up the hillside, between J. P. Brown's and rough-cast house, am surprised to see great plump ripe low blackberries. How important their acid (as well as currants) this warm weather!
It is 5 p. m. The wood thrush begins to sing. A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust.
I have come to collect birds' nests. The thrasher's is apparently made partly beneath the surface, some dirt making its sides. I find the nests by withered twigs and leaves broken off in the spring, but commonly nearly concealed by the recent growth.
The jay's nest had been filled with white oak leaves. Not one could have been blown into it.
On Linnaea Hill many thimble-berries and some raspberries.
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| July 17, 2016 |
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Evening by river to Ed. Homer’s
Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass with its drooping flowers at the Island, a few minutes only before sunset. It sounds like the rumbling of a distant train of cars.
Returning after ten, by moonlight, see the bullfrogs lying at full length on the pads where they trump.
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| July 17, 2016 |
H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 17, 1856
White lilies which opened in pan this forenoon, which had never opened before. What regular and handsome petals! See July 1, 1852 ("Tto see the white lilies in blossom...to breathe the atmosphere of lilies, and get the full impression which lilies are fitted to make. ... After eating our luncheon I can not find one open anywhere for the rest of the day."); July 17, 1854 ("I could tell when it was 12 o'clock within half an hour by the lilies.");July 20, 1853 ("Coming home at twelve, I see that the white lilies are nearly shut"); July 26, 1856 ("At five [A.M.] the lilies had not opened, but began about 5.15 and were abundantly out at six")
Hear a new note from bank swallows . . . They are probably out with young. See May 20, 1858 ("The principal note is the low grating sound of the bank swallow,"); July 10, 1854 ("Barn swallow, bank swallow, etc., numerous with their young for a week or two")
On the flat Hosmer shore or meadow, where the surface has been laid bare by the ice . . .the Hypericum Sarothra has pushed up abundantly. See July 13, 1853 ("On the hard, muddy shore opposite Dennis’s, in the meadow, Hypericum Sarothra in dense fields,"); See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, St. Johns-wort (Hypericum)
I see many young toads hopping about on that bared ground amid the thin weeds, not more than five eighths to three quarters of an inch long. See July 17, 1853 ("Young toads not half an inch long at Walden shore"); July 25, 1855 ("Many little toads about.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Midsummer Toads
They have . . . a broad, distinct black band along sides (which methinks marks the shiner), and comparatively transparent beneath behind vent. See March 29, 1854 ("Poised over the sand on invisible fins, the outlines of a shiner". . . "distinct longitudinal light-colored line midway along their sides and a darker line below it”)
Cows in their pasture, going to water or elsewhere, make a track four or five inches deep and frequently not more than ten inches wide. See August 1850 ("I notice that cows never walk abreast, but in single file commonly, making a narrow cow-path.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Cows in their Pasture
Surprised to see great plump ripe low blackberries. See July 17, 1852 ("Notwithstanding the rain, some children still pursue their blackberrying on the Great Fields.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Blackberries
It is 5 p. m. The wood thrush begins to sing. See July 19, 1854 ("A wood thrush to-night."); July 20, 1852 ("It is starlight. . . .And now, when we had thought the day birds gone to roost, the wood thrush takes up the strain.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Thrush
A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust. See. July 18, 1851 ("I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day"); July 19, 1854 ("The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust Days, Dogdayish Days
On Linnaea Hill many thimble-berries and some raspberries. See July 13, 1856 ("Thimble-berries are now fairly ripe and abundant"); July 18, 1854 ("As I go along the Joe Smith road, every bush and bramble bears its fruit; the sides of the road are a fruit garden; blackberries, huckleberries, thimble-berries, fresh and abundant, no signs of drought; all fruits in abundance; the earth teems. ")
Hear at distance the hum of bees from the bass . . . like the rumbling of a distant train of cars. See July 17, 1854 ("I was surprised by the loud humming of bees, etc., etc., in the bass tree; thought it was a wind rising at first. Methinks none of our trees attract so many.") See also July 14, 1856 ("Bass out about two days at Island."); July 16, 1852 ("The bass on Conantum is a very rich sight now, a solid mass of verdure and of flowers with its massed and rounded outline. Its twigs are drooping, weighed down with pendulous flowers . . .The tree resounds with the hum of bees . . . a sound unlike any other in nature.”) July 18, 1854 ("At a little distance it is like the sound of a waterfall or of the cars; close at hand like a factory full of looms.”); and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Basswood
See the bullfrogs lying at full length on the pads where they trump. See July 16, 1856 ("See several bullfrogs lying fully out on pads at 5 p. m. They trump well these nights. "); July 17, 1860 ("Clean and handsome bullfrogs. . .sit imperturbable out on the stones all around the pond.”) See also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well . . . The bullfrog belongs to summer.")
Distant hum of bees
at sunset from the bass with
its drooping flowers.
"A book, each page written in its own season,
out-of-doors, in its own locality."
~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2026
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