States. Instead of decaying, acquire hardness with time.
_May 18. Sunday._ Lady’s-slipper almost fully blossomed. The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut down the last winter, more than a foot in diameter at the stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from the ground. I observed that all parts of the epidermis exposed to the air and light were white, but the inner surfaces, freshly exposed, were a buff or salmon-color. Sinclair says that in winter it is white throughout. But this was cut before the sap flowed??! Was there any sap in the log? I counted about fifty rings. The shrub oaks are now blossoming. The scarlet tanagers are come. The oak leaves of all colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than most flowers. The hickory buds are almost leaves. The landscape has a new life and light infused into it. The deciduous trees are springing, to countenance the pines, which are evergreen. It seems to take but one summer day to fetch the summer in. The turning-point between winter and summer is reached. The birds are in full blast. There is a peculiar freshness about the landscape; you scent the fragrance of new leaves, of hickory and sassafras, etc. And to the eye the forest presents the tenderest green. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming general.
I think that I have made out two kinds of poplar,—the _Populus tremuloides_, or American aspen, and the _P. grandidentata_, or large American aspen, whose young leaves are downy.
* * * * * Michaux says that the locust begins to convert its sap into perfect wood from the third year; which is not done by the oak, the chestnut, the beech, and the elm till after the tenth or the fifteenth year.
He quotes the saying, “The foot of the owner is the best manure for his land.” “He” is Augustus L. Hillhouse, who writes the account of the olive at the request of Michaux.
The elder Michaux found the balsam poplar (_P. balsamifera_) very abundant on Lake St. John and the Saguenay River, where it is eighty feet high and three feet in diameter. This, however, is distinct from the _P. candicans_, heart-leaved balsam poplar, which M. finds hereabouts, though never in the woods, and does not know where it came from.
He praises the Lombardy poplar because, its limbs being compressed about the trunk, it does not interfere with the walls of a house nor obstruct the windows.
No wood equal to our black ash for oars, so pliant and elastic and strong, second only to hickory for handspikes; used also for chair-bottoms and riddles.
The French call the nettle-tree _bois inconnu_.
Our white elm (_Ulmus Americana_) “the most magnificent vegetable of the temperate zone.”
The _Pinus mitis_, yellow pine, or spruce pine, or short-leaved pine. A two-leaved pine widely diffused, but not found northward beyond certain districts of Connecticut and Massachusetts. In New Jersey fifty or sixty feet high and fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. Sometimes three leaves on fresh shoots; smallest of pine cones; seeds cast first year. Very excellent wood for houses, masts, decks, yards, beams, and cabins, next in durability to the long-leaved pine. Called at Liverpool New York pine. Its regular branches make it to be called spruce pine sometimes.
_Pinus australis_, or long-leaved pine, an invaluable tree, called yellow pine, pitch pine, and broom pine where it grows; in the North, Southern pine and red pine; in England, Georgia pitch pine. First appears at Norfolk, Virginia; thence stretches six hundred miles southwest. Sixty or seventy feet high, by fifteen to eighteen inches; leaves a foot long, three in a sheath; negroes use them for brooms.
Being stronger, more compact and durable, because the resin is equally distributed, and also fine-grained and susceptible of a bright polish, it is preferred to every other pine. In naval architecture, most esteemed of all pines,—keels, beams, side-planks, trunnels, etc. For decks preferred to yellow pine,—and flooring houses. Sold for more at Liverpool than any other pine. Moreover it supplies nearly all the resinous matter used and exported. Others which contain much pitch are more dispersed. At present (1819) this business is confined to North Carolina.
M. says the branches of resinous trees consist almost wholly of _wood_, of which the organization is even more perfect than in the body of the tree. They use dead wood for the tar, etc., in which it has accumulated.
Says the vicinity of Brunswick, Me., and Burlington, Vt., are the most northerly limits of the pitch pine or _P. rigida_. (I saw what I should have called a pitch pine at Montmorency.)
White pine (_P. Strobus_) most abundant between forty-third and forty-seventh degrees, one hundred and eighty feet by seven and eight twelfths the largest. “The loftiest and most valuable” of the productions of the New Hampshire forest.
