It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct.

September 25


The season of flowers may be considered as past now that the frosts have come. Fires have become comfortable. The evenings are pretty long. 

2 P. M. To bathe in Hubbard's meadow, thence to ― Cliffs. 

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. The air is of crystal purity.

Both air and water are so transparent that the fisherman tries in vain to deceive the fish with his baits. Even our commonly muddy river looks clear to-day.

I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. 

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets. 

Examined the hornets' nest near Hubbard's Grove, suspended from contiguous huckleberry bushes . . .

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky . . . I brought home two of the pods which were already bursting open, and amused myself from day to day with releasing the seeds and watching [them] rise slowly into the heavens till they were lost to my eye. No doubt the greater or less rapidity with which they rose would serve as a natural barometer to test the condition of the air. 

The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance. 

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. Standing on the Cliffs, I see them flitting and screaming from pine to pine beneath, displaying their gaudy blue pinions. 

September 25, 2020

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air, looking white against the green pines, like the seeds of the milkweed. There is almost always a pair of hawks. Their shrill scream, that of the owls, and wolves are all related.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1851

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct. See September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen.")

I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over. See September 24, 1854 (" It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.");. September 26, 1852 ("The river is getting to be too cold for bathing."); September 27, 1856 ("Bathed at Hubbard's Bath, but found the water very cold. Bathing about over.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of Bathing

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky. See September 24, 1851 ("I let one go, and it rises slowly and uncertainly at first, now driven this way, then that, by currents which I cannot perceive, and.  . . then, feeling the strong north wind, it is borne off rapidly in the opposite direction, ever rising higher and higher and tossing and heaved about with every fluctuation of the air, till, at a hundred feet above the earth and fifty rods off, steering south, I lose sight of it") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, Milkweed.

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets. See . July 15, 1854 ("There are many butterflies, yellow and red, about the Asclepias incarnata now"); July 16, 1851 ("I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed . . .also the smaller butterfly, with reddish wing"); July 16, 1854 ("Many yellow butterflies and red on clover and yarrow."); . September 6, 1858 ("Solidago nemoralis . . . is swarming with butterflies, — yellow, small red, and large, — fluttering over it") See also A Book of the Seasons,   by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

The hornets' nest. See September 28, 1851 ("Here was a large hornets' nest . . .out came the whole swarm upon me lively enough. I do not know why they should linger longer than their fellows whom I saw the other day."); October 15, 1855 (“The hornets’ nests are exposed, the maples being bare, but the hornets are gone.”); October 24, 1858 ("That large hornets’ nest which I saw on the 4th is now deserted, and I bring it home. But in the evening, warmed by my fire, two or three come forth and crawl over it, and I make haste to throw it out the window.")

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. See September 25, 1855 ("The scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side."); see also August 7, 1853 ("Do I not already hear the jays with more distinctness, as in the fall and winter?"); September 21, 1859 (" Jays are more frequently heard of late.");October 6, 1856 ("The jay's shrill note is more distinct of late about the edges of the woods, when so many birds have left us.") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air .  . . There is almost always a pair.  See September 25, 1851 ("See two marsh hawks skimming low over the meadows and another, or a hen-hawk, sailing on high."); See also September 16, 1852 ("What makes this such a day for hawks? There are eight or ten in sight from the Cliffs,") and A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The hen-hawk

To watch milkweed  seeds

rising higher and higher 

till lost in the sky –

Hawks too sail about 

in the clear air looking white

against the green pines.

A Book of the Seasons: September 25 (changing colors, reds and sober browns, a single red maple, berries, fall flowers and birds, bathing ends)

 

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

September 25

I am detained by

the bright red blackberry leaves

strewn along the sod.

September 25, 1854

Holding a white pine

needle, turning it in a

favorable light –

I see each of its

edges notched or serrated

with minute bristles.

September 25, 1859

At a distance a

fox or an otter withdraws

from the riverside.

