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  The seringo, too, has long been silent like other birds. The red prinos berries ripe in sunny places. rose hips begin to be handsome. Small flocks of pigeons are seen these days. Distinguished from doves by their sharper wings and bodies. August has been a month of berries and melons, small fruits . . .

  P.M.—By boat to Purple Utricularia Shore . . .

  I see white lilies wide open at 2.30 P.M. They are half open even at 5 P.M. in many places this moist cloudy day and thus late in their season . . . Bathed at Hubbard’s . . .

  Clear bright days of late, with a peculiar sheen on the leaves,—light reflected from the surface of each one, for they are grown and worn and washed smooth at last, no infantile downiness on them . . .

  I think we may detect that some sort of preparation and faint expectation preceded every discovery we have made. We blunder into no discovery but it will appear that we have prayed and disciplined ourselves for it. Some years ago I sought for Indian hemp (Apocynum cannabinum) hereabouts in vain, and concluded that it did not grow here. A month or two ago I read again, as many times before, that its blossoms were very small . . .

  It commonly chances that I make my most interesting botanical discoveries when I [am] in a thrilled and expectant mood, perhaps wading in some remote swamp where I have just found something novel and feel more than usually remote from the town. Or some rare plant which for some reason has occupied a strangely prominent place in my thoughts for some time will present itself. My expectation ripens to discovery. I am prepared for strange things . . .

  My father & mother regret that your indisposition is likely to prevent your coming to Concord at present. It is as well that you do not, if you depend on seeing me, far I expect to go to New Hampshire the latter part of the week. I shall be glad to see you afterward, if you are prepared for & can endure my unsocial habits.

  1 would suggest that you have one or two of the teeth-which you can best spare, extracted at once—for the sake of your general no less than particular health. This is the advice of one who has had quite his share of toothache in this world.—I am a trifle stouter than when I saw you last, yet far—far short of my best estate. I thank you for two newspapers which you have sent me—am glad to see that you have studied out the history of the ponds, got the Indian names straightened—which means made more crooked—&c &c I remember them with great satisfaction. They are all the more interesting to me for the mearn & sandy solid that surrounds the. Heaven is not one [of] your fertile Ohio bottoms, you may depend on it. Ah, the Middleboro Ponds!—Great Platte Lakes! Remember me to the perch in them. I trust that I may have some better craft that that oarless pumpkin-seed the next time I navigate them.

  From the size of your family I infer that Mrs, Ricketson & your daughters have returned from Franconia. Please remember me to them, & also to Arthur & Walton & tell the latter that if in the course of his fishing he should chance to come across the shell of a terrapin & will save it for me, I shall be exceedingly obliged to him.

  Channing dropped in on us the other day, but soon dropped out again.
 
  Yrs
  Henry D. Thoreau

  Measured the thorn at Yellow Birch Swamp. At one foot from ground it is a foot and ten inches in circumference. The first branch is at two feet seven inches. The tree spreads about eighteen feet. The height is about seventeen feet . . .