Heard this forenoon what I thought at first to be children playing on pumpkin stems in the next yard, but it turned out to be the new steam-whistle music, what they call the Calliope (!) in the next town . . .

  P. M.—With a berry party, ride to Conantum.

  At Blackberry Steep, apparently an early broadleafed variety of Desmodium paniculatum, two or three days. This and similar plants are common there . . .