The black spruce is called _épinette noire_ and _épinette à la bière_ in Canada. From its strength best substitute for oak and larch. Used here for rafters and preferred to hemlock; tougher than white pine, but more liable to crack.
The white spruce (_Abies alba_) called _épinette blanche_ in Canada.
Not so large as the last and wood inferior.
Hemlock spruce (_Abies Canadensis_) called _pérusse_ in Canada. In Maine, Vermont, and upper New Hampshire, three fourths of the evergreen woods, the rest being black spruce. Belongs to cold regions; begins to appear about Hudson’s Bay. Its fibre makes the circuit of stocks fifteen or twenty inches in diameter in ascending five or six feet.
Old trees have their circles separated, and the boards are _shaky_.
Decays rapidly when exposed to the air. It is firmer, though coarser, than the white pine; affords tighter hold to nails. Used in Maine for threshing-floors, resisting indentation. Most common use sheathing of houses, to be covered with clapboards. Used for laths.
White cedar (_Cupressus thyoides_). “The perfect wood resists the succession of dryness and moisture longer than that of any other species;” hence for shingles.
the Dutch. Male aments appear before the leaves. Wood superior to any pine or spruce in strength and durability. Used in Maine for knees.
Cedar of Lebanon (_Larix cedrus_) largest and most majestic of resinous trees of the Old World and one of the finest vegetable productions of the globe.
Cedar Island in Lake Champlain northern limit of red cedar (_Juniperus Virginiana_). Eastward, not beyond Wiscasset. Seeds mature at beginning of fall and _sown at once_; shoot next spring. Gin made from them.
Arbor-vitæ (_Thuya occidentalis_), the only species of _Thuya_ in the New World. Lake St. John in Canada its northern limit; abounds between 48° 50´ and 45°. The posts last thirty-five or forty years, and the rails sixty, or three or four times as long as those of any other species. In northern New England States the best for fences; last longer in clay than sand.
The superiority of mahogany in the fineness of its grain and its hardness, which make it susceptible of a brilliant polish. Native trees in Northern States used in cabinet making are black, yellow, and canoe birches, red-flowering curled maple, bird’s-eye maple, wild cherry, and sumach.
The circle[s] of peck and other measures made at Hingham of black, red, or gray oak are “always of a dull blue color, produced by the gallic acid of the wood acting upon the iron vessel in which it is boiled.”
White ash used for sieve rims, rake heads and handles, scythe handles, pulleys, etc. Rake teeth of the mockernut hickory.
In New York and Philadelphia “the price [of wood for fuel][168] nearly equals and sometimes exceeds that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than 300,000 cords, and is surrounded to the distance of 300 miles by cultivated plains.” Said in book of 1819.
_May 19._ Found the _Arum triphyllum_ and the nodding trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant’s Swamp. An ash also in bloom there, and the sassafras quite striking. Also the fringed polygala by Conantum wood.
* * * * * Sinclair says the hornbeam is called “swamp beech” in Vermont.
_May 20. Tuesday._ There is, no doubt, a perfect analogy between the life of the human being and that of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind. The botanist Gray says:— “The organs of plants are of two sorts:—1. Those of _Vegetation_, which are concerned in growth,—by which the plant takes in the aërial and earthy matters on which it lives, and elaborates them into the materials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of _Fructification_ or _Reproduction_, which are concerned with the propagation of the species.”
So is it with the human being. I am concerned first to come to my _Growth_, intellectually and morally (and physically, of course, as a means to this, for the body is the symbol of the soul), and then to bear my _Fruit_, do my _Work_, _propagate_ my kind, not only physically but _morally_, not only in body but in mind.
“The organs of vegetation are the _Root_, _Stem_, and _Leaves_. The _Stem_ is the axis and original basis of the plant.”
“The first point of the stem preëxists in the embryo (_i. e._ in the rudimentary plantlet contained within the seed): it is here called the radicle.” Such is the rudiment of mind, already partially developed, more than a bud, but pale, having never been exposed to the light, and slumbering coiled up, packed away in the seed, unfolded [_sic_].
