Log Search Results

  C. [William Ellery Channing] saw a phœbe, i.e. pewee, the 25th . . .

   When returning, we saw, near the outlet of the pond, seven or eight sheldrakes standing still in a line on the edge of the ice, and others swimming close by . . .

  P.M.—Sail from Cardinal Shore up Otter Bay, close to Deacon Farrar’s . . .

  Cousin Charles says that he took out of the old Haverhill house a very broad panel from over the fireplace, which had a picture of Haverhill at some old period on it. The panel had been there perfectly sheltered in an inhabited house for more than a hundred years. It was placed in his shop and no moisture allowed to come near it, and yet it shrunk a quarter of an inch in width when the air came to both sides of it . . .

  A wet day. The veery sings nevertheless. The road is white with the apple blossoms fallen off, as with snowflakes. The dogwood is coming out. Ladies’ slippers out. They perfume the air . . .

  The Cornus florida now fairly out, and the involucres are now not greenish-white but white tipped with reddish—like a small flock of white birds passing—three and a half inches in diameter, the larger ones, as I find by measuring. It is something quite novel in the tree line . . .

  P. M.—To Saw Mill Brook.

  Cleared up last night after two and a half days’ rain. This, with the two days’ rain the 18th and 19th, makes our May rain—and more rain either of the two than at any other time this spring. Coming out into the sun after this rain, with my thick clothes, I
find it unexpectedly and oppressively warm. Yet the heat seems tempered by a certain moisture still lingering in the air. (Methinks I heard a cuckoo yesterday and a quail (?) to-day.) A new season has commenced—summer—leafy June . . .

  8 P. M.—Up Union Turnpike.

  The reign of insects commences this warm evening after the rains. They could not come out before. I hear from the pitch pine woods beyond E. Wood’s a vast faint hum, as of a factory far enough off to be musical. I can fancy it something ambrosial from starlit mansions, a faint murmuring harp music rising from all groves; and soon insects are felt on the hands and face, and dor-bugs are heard humming by, or entangled in the pines, like winged bullets . . .

  Geum rivale, a day or two at Hubbard’s Close; also the Rubus trifloras abundant there along the brook next the maple swamp, and still in bloom. Wild pinks (Silene), apparently a day or two. The red-eye is an indefatigable singer,—a succession of short bars with hardly an interval long continued . . .