 September 25, 1854

September 25, 2020

A smart white frost last night, which has killed the sweet potato vines and melons. September 25, 1858

The very crab-grass in our garden is for the most part a light straw-color and withered, probably by the frosts. . . and hundreds of sparrows (chip-birds ?) find their food amid it. September 25, 1859

The same frosts that kill and whiten the corn whiten many grasses thus. September 25, 1859

The season of flowers may be considered as past now that the frosts have come.  September 25, 1851

It is beautiful weather, the air wonderfully clear and all objects bright and distinct.  September 25, 1851

A very fine and warm afternoon after a cloudy morning. Carry Aunt and Sophia a-barberrying to Conantum. September 25, 1855

Go a-graping up Assabet with some young ladies.September 25, 1858

The button-bush leaves are rapidly falling and covering the ground with a rich brown carpet.  September 25, 1854

I am detained by the very bright red blackberry leaves strewn along the sod, the vine being inconspicuous.  September 25, 1854

At a distance a fox or an otter withdraws from the riverside. September 25, 1854

The river has risen again considerably (this I believe the fourth time), owing to the late copious rains . . .  It had not got down before this last rain but to within some eighteen inches, at least, of the usual level in September. September 25, 1856

At 2 p. m. the river is sixteen and three quarters inches above my hub [?] by boat. September 25, 1859

To bathe in Hubbard's meadow . . . I find the water suddenly cold, and that the bathing days are over.  September 25, 1851 

On the shrub oak plain, as seen from Cliffs, the red at least balances the green. It looks like a rich, shaggy rug now, before the woods are changed.  September 25, 1854

The red maple has fairly begun to blush in some places by the river. I see one, by the canal behind Barrett’s mill, all aglow against the sun  . . .  such brilliant red on green. September 25, 1857

A single tree becomes the crowning beauty of some meadowy vale and attracts the attention of the traveller from afar. The whole tree, thus ripening in advance of its fellows, attains a singular preéminence. September 25, 1857

There is a very red osier-like cornel on the shore by the stone-heaps. September 25, 1858

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed. September 25, 1852

Dogwood (Rhus venenata) is yet but pale-scarlet or yellowish. The R. glabra is more generally turned. September 25, 1857

The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red. September 25, 1852 

Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days. September 25, 1859

The haws of the common thorn are now very good eating and handsome. September 25, 1856

Some of the Crataegus Crus-Galli on the old fence line between Tarbell and T. Wheeler beyond brook are smaller, stale, and not good at all. September 25, 1856

The zizania fruit is green yet, but mostly dropped or plucked. Does it fall, or do birds pluck it? September 25, 1858

We get about three pecks of barberries from four or five bushes, but I fill my fingers with prickles to pay for them. . . . Some bushes bear much larger and plumper berries than others. Some also are comparatively green yet. September 25, 1855

The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody. September 25, 1859

I remember that brakes had begun to decay as much as six weeks ago. September 25, 1857

I see at Brister Spring Swamp the (apparently) Aspidium Noveboracense, more than half of it turned white.September 25, 1859

Also some dicksonia is about equally white. September 25, 1859

In shade is the laboratory of white. Color is produced in the sun. September 25, 1859

The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown there. The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. September 25, 1859

The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river. September 25, 1852

Ranunculus reptans still. September 25, 1852

The Gentiana Andrewsii are now in prime at Gentian Shore. Some are turned dark or reddish-purple with age. September 25, 1858

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. September 25, 1852

Nabalus albus still common, though much past prime. Though concealed amid trees, I find three humble-bees on one. September 25, 1859

I see numerous butterflies still, yellow and small red, though not in fleets.  September 25, 1851

Examined the hornets ' nest near Hubbard's Grove , suspended from contiguous huckleberry bushes  September 25, 1851

The hornets' nest not brown but gray, two shades, whitish and dark, alternating on the outer layers or the covering, giving it a waved appearance.  September 25, 1851

You notice now the dark-blue dome of the soapwort gentian in cool and shady places under the bank. September 25, 1857

Do I see an F. hyemalis in the Deep Cut? It is a month earlier than last year. September 25, 1854

A golden-crowned thrush runs off, a few feet at a time, on hillside on Harrington road, as if she had a nest still! September 25, 1856

See where the moles have been working in Conant’s meadow,—heaps of fresh meadow mould some eight inches in diameter on the green surface, and now a little hoary. September 25, 1855

