I first heard the locust sing
so dry and piercing
by the side of the pine woods
in the heat of the day.
Henry Thoreau, July 18, 1851
I do not like the name “dog-days.”
Can we not have a new name for this season?
It is the season of mould and mildew,
and foggy, muggy, often rainy weather.
August 15, 1858
June 14. Heard the first locust from amid the shrubs by the roadside. He comes with heat. June 14, 1853
June 14. The dog-day cicada (canicularis), or harvest-fly. [Harris] says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog-days; he heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. June 14, 1854
June 15. The drouth begins. The dry z-ing of the locust is heard . . . First locust. June 15, 1852
June 23. Sultry dogdayish weather, with moist mists or low clouds hanging about, the first of this kind we have had . . . a fresh, cool moisture and a suffocating heat are strangely mingled. June 23, 1853
June 23. This is a decidedly dogdayish day, foretold by the red moon of last evening. The sunlight, even this fore-noon, was peculiarly yellow, passing through misty clouds, and this afternoon the atmosphere is decidedly blue. I see it in the street within thirty rods, and perceive a distinct musty odor. First bluish, musty dog-day, and sultry. June 23, 1860
June 24. The dogdayish weather continues. June 24, 1860
June 26. Still hazy and dogdayish. June 26, 1860
June 29. Dogdayish and showery, with thunder. At 6 P. M. 91°, the hottest yet . . . [O]ur most violent thunder-shower followed the hottest hour of the month. June 29, 1860
July 16. After the late rains and last night's fog, it is somewhat dog-dayish, and there is a damp, earthy, mildewy scent to the ground in wood-paths. July 16, 1854
July 17. Last night and this morning another thick dogdayish fog. I find my chamber full this morning. July 17, 1854
July 17. A very warm afternoon. Thermometer at 97° at the Hosmer Desert. I hear the early locust. July 17, 1856
July 18. I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day. July 18, 1851
July 18. A hot midsummer day with a sultry mistiness in the air and shadows on land and water beginning to have a peculiar distinctness and solidity. The river, smooth and still, with a deepened shade of the elms on it, like midnight suddenly revealed, its bed-curtains shoved aside, has a sultry languid look. The atmosphere now imparts a bluish or glaucous tinge to the distant trees. A certain debauched look. This a crisis in the season. After this the foliage of some trees is almost black at a distance. July 18, 1854
July 19. To-day I met with the first orange flower of autumn . . . [T]his is the fruit of a dog-day sun. The year has but just produced it. July 19, 1851
July 19. The more smothering, furnace-like heats are beginning, and the locust days. July 19, 1854
July 22. First locust heard. July 22, 1860
July 26. Dog-days, - sultry, sticky weather, - now when the corn is topped out. Clouds without rain. Rains when it will. Old spring and summer signs fail . . . I mark again, about this time when the first asters open, the sound of crickets or locusts that makes you fruitfully meditative, helps condense your thoughts, like the mel dews in the afternoon. This the afternoon of the year. July 26, 1853
July 26. I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound. July 26, 1854
July 26. The peculiarity of the stream is in a certain languid or stagnant smoothness of the water, and of the bordering woods in a dog-day density of shade reflected darkly in the water . . . Almost constantly I hear borne on the wind from far, mingling with the sound of the wind, the z-ing locust, scarcely like a distinct sound. July 26, 1854
July 26. Dogdayish. July 26, 1859
July 27. The drought ceases with the dog-days. July 27, 1853
July 27. Now observe the darker shades, and especially the apple trees, square and round, in the northwest landscape. Dogdayish. July 27, 1859
July 30. This is a perfect dog-day. The atmosphere thick, mildewy, cloudy. It is difficult to dry anything. The sun is obscured, yet we expect no rain. Bad hay weather. July 30, 1856
July 31. Our dog-days seem to be turned to a rainy season. July 31, 1855
July 31. For a morning or two I have noticed dense crowds of little tender whitish parasol toadstools . . .first fruit of this dog-day weather. . . .This dog-day afternoon [a]s I make my way amid rank weeds still wet with the dew, the air filled with a decaying musty scent and the z-ing of small locusts, I hear the distant sound of a flail, and thoughts of autumn occupy my mind, and the memory of past years. July 31, 1856
July 31. It is emphatically one of the dog-days. A dense fog, not clearing off till we are far on our way, and the clouds (which did not let in any sun all day) were the dog-day fog and mist, which threatened no rain. A muggy but comfortable day. July 31, 1859
July 31. Decidedly dog-days, and a strong musty scent, not to be wondered at after the copious rains and the heat of yesterday. July 31, 1860
August 1. Since July 30th, inclusive, we have had perfect dog-days without interruption. The earth has suddenly invested with a thick musty mist. The sky has become a mere fungus. A thick blue musty veil of mist is drawn before the sun. The sun has not been visible, except for a moment or two once or twice a day, all this time, nor the stars by night. Moisture reigns. August 1, 1856
August 2. That fine z-ing of locusts in the grass which I have heard for three or four days is, methinks, an August sound and is very inspiriting. August 2, 1859
Midsummer standstill.
