Old Mr. Joe Hosmer chopping wood at his door. He is full of meat. Had a crack with him. I told him I was studying lichens, pointing to his wood. He thought I meant the wood itself. Well, he supposed he’d had more to do with wood than I had. “Now,” said he, “there are two kinds of white oak. Most people wouldn’t notice it. When I’ve been chopping, say along in March, after the sap begins to start, I’ll sometimes come to an oak that will color my axe steel-blue like a sword-blade. Well, that oak is fine-grained and heavier than the common, and I call it blue white oak, for no other blues my axe so. Then there are two kinds of black oak, or yellow-bark. One is the mean black oak, or bastard. Then there’s a kind of red oak smells like urine three or four days old” . . .

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  been the track of an otter near the Clamshell Hill, for it looks too large for a mink . . .

  Found three or four parmelias (caperata) in fruit on a white oak on the high river-bank between Tarbell’s and Harrington’s.