Consider the still pale, rudimentary, infantine, radicle-like thoughts of some students, which who knows what they might expand to, if they should ever come to the light and air, if they do not become rancid and perish in the seed. It is not every seed that will survive a thousand years. Other thoughts further developed, but yet pale and languid, like shoots grown in a cellar.
“The plant...develops from the first in two opposite directions, _viz._ upwards [to expand in the light and air] to produce and continue the stem (or _ascending axis_), and downwards [avoiding the light][169] to form the root (or _descending_ axis). The former is ordinarily or in great part aërial, the latter subterranean.”
So the mind develops from the first in two opposite directions: upwards to expand in the light and air; and downwards avoiding the light to form the root. One half is aërial, the other subterranean. The mind is not well balanced and firmly planted, like the oak, which has not as much root as branch, whose roots like those of the white pine are slight and near the surface. One half of the mind’s development must still be root,—in the embryonic state, in the womb of nature, more unborn than at first. For each successive new idea or bud, a new rootlet in the earth. The growing man penetrates yet deeper by his roots into the womb of things. The infant is comparatively near the surface, just covered from the light; but the man sends down a tap-root to the centre of things.
The mere logician, the mere reasoner, who weaves his arguments as a tree its branches in the sky,—nothing equally developed in the roots,—is overthrown by the first wind.
As with the roots of the plant, so with the roots of the mind, the branches and branchlets of the root “are mere repetitions for the purpose of multiplying the absorbing points, which are chiefly the growing or newly formed extremities, sometimes termed _spongelets_. It bears no other organs.”
So this organ of the mind’s development, the _Root_, bears no organs but spongelets or absorbing points.
Annuals, which perish root and all the first season, especially have slender and thread-like fibrous roots. But biennials are particularly characterized by distended, fleshy roots containing starch, a stock for future growth, to be consumed during their second or flowering season,—as carrots, radishes, turnips. Perennials frequently have many thickened roots clustered together, tuberous or palmate roots, fasciculated or clustered as in the dahlia, pæony, etc.
Roots may spring from any part of the stem under favorable circumstances; “that is to say in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.”
That is, the most clear and ethereal ideas (Antæus-like) readily ally themselves to the earth, to the primal womb of things. They put forth roots as soon as branches; they are eager to be _soiled_. No thought soars so high that it sunders these apron-strings of its mother.
The thought that comes to light, that pierces the empyrean on the other side, is wombed and rooted in darkness, a moist and fertile darkness,—its roots in Hades like the tree of life. No idea is so soaring but it will readily put forth roots. Wherever there is an air-and-light-seeking bud about to expand, it may become in the earth a darkness-seeking root. Even swallows and birds-of-paradise _can_ walk on the ground. To quote the sentence from Gray entire: “Roots not only spring from the root-end of the primary stem in germination, but also from any subsequent part of the stem under favorable circumstances, that is to say, in darkness and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.”
No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower, with the earth. The mind flashes not so far on one side but its rootlets, its spongelets, find their way instantly on the other side into a moist darkness, uterine,—a low bottom in the heavens, even miasma-exhaling to such immigrants as are not acclimated. A cloud is uplifted to sustain its roots. Imbosomed in clouds as in a chariot, the mind drives through the boundless fields of space. Even there is the dwelling of Indra.
I might here quote the following, with the last—of roots: “They may even strike in the open air and light, as is seen in the copious aërial rootlets by which the Ivy, the Poison Ivy, and the Trumpet Creeper climb and adhere to the trunks of trees or other bodies; and also in Epiphytes or Air-plants, of most warm regions, which have no connection whatever with the soil, but germinate and grow high in air on the trunks or branches of trees, etc.; as well as in some terrestrial plants, such as the Banian and Mangrove, that send off aërial roots from their trunks or branches, which finally reach the ground.”
So, if our light-and-air-seeking tendencies extend too widely for our original root or stem, we must send downward new roots to ally us to the earth.
Also there are parasitic plants which have their roots in the branches or roots of other trees, as the mistletoe, the beech-drops, etc. There are minds which so have their roots in other minds as in the womb of nature,—if, indeed, most are not such?!