That fine z-ing of locusts
is an August sound.
August 2, 1859
August 13. The last was a melting night, and a carnival for mosquitoes. Could I not write meditations under a bridge at midsummer? The last three or four days less dogdayish. We paused under each bridge yesterday, - we who had been sweltering on the quiet waves , — for the sake of a little shade and coolness, holding on by the piers with our hands August 13, 1853
August 13. Now the mountains are concealed by the dog-day haze. August 13, 1854
August 13. This month thus far has been quite rainy. It has rained more or less at least half the days. You have had to consider each afternoon whether you must not take an umbrella. It has about half the time either been dogdayish or mizzling or decided rain. August 13, 1858
August 14. This misty and musty dog-day weather has lasted now nearly a month. Locust days, — sultry and sweltering. I hear them even till sunset. The usually invisible but far-heard locust. August 14, 1853
August 15.That clear ring like an alder locust (is it a cricket ?) for some time past is a sound which belongs to the season.August 15, 1852
August 16. These are locust days. I hear them on the elms in the street, but cannot tell where they are. August 16, 1852
August 18. The locust is heard. Fruits are ripening. Ripe apples here and there scent the air. August 18, 1852
August 19. The dog-day mists are gone; the washed earth shines; the cooler air braces man. No summer day is so beautiful as the fairest spring and fall days. August 19, 1853
August 19. The dog-day weather is suddenly gone and here is a cool, clear, and elastic air. You may say it is the first day of autumn. August 19, 1858
August 20. There is so thick a bluish haze these dog-days that single trees half a mile off, seen against it as a light colored background, stand out distinctly a dark mass, — almost black, — as seen against the more distinct blue woods. August 20, 1854
August 21. Saw one of those light-green locusts about three quarters of an inch long on a currant leaf in the garden. It kept up a steady shrilling (unlike the interrupted creak of the cricket). August 21, 1853
August 24. [W]e have no rain, and I see the blue haze between me and the shore six rods off. . . . Looking across the pond, the haze at the water's edge under the opposite woods looks like a low fog. To-night, as for at least four or five nights past, and to some extent, I think, a great many times within a month, the sun goes down shorn of his beams, half an hour before sunset, round and red, high above the horizon. There are no variegated sunsets in this dog-day weather. August 24, 1854
August 24. This and yesterday very foggy, dogdayish days. Yesterday the fog lasted till nine or ten, and to-day, in the afternoon, it amounts to a considerable drizzling rain. August 24, 1860
August 26. The shrilling of the alder locust is the solder that welds these autumn days together. Methinks the burden of their song is the countless harvests of the year, - berries, grain, and other fruits. August 26, 1860
All bushes resound.
I wade up to my ears in the
alder locust song.
September 1. The character of the past month, as I remember, has been, at first very thick and sultry, dogdayish, the height of summer, and throughout very rain, followed by crops of toadstools, and latterly, after the dog-days and most copious of the rains, autumnal. September 1, 1853
The silence–
the voice of the cicadas
penetrates the rocks.
~ Basho
A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Locust Days, Dogdayish Days
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
