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  The early cotton-grass is now about gone from Hubbard’s Close. With this month began the reign of riverweeds obstructing the stream. Potamogetons and heartleaves, etc., now for a long time covered with countless mosquito cases (?). They catch my oars and retard the boat. A rail will be detained a month by them in mid-stream . . .

  Hear the plaintive note of young bluebirds, a reviving and gleaming of their blue ray. In Moore’s meadow by Turnpike, see the vetch in purple patches weighing down the grass, as if a purple tinge were reflected there . . .

  Red lilies in prime, single upright fiery flowers, their throats how splendidly and variously spotted, hardly two of quite the same hue and not two spotted alike,—leopard-spotted,—averaging a foot or more in height, amid the huckleberry and lambkill, etc., in the moist, meadowy pasture . . .

  M.E.

  In the afternoon we rode along, three of us, northward and northwestward on our way round the mountains, going through Gorham. We camped about a mile and a half west of Gorham, by the roadside, on the bank of Moose River . . .

  P.M.—To Assabet Bath.

  The elm avenue above the Wheeler farm is one of the hottest places in the town ; the heat is reflected from the dusty road. The grass by the roadside begins to have a dry, hot, dusty look. The melted ice is running almost in a stream from the countryman’s covered wagon. . .

  In the evening, the moon being about full, I paddle up the river to see the moonlight and hear the bullfrogs . . . I see at 9.30 P.M. a little brood of four or five barn swallows, which have quite recently left the nest, perched close together for the night on a dead willow twig in the shade of the tree, about four feet above the water . . .

  The river at 8 P.M. is eight and three quarters inches above summer level. Just after the sun is set I observe the dewdrops on the pontederia leaves . . .

  A Mr. Bradshaw, a taxidermist, carpenter, etc., etc., of Wayland, tells me that he finds the long-eared owl there in summer, and has set it up.

Dear Sir—
  I mail to your address today a copy of my “Week” as you request—

  I am in the lecture field—but my subjects are not scientific—rather [Transcendentalist & aesthetic. I devote myself to the absorption of nature generally.] Such as “Walking or the Wild” “Autumnal tints” &c—[Even if the utterances were scientific, the treatment would hardly bear that sense]

less in a popular vein if you think that your audience will incline or erect[?] their ears to such themes as these. I shall be happy to read to them.

Yr respect[ful]ly

Hen. D. Thoreau

  As I entered the Deep Cut, I was affected