_May 21. Wednesday._ Yesterday I made out the black and the white ashes. A double male white ash in Miles’s Swamp, and two black ashes with sessile leaflets. A female white ash near railroad, in Stow’s land. The white ashes by Mr. Pritchard’s have no blossoms, at least as yet.
If I am right, the _black_ ash is improperly so called, from the color of its bark being lighter than the white. Though it answers to the description in other respects, even to the elder-like odor of the leaves, I should like still to see a description of the yellow ash which grows in made [_sic_].
The day before yesterday I found the male sassafras in abundance but no female.
The leaves of my new pine on Merriam’s or Pine Hill are of intermediate length between those of the yellow pine and the Norway pine. I can find no cone to distinguish the tree by; but, as the leaves are _semicylindrical_ and not _hollowed_ I think it must be the red or Norway Pine, though it does not look very red, and is _spruce_!
answering perhaps to the description of the yellow pine, which is sometimes called spruce pine.
To-day examined the flowers of the _Nemopanthes Canadensis_,—a genus of a single species, says Emerson. It bears the beautiful crimson velvety berry of the swamps, and is what I have heard called the cornel. Common name wild holly.
* * * * * I have heard now within a few days that peculiar dreaming sound of the frogs[170] which belongs to the summer,—their midsummer night’s dream.
Only that thought and that expression are good which are musical.
I think that we are not commonly aware that man is our contemporary,—that in this strange, outlandish world, so barren, so prosaic, fit not to live in but merely to pass through, that even here so divine a creature as man does actually live. Man, the crowning fact, the god we know. While the earth supports so rare an inhabitant, there is somewhat to cheer us. Who shall say that there is no God, if there is a _just_ man. It is only within a year that it has occurred to me that there is such a being actually existing on the globe. Now that I perceive that it is so, many questions assume a new aspect. We have not only the idea and vision of the divine ourselves, but we have brothers, it seems, who have this idea also. Methinks my neighbor is better than I, and his thought is better than mine. There is a representative of the divinity on earth, of [whom] all things fair and noble are to be expected. We have the material of heaven here. I think that the standing miracle to man is man. Behind the paling yonder, come rain or shine, hope or doubt, there dwells a man, an actual being who can sympathize with our sublimest thoughts.
The revelations of nature are infinitely glorious and cheering, hinting to us of a remote future, of possibilities untold; but startlingly near to us some day we find a fellow-man.
The frog had eyed the heavens from his marsh, until his mind was filled with visions, and he saw more than belongs to this fenny earth. He mistrusted that he was become a dreamer and visionary. Leaping across the swamp to his fellow, what was his joy and consolation to find that he too had seen the same sights in the heavens, he too had dreamed the same dreams!
From nature we turn astonished to this _near_ but supernatural fact.
I think that the existence of man in nature is the divinest and most startling of all facts. It is a fact which few have realized.
I can go to my neighbors and meet on ground as elevated as we could expect to meet upon if we were now in heaven.
“And we live, We of this mortal mixture, in the same law As the pure colorless intelligence Which dwells in Heaven, and the dead Hadean shades.”
I do not think that man can understand the _importance_ of man’s existence, its bearing on the other phenomena of life, until it shall become a remembrance to him the survivor that such a being or such a race once existed on the earth. Imagine yourself alone in the world, a musing, wondering, reflecting spirit, _lost_ in thought, and imagine thereafter the creation of man!—man made in the image of God!
Looking into a book on dentistry the other day, I observed a list of authors who had written on this subject. There were Ran and Tan and Yungerman, and I was impressed by the fact that there was nothing in a name. It was as if they had been named by the child’s rigmarole of _Iery [wiery] ichery van, tittle-tol-tan_, etc. I saw in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each one its own herdsman had affixed some barbarous name, or sound, or syllables, in his own dialect,—so in a thousand languages. Their names were seen to be as meaningless exactly as Bose or Tray, the names of dogs.[171] Men get named no better.
We seem to be distinct ourselves, never repeated, and yet we bear no names which express a proportionate distinctness; they are quite accidental. Take away their names, and you leave men a wild herd, distinguished only by their individual qualities. It is as if you were to give names in the Caffre dialect to the individuals in a herd of spring-boks or gnus.
