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As I was paddling by Dodge’s Brook, a great devil’s needle lit on my paddle, between my hands. It was about three inches long and three and a half in spread of wings, without spots, black and yellow, with green eyes (?). It kept its place within a few inches of my eyes, while I was paddling some twenty-five rods against a strong wind, clinging closely. Perhaps it chose that place for coolness this hot day.

  To-day, as yesterday, it is more comfortable to be walking or paddling at 2 and 3 P.M., when there is wind, but at five the wind goes down and it is very still and suffocating.

  I afterward saw other great devil’s-needles, the forward part of their bodies light-blue and very stout . . .

  2 P.M.—Sail and paddle down river . . .

  See, twenty rods or more down-stream, four or five young ducks, which appear already to be disturbed by my boat. So, leaving that to attract their attention, I make my way alongshore in the high grass and behind the trees till I am opposite to them . . .

  Below you will find my bill for plumbago. I will thank you to send a Draft for the amount on a Boston bank, as heretofore. Trusting that you will not require me to wait so long, without explanation, as the last time, I remain

Yrs truly

Henry D. Thoreau

Concord July 27 1860

Messrs Welch Bigelow & Co
   Bought of Henry D. Thoreau
  Twenty-four lb of Plumbago
  sent April 27
       Recd Payt

  Looking from Bear Hill, I am struck by the yellowish green of meadows, almost like an ingrained sunlight . . . It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock. It is a good way to describe the density of a haze to say how distant a mountain can be distinguished through it, or how near a hill is obscured by it.

  Saw a very large white ash tree, three and a half feet in diameter, in front of the house which White formerly owned, under this hill, which was struck by lightning the 22d, about 4 P.M. The lightning apparently struck the top of the tree . . . and so it went down in the midst of the trunk to the earth, where it apparently exploded, rending the trunk into six segments . . . The lightning appeared to have gone off through the roots, furrowing them as the branches, and through the earth, making a furrow like a plow, four or five rods in one direction, and in another passing through the cellar of the neighboring house, about thirty feet distant . . . The windows in the house were broken and the inhabitants knocked down by the concussion. All this was accomplished in an instant by a kind of fire out of the heavens called lightning, or a thunderbolt, accompanied by a crashing sound. For what purpose? The ancients called it Jove’s bolt, with which he punished the guilty and we moderns understand it no better. There was displayed a Titanic force, some of that force which made and can unmake the world . . .

  The cuckoo’s nest is robbed, or perhaps she broke her egg because I found it. Thus three out of half a dozen nests which I have revisited have been broken up. It is a very shallow nest, six or seven inches in diameter by two and a half or three deep, on a low bending willow, hardly half an inch deep within; concealed by overlying leaves of a swamp white oak on the edge of the river meadow, two to three feet from ground, made of slender twigs which are prettily ornamented with much ramalina lichen, lined with hickory catkins and pitch pine needles . . .