Moles work in meadows. September 25, 1859

Scare up the usual great bittern above the railroad bridge, whose hoarse qua qua, as it flies heavily off, a pickerel-fisher on the bank imitates. September 25, 1855

Stopping in my boat under the Hemlocks, I hear singular bird-like chirruping from two red squirrels. One sits high on a hemlock bough with a nut in its paws. September 25, 1857

Suddenly he dodges behind the trunk of the tree, and I hear some birds in the maples across the river utter a peculiar note of alarm. September 25, 1857

I watched the seeds of the milkweed rising higher and higher till lost in the sky  September 25, 1851

Hawks, too, I perceive, sailing about in the clear air, looking white against the green pines, like the seeds of the milkweed.  September 25, 1851

See two marsh hawks skimming low over the meadows and another, or a hen-hawk, sailing on high. September 25, 1855

Looking round, I see a marsh hawk beating the bushes on that side. September 25, 1857

The catbird still mews occasionally, and the chewink is heard faintly. September 25, 1858

Meanwhile the catbird mews in the alders by my side, and the scream of the jay is heard from the wood-side. September 25, 1855

In these cooler, windier, crystal days the note of the jay sounds a little more native. Standing on the Cliffs, I see them flitting and screaming from pine to pine beneath, displaying their gaudy blue pinions.  September 25, 1851

Holding a white pine needle in my hand, and turning it in a favorable light, as I sit upon this cliff, I perceive that each of its three edges is notched or serrated with minute forward-pointing bristles. September 25, 1859

As I came round the island, I took notice of that little ash tree . . . seven small branches have shot up from its circumference, all together forming a perfectly regular oval head. September 25, 1857

That the tree thus has its idea to be lived up to, and, as it were, fills an invisible mould in the air. September 25, 1857

Hard, gusty rain (with thunder and lightning) in afternoon. September 25, 1860

Brought home my first boat-load of wood. September 25, 1857

When returning, about 4.30 P. M., we observe a slight mistiness, a sea-turn advancing from the east, and soon after felt the raw east wind . . . Aunt thought she could smell the salt marsh in it. September 25, 1855

There is a splendid sunset while I am on the water . . . All the colors are prolonged in the rippled reflection to five or six times their proper length. The effect is particularly remarkable in the case of the reds, which are long bands of red perpendicular in the water.  September 25, 1854

At home, after sundown, I observe a long, low, and uniformly level slate-colored cloud reaching from north to south throughout the western horizon, which I suppose to be the sea-turn further inland, for we no longer felt the east wind here. September 25, 1855

Bats come out fifteen minutes after sunset, and then I hear some clear song sparrow strains, as from a fence-post amid snows in early spring. September 25, 1854

September 25, 2019

*****

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  the Marsh Hawk (Northern Harrier)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, American Bittern (the Stake-Diver)

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau,  The Oven-bird

A Book of the Seasons by Henry Thoreau, the Dark-eyed Junco (Fringilla hyemalis)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Chewink  (Rufous-sided Towhee)

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Blue Jay

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Red Squirrel

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Fox

 A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Soapwort Gentian

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Autumnal Dandelion

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Cinnamon Fern

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Common Barberry

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Red Maple

 A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The White Pines

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Luxury of  Bathing

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the Sea-turn

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, The Small Red Butterfly

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

*****

September 25, 2019

February 12, 1859 ("You may account for that ash by the Rock having such a balanced and regular outline by the fact that in an open place their branches are equally drawn toward the light on all sides, and not because of a mutual understanding through the trunk.")
March 16, 1855 ("At the woodchuck’s hole just beyond the cockspur thorn”)
June 10, 1856 ("The Crataegus Crus-Galli is out of bloom”)
June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th, . . . A bud in pitcher the 13th.”)
June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”)
June 18, 1854 ("Observe in two places golden-crowned thrushes, near whose nests I must have been”)
July 8, 1856 ("Ranunculus reptans is abundantly out at mouth of brook, Baker shore.")
July 17, 1857 ("Aspidium Noveboracense at Corner Spring, not yet brown; also Aspidium Filix-foemina (?), with lunar-shaped fruit, not yet brown; also apparently a chaffy-stemmed dicksonia, densely brown-fruited")
July 26, 1853 ("Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?).")
August 6, 1852 (“With the goldenrod comes the goldfinch. About the time his cool twitter is heard, does not the . . . oven-bird, etc . cease?”)
August 10, 1853 (“The Ranunculus repens numerously out about Britton's Spring.”)
August 12, 1853 ("To Conantum by boat, berrying, with three ladies.")