We have but few patronymics, but few Christian names, in proportion to the number of us. Is it that men ceased to be original when genuine and original names ceased to be given. Have we not enough character to establish a new patronymic.
Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were _named_ merely in the gross, as they are known. It would only be necessary to know the genus and, perchance, the species and variety, to know the individual.
I will not allow _mere names_ to make distinctions for me, but still see men in herds for all _them_. A familiar name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild title earned in the woods. I see that the neighbor who wears the familiar epithet of William or Edwin takes it off with his jacket.
It does not adhere to him when asleep or when in anger, or aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them.
Our names are as cheap as the names given to dogs. We know what are dogs’ names; we know what are men’s names. Sometimes it would be significant and truer, it would lead to generalization, it would avoid exaggeration, to say, “_There was a man_ who said or did—,” instead of designating him by some familiar, but perchance delusive, name.
We hardly believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own.[172] It is interesting to see how the names of famous men are repeated,—even of great poets and philosophers. The poet is not known to-day even by his neighbors to be more than a common man. He is perchance the butt of many. The proud farmer looks down [on] and boorishly ignores him, or regards him as a loafer who treads down his grass, but perchance in course of time the poet will have so succeeded that some of the farmer’s posterity, though equally boorish with their ancestor, will bear the poet’s name. The boor names his boy Homer, and so succumbs unknowingly to the bard’s victorious fame. Anything so fine as poetic genius he cannot more directly recognize. The unpoetic farmer names his child Homer.
You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as yours.[173] _May 23. Friday._ And wilder still there grows elsewhere, I hear, a native and aboriginal crab-apple, _Malus_ (as Michaux, or, as Emerson has it, _Pyrus_) _coronaria_ in Southern States, and also _angustifolia_ in the Middle States; whose young leaves “have a bitter and slightly aromatic taste” (Michaux), whose beautiful flowers perfume the air to a great distance. “The apples...are small, green, intensely acid, and very odoriferous. Some farmers make cider of them, which is said to be excellent: they make very fine sweet-meats also, by the addition of a large quantity of sugar” (Michaux). Celebrated for “the beauty of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its perfume” (Michaux).[174] Michaux says that the wild apple of Europe has yielded to cultivation nearly three hundred species in France alone. Emerson says, referring to Loudon, “In 1836, the catalogue and the gardens of the London Horticultural Society contained upwards of 1400 distinct sorts, and new ones are every year added.”
But here are species which they have not in their catalogue, not to mention the varieties which the crab might yield to cultivation.[175] This genus, so kind to the human race, the _Malus_ or _Pyrus_; _Rosaceæ_ the family, or others say _Pomaceæ_. Its flowers are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree. I am frequently compelled to turn and linger by some more than usually beautiful two-thirds-expanded blossoms.[176] If such were not so common, its fame would be loud as well as wide. Its most copious and delicious blossoms.
But our wild apple is wild perchance like myself, who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock,[177]—where the birds, where winged thoughts or agents, have planted or are planting me. Even these at length furnish hardy stocks for the orchard.
You might call one _Malus oculata_; another _M. Iridis_; _M. cum parvuli dæmonis oculis_, or Imp-eyed; Blue-Jay Apple, or _M. corvi (_M. campestri-vallis_); Meadow Apple (_M. pratensis_); Rock Meadow Apple (_saxopratensis_); Partridge or Grouse Apple or bud [_sic_]; Apple of the Hesperides (_Malus Hesperidum_); Woodside Apple; Saunterer’s Apple (_M. erronis vel vagabundi_); the Wayside Apple Frozen-thawed (_gelato-soluta_ or _gelata regelata_); the Concord Apple (_M. Concordiensis_); the Brindled Apple; Wine of New England (_M.
vinosa_); the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (_M. viridis_); the Dysentery or Cholera-morbus Apple.[178] Distinctly related things are strangely near in _fact_, brush one another with their jackets. Perchance this window-seat in which we sit discoursing Transcendentalism, with only Germany and Greece stretching behind our minds, was made so deep because this was a few years ago a garrison-house, with thick log walls, bullet-proof, behind which men sat to escape the wild red man’s bullet and the arrow and the tomahawk, and bullets fired by Indians are now buried in its walls. Pythagoras seems near compared with them.
