The Cornus florida now fairly out, and the involucres are now not greenish-white but white tipped with reddish—like a small flock of white birds passing—three and a half inches in diameter, the larger ones, as I find by measuring. It is something quite novel in the tree line . . .

  P. M.—To Saw Mill Brook.

  Cleared up last night after two and a half days’ rain. This, with the two days’ rain the 18th and 19th, makes our May rain—and more rain either of the two than at any other time this spring. Coming out into the sun after this rain, with my thick clothes, I
find it unexpectedly and oppressively warm. Yet the heat seems tempered by a certain moisture still lingering in the air. (Methinks I heard a cuckoo yesterday and a quail (?) to-day.) A new season has commenced—summer—leafy June . . .

  8 P. M.—Up Union Turnpike.

  The reign of insects commences this warm evening after the rains. They could not come out before. I hear from the pitch pine woods beyond E. Wood’s a vast faint hum, as of a factory far enough off to be musical. I can fancy it something ambrosial from starlit mansions, a faint murmuring harp music rising from all groves; and soon insects are felt on the hands and face, and dor-bugs are heard humming by, or entangled in the pines, like winged bullets . . .