August 23, 1858 ("I see a golden-crowned thrush, but it is silent except a chip; sitting low on a twig near the main stem of a tree, in these deep woods ")

August 24, 1856 ("The river meadows probably will not be mown this year. I can hardly get under the stone bridge without striking my boat.”)
August 29, 1858 ("Gentiana Andrewsii, one not quite shedding pollen.")

August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”)
August 31, 1853 ("I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp")
August 31, 1852 ("The evening of the year is colored like the sunset.")
September 1, 1858 ("Ranunculus repens in bloom — as if begun again ? — at the violet wood-sorrel spring")
September 3, 1857 ("A slate-colored snowbird back.")

September 4, 1854 ("Full moon; bats flying about; skaters and water bugs like sparks of fire on the surface between us and the moon.")

September 4, 1859 ("Three kinds of thistles are commonly out now. . .and on them all you are pretty sure to see one or two humblebees")

September 8, 1853 ("Roses, apparently R. lucida, abundantly out on a warm bank on Great Fields by Moore's Swamp, with Viola pedata.")

September 13, 1857 ("The nabalus family generally, apparently now in prime.")

September 19, 1858 ("Hear a chewink’s chewink. But how ineffectual is the note of a bird now! We hear it as if we heard it not, and forget it immediately.")

September 20, 1855 ("The great bittern, as it flies off from near the rail road bridge, filthily drops its dirt and utters a low hoarse kwa kwa; then runs and hides in the grass")

September 21, 1854 ("With this bright, clear, but rather cool air the bright yellow of the autumnal dandelion is in harmony and the heads of the dilapidated goldenrods")
September 21, 1854 ("Hear the chewink and the cluck of the thrasher.")
September 21, 1856 ("I hear of late faint chewink notes in the shrubbery, as if they were meditating their strains in a subdued tone against another year.")

September 22, 1851 ("It is a beautifully clear and bracing air, with just enough coolness, full of the memory of frosty mornings, through which all things are distinctly seen.")

September 22, 1852 ("The soapwort gentian the flower of the river-banks now.") 
September 22, 1859 ("I see the fall dandelions all closed in the rain this afternoon. Do they, then, open only in fair or cloudy forenoons and cloudy afternoons? ")

September 23, 1853 ("I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow . . . more full and bright than any flower.")

September 23, 1857 ("Varieties of nabalus grow along the Walden road in the woods; also, still more abundant, by the Flint's Pond road in the woods....”)

September 24, 1851 ("The other evening (22d), just at sunset, I observed that while the west was of a bright golden color under a bank of clouds, — the sun just setting, — and not a tinge of red was yet visible there, there was a distinct purple tinge in the nearer atmosphere, so that Annursnack Hill, seen through it, had an exceedingly rich empurpled look")

September 24, 1855 ("Brought home quite a boat-load of fuel . . . It would be a triumph to get all my winter’s wood thus")

September 24, 1859 ("The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown.")

September 24, 1854 ("It is now too cold to bathe with comfort.")

I watch the milkweed

rising higher and higher

till lost in the sky. 

 September 25, 1851

A splendid sunset,

all its colors prolonged in

rippled reflection.

September 25, 1854

September 26, 1852 ("The river is getting to be too cold for bathing.")

September 26, 1854 ("Some single red maples are very splendid now, the whole tree bright-scarlet against the cold green pines; now, when very few trees are changed, a most remarkable object in the landscape; seen a mile off.")

September 26, 1855 (Go up Assabet for fuel")

September 26, 1857 ("I watch a marsh hawk circling low along the edge of the meadow, looking for a frog, and now at last it alights to rest on a tussock. ")

September 27, 1855 ("Some single red maples now fairly make a show along the meadow. I see a blaze of red reflected from the troubled water.")