_May 24. Saturday._ Our most glorious experiences are a kind of regret.
Our regret is so sublime that we may mistake it for triumph. It is the painful, plaintively sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives and contemplating what is possible. It is remarkable that men commonly never refer to, never hint at, any crowning experiences when the common laws of their being were unsettled and the divine and eternal laws prevailed in them. Their lives are not revolutionary; they never recognize any other than the local and temporal authorities. It is a regret so divine and inspiring, so genuine, based on so true and distinct a contrast, that it surpasses our proudest boasts and the fairest expectations.
My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its native place, and, in the act of reëntering its native body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around.
The Genius says: “Ah! That is what you were! That is what you may yet be!” It is glorious for us to be able to regret even such an existence.
A sane and growing man revolutionizes every day. What institutions of man can survive a morning experience? A single night’s sleep, if we have indeed slumbered and forgotten anything and grown in our sleep, puts them behind us like the river Lethe. It is no unusual thing for him to see the kingdoms of this world pass away.[179] * * * * * It is an interesting inquiry to seek for the medicines which will cure our ails in the plants which grow around us. At first we are not disposed to believe that man and plants are so intimately related. Very few plants have been medically examined. And yet this is the extent of most men’s botany; and it is more extensive than would at first be supposed. The botanist is startled by some countryman’s familiarity with an obscure plant to him rare and strange. He, who has been an observer for some years, knows not what it is, but the unobserving countryman, who sees nothing but what is thrust upon him, or the old woman who rarely goes out of the house, shows an easy familiarity with it and can call it by name.
I am struck by the fact that, though any important individual experience is rare, though it is so rare that the individual is conscious of a relation to his maker transcending time and space and earth, though any knowledge of, or communication from, “Providence” is the rarest thing in the world, yet men very easily, regarding themselves in the gross, speak of carrying out the designs of Providence as nations. How often the Saxon man talks of carrying out the designs of Providence, as if he had some knowledge of Providence and His designs. Men allow themselves to associate Providence and designs of Providence with their dull, prosaic, every-day thoughts of things. That language is usurped by the stalest and deadest prose, which can only report the most choice poetic experience. This “Providence” is the stalest jest in the universe. The office-boy sweeps out his office “by the leave of Providence.”
_May 25._ A fine, freshening air, a little hazy, that bathes and washes everything, saving the day from extreme heat. Walked to the hills south of Wayland by the road by Deacon Farrar’s. First vista just beyond Merron’s (?), looking west down a valley, with a verdant-columned elm at the extremity of the vale and the blue hills and horizon beyond.
These are the resting-places in a walk. We love to see any part of the earth tinged with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial color. I wonder that houses are not oftener located mainly that they may command particular rare prospects, every convenience yielding to this. The farmer would never suspect what it was you were buying, and such sites would be the cheapest of any. A site where you might avail yourself of the art of Nature for three thousand years, which could never be materially changed or taken from you, a noble inheritance for your children. The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved.
They command no price in the market. Men will pay something to look into a travelling showman’s box, but not to look upon the fairest prospects on the earth. A vista where you have the near green horizon contrasted with the distant blue one, terrestrial with celestial earth.
The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our neighborhood.
Where men of enlarged views may be educated. An unchangeable kind of wealth, a _real_ estate.
There we found the celandine in blossom and the _Ranunculus bulbosus_, which we afterwards saw _double_ in Wayland, having nine petals.
The _Pyrus arbutifolia_, variety _melanocarpa_. Gray makes also the variety _erythrocarpa_. Is this the late red choke-berry of the swamps?
and is the former the earlier black one of the swamps?
By Farrar’s the _Nepeta Glechoma_, a kind of mint. Linnæus calls it _Glechoma hederacea_. Looks somewhat like catnep.
The marsh-marigold, _Caltha palustris_, improperly called cowslip.
The white oak, _Quercus alba_. And the commonest scrub oak, the bear or black oak, _Q. ilicifolia_.
