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  A strong northwest wind. The waves were highest off Hubbard’s second grove, where they had acquired their greatest impetus and felt the full force of the wind. Their accumulated volume was less beyond on account of the turn in the river. The greatest undulation is at the leeward end of the longest broad reach in the direction of the wind. I was steering there diagonally across the black billows . . .

  Walden is open entirely to-day for the first time, owing to the rain of yesterday and evening. I have observed its breaking up of different years commencing in ’45, and the average date has been April 4th . . .

  Frogs are strange creatures. One would describe them as peculiarly wary and timid, another as equally bold and imperturbable. All that is required in studying them is patience. You will sometimes walk a long way along a ditch and hear twenty or more leap in one after another before you, and see where they rippled the water, without getting sight of one of them . . .

  Melvin says he has heard snipe some days, but thinks them scarce . . . As I go by the site of Staple’s new barn on the Kettle place, I see that they have just dug a well on the hillside and are bricking it up . . . Humphrey Buttrick, the sportsman, was at the bottom, bricking up the well; a Clark who had been mining lately in California, and who had dug the well, was passing down brick and mortar to him; and Melvin, with a bundle of apple scions in his hand, was sitting close by and looking over into the well from time to time . . .

  Mr Thoreau a Report on Fort Pond, the Cromlech, & the remains of a swamp fort near the Pond.

  Mr E. called attention to the Ebbahubbard park.

  Miss E. Hoar presented a bunch of Linnaea Borealis found in Concord.

  Mr C read a paper on the foliaceous & spongelike formations by spring-thaw in the argillite of the Deep Cut in the Rail Road—& so forth.

  I cannot conceive how a reran can accomplish anything worthy of him, unless his very breath is sweet to him. He must be particularly alive . . .

  The hibiscus flowers are seen a quarter of a mile off over the water, like large roses, now that these high colors are rather rare. Some are exceedingly delicate and pale, almost white, just rose-tinted, others a brighter pink or rose-color, and all slightly plaited (the five large petals) and turned toward the sun, now in the west, trembling in the wind. So much color looks very rich in these localities . . .

  Many leaves of the cultivated cherry are turned yellow, and a very few leaves of the elm have fallen,—the dead or prematurely ripe. The abundant and repeated rains since this month came in have made the last fortnight and more seem like a rainy season in the tropics,—warm, still copious rains falling straight down, contrasting with the cold, driving spring rains. Now again I am caught in a heavy shower in Moore’s pitch pines on edge of Great Fields, and am obliged to stand crouching tinder my umbrella till the drops turn to streams, which find their way through my umbrella . . .

  P.M.—Over Great Meadows . . . (Journal, 6:449-453).