September 27, 1857 ("The large common ferns (either cinnamon or interrupted) are yellowish, and also many as rich a deep brown now as ever.")

September 28, 1851 ("The fall dandelion is now very fresh and abundant in its prime. ")

September 28, 1852 ("This is the commencement, then, of the second spring. Violets, Potentilla Canadensis, lambkill, wild rose, yellow lily, etc., etc., begin again")

September 29, 1854 (" I  hear a very pleasant and now unusual strain on the sunny side of an oak wood from many — I think F. hyemalis, though I do not get a clear view of them.")

What astronomer

can calculate the orbit 

of my thistle-down?

September 29, 1858

September 30, 1854 ("The song sparrow is still about, and the blackbird.")
October 4, 1857 ("Hear a catbird and chewink, both faint.")
October 8, 1855 (" Hear a song sparrow sing.")
October 15, 1859 ("See a Fringilla hyemalis")
October 22, 1855 ("Some F. hyemalis and other sparrows, are actively flitting about amid the alders and dogwood")

October 23, 1853 ("The Aster undulatus is still quite abundant and fresh on this high, sunny bank. . . in large, dense masses, two or three feet high, pale purple or whitish, and covered with humble bees")

October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum.. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”)
October 28, 1858 ("The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case.");
November 11, 1858 ("The flowering dogwood, though still leafy, is uninteresting and partly withered.")
November 25, 1857 ("I see a fox run across the road in the twilight")

September 25, 2017

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 

 September 24 <<<<<<<<<  September 25 >>>>>>>>  September 26

A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, September 25

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

https://tinyurl.com/HDT25September 

The untouched white pine timber which comes down the Penobscot.

September 25. 

Sunday.

Dined with Lowell.

Said the largest pine Goddard's men cut last winter scaled in the woods forty-five hundred feet board measure, and was worth ninety dollars at the Bangor boom, Oldtown.

They cut a road three miles and a half for this alone. They do not make much of a path, however.

From L. I learned that the untouched white pine timber which comes down the Penobscot waters is to be found at the head of the East Branch and the head waters of the Allegash, about Eagle Lake and Chamberlain, etc., and Webster Stream.

But Goddard had bought the stumpage in eight townships in New Brunswick. They are also buying up townships across the Canada line.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1853

The untouched white pine timber which comes down the Penobscot waters is to be found at the head of the East Branch and the head waters of the Allegash, See The Maine Woods, July 29, 1857 ("I passed one white pine log, which had lodged, in the forest near the edge of the stream, which was quite five feet in diameter at the butt") See also November 18, 1852 ("Measured a stick of round timber, probably white pine, on the cars this afternoon, -- ninety-five feet long, nine and ten-twelfths in circumference at butt, and six and two-twelfths in circumference at small end, quite straight. From Vermont."); July 8, 1857 ("Counted the rings of a white pine stump, sawed off last winter at Laurel Glen. It was three and a half feet diameter and has one hundred and twenty-six rings")

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present.

September 25.

September 25, 2020

Polygonum dumetorum, climbing false-buck wheat, still; also dodder.

The fall dandelions are a prevailing flower on low turfy grounds, especially near the river.

Ranunculus reptans still.

The small galium (trifidum).

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected.

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. You can now easily detect them at a distance; every one in the swamps you overlook is revealed.

The smooth sumach and the mountain is a darker, deeper, bloodier red.

Found the Bidens Beckii (?) September 1st, and the fringed gentian November 7th, last year.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1852

The scarlet of the dogwood is the most conspicuous and interesting of the autumnal colors at present. See September 23, 1853 ("I observe the rounded tops of the dogwood bushes, scarlet in the distance, on the edge of the meadow . . . more full and bright than any flower."); see also August 30, 1854 (“Dogwood leaves have fairly begun to turn”); August 31, 1853 ("I see the first dogwood turned scarlet in the swamp"): October 28, 1858 ("The dogwood on the island is perhaps in its prime, — a distinct scarlet, with half of the leaves green in this case."); November 11, 1858 ("The flowering dogwood, though still leafy, is uninteresting and partly withered.")