The chinquapin, or dwarf chestnut, oak, the smallest of our oaks, _Q.
prinoides_.
Another glorious vista with a wide horizon at the yellow Dutch house, just over the Wayland line, by the black spruce, heavy and dark as night, which we could see two or three miles as a landmark. Now at least, before the deciduous trees have fully expanded their leaves, it is remarkably black. It is more stoutly and irregularly branched than Holbrook’s spruces—has a much darker foliage; but the cone scales of both are slightly waved or notched. Are they, then, both black spruce?
The cones are enough like, and the thickness of the leaves; their color enough unlike. Here is a view of the Jenkins house, the fish-pole house, and Wachusett beyond.
Noticed what I think must be a young poison sumach[180] abundant by the roadside in woods, with last year’s berries, with small greenish-yellow flowers, but leaves not pinnatifid, three together; from one to two feet high. What is it?
_Alnus serrulata_, the common alder, with a grayish stem, leaves smooth on both sides.
_Alnus incana_, the speckled alder, downy on under side of leaves.
The hard-berried plant seems to be _Andromeda ligustrina_ (?) of Gray, _A. paniculata_ of Bigelow, _Lyonia paniculata_ of Emerson.
Thyme-leaved veronica, little bluish-white, streak-petalled flower by road sides. _Silene Pennsylvanica._ What is the orange-yellow aster-like flower of the meadows now in blossom with a sweet-smelling stem when bruised?[181] What the delicate pinkish and yellowish flower with hoary-green stem and leaves, of rocky hills.[182] Saw Bunker Hill Monument and Charlestown from the Wayland hills, and across the valleys to Milton Hill.[183] Westward, or west by south, an island in a pond or in the river (!which see!) A grand horizon.
Probably saw the elm between Wayland and Weston which is seen so far in the horizon from the northwest part of Sudbury. A good, a rare place this must be to view the Sudbury or Wayland meadows a little earlier.
Came back across lots to the black spruce.
Now, at 8.30 o’clock P. M., I hear the dreaming of the frogs.[184] So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.
_May 27._ I saw an organ-grinder this morning before a rich man’s house, thrilling the street with harmony, loosening the very paving-stones and tearing the routine of life to rags and tatters, when the lady of the house shoved up a window and in a semiphilanthropic tone inquired if he wanted anything to eat. But he, very properly it seemed to me, kept on grinding and paid no attention to her question, feeding her ears with melody unasked for. So the world shoves up its window and interrogates the poet, and sets him to gauging ale casks in return. It seemed to me that the music suggested that the recompense should be as fine as the gift. It would be much nobler to enjoy the music, though you paid no money for it, than to presume always a beggarly relation. It is after all, perhaps, the best instrumental music that we have.
_May 28._ The trees now begin to shade the streets. When the sun gets high in the sky the trees give shade. With oppressive heats come refreshing shadows.
The buttercups spot the churchyard.
_May 29._ It is evident that the virtues of plants are almost completely unknown to us, and we esteem the few with which we are better acquainted unreasonably above the many which are comparatively unknown to us. Bigelow says: “It is a subject of some curiosity to consider, if the knowledge of the present Materia Medica were by any means to be lost, how many of the same articles would again rise into notice and use. Doubtless a variety of new substances would develop unexpected powers, while perhaps the poppy would be shunned as a deleterious plant, and the cinchona might grow unmolested upon the mountains of Quito.” Sawyer regards _Nux vomica_ among the most valuable. B. says (1817): “We have yet to discover our anodynes and our emetics, although we abound in bitters, astringents, aromatics, and demulcents. In the present state of our knowledge we could not well dispense with opium and ipecacuanha, yet a great number of foreign drugs, such as gentian, columbo, chamomile, kino, catechu, cascarilla, canella, etc., for which we pay a large annual tax to other countries, might in all probability be superseded by the indigenous products of our own. It is certainly better that our own country people should have the benefit of collecting such articles, than that we should pay for them to the Moors of Africa, or the Indians of Brazil.”
The thorn-apple (_Datura Stramonium_) (apple of Peru, devil’s-apple, Jamestown-weed) “emigrates with great facility, and often springs