A rose again, apparently lucida (?). This is always unexpected. See June 12, 1854 ("Rosa lucida, probably yesterday, the 11th, . . . A bud in pitcher the 13th.”); June 18, 1854 (“The Rosa lucida is pale and low on dry sunny banks like that by Hosmer's pines.”);  July 26, 1853 ("Saw one of the common wild roses (R. lucida?).")

Holding a white pine needle in my hand.

September 25. 

September 25, 2019

P. M. — To Emerson's Cliff. 

Holding a white pine needle in my hand, and turning it in a favorable light, as I sit upon this cliff, I perceive that each of its three edges is notched or serrated with minute forward-pointing bristles. 

So much does Nature avoid an unbroken line that even this slender leaf is serrated; though, to my surprise, neither Gray nor Bigelow mention it. Loudon, however, says, "Scabrous and inconspicuously serrated on the margin; spreading in summer, but in winter contracted, and lying close to the branches." 

Fine and smooth as it looks, it is serrated after all. This is its concealed wildness, by which it connects itself with the wilder oaks. 

Prinos berries are fairly ripe for a few days. 

Moles work in meadows.  

I see at Brister Spring Swamp the (apparently) Aspidium Noveboracense, more than half of it turned white. Also some dicksonia is about equally white. These especially are the white ones. There is another, largish, and more generally decayed than either of these, with large serrated segments, rather far apart, — perhaps the Asplenium Filix-foemina (?). The first may be called now the white fern, — with rather small entirish and flat segments close together. 

In shade is the laboratory of white. Color is produced in the sun. 

The cinnamon ferns are all a decaying brown there. The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. 

The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody. 

At 2 p. m. the river is sixteen and three quarters inches above my hub[?] by boat. 

Nabalus albus still common, though much past prime. Though concealed amid trees, I find three humble-bees on one. As when Antaeus touched the earth, so when the mountaineer scents the fern, he bounds up like a chamois, or mountain goat, with renewed strength. There is no French perfumery about it. It has not been tampered with by any perfumer to their majesties. It is the fragrance of those plants whose impressions we see on our coal. Beware of the cultivation that eradicates it. 

The very crab-grass in our garden is for the most part a light straw-color and withered, probably by the frosts of the 15th and 16th, looking almost as white as the corn; and hundreds of sparrows (chip-birds ?) find their food amid it. The same frosts that kill and whiten the corn whiten many grasses thus.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 25, 1859

I see at Brister Spring Swamp the (apparently) Aspidium Noveboracense, more than half of it turned white. Also some dicksonia...perhaps the Asplenium Filix-foemina. See July 17, 1857 ("Aspidium Noveboracense at Corner Spring, not yet brown; also Aspidium Filix-foemina (?), with lunar-shaped fruit, not yet brown; also apparently a chaffy-stemmed dicksonia, densely brown-fruited")

The sober brown colors of those ferns are in harmony with the twilight of the swamp. See note to September 24, 1859 ("The tufts of cinnamon fern, now a pale brown.")

The terminal shield fern and the Aspidium spinulosum (?) are still fresh and green, the first as much so as the polypody. See September 30, 1859 ("The terminal shield fern is one of the handsomest. The most decidedly evergreen are the last, polypody, Aspidium marginale, and Aspidium spinulosum of Woodis Swamp and Brister's . . . Of the twenty-three ferns which I seem to know here, seven may be called evergreens."); October 23, 1857 ("The ferns which I can see on the bank, apparently all evergreens, are polypody at rock, marginal shield fern, terminal shield fern, and (I think it is) Aspidium spinulosum.. . .The above-named evergreen ferns are so much the more conspicuous on that pale-brown ground. They stand out all at once and are seen to be evergreen; their character appears.”); November 17, 1858 ("As for the evergreen ferns, I see now —

• Common polypody (though shrivelled by cold where exposed).
• Asplenium trichomanes.
• A. ebeneum.
• Aspidium spinulosum (?). large frond, small-fruited, in swamp southeast Brister’s Spring, on 16th.
• A. cristatum (?), Grackle Swamp on the 15th, with oftener what I take to be the narrower and more open sterile frond.
• A. marginale (common).
• A. achrostichoides (terminal shield).

The first one and the last two are particularly handsome, the last especially, it has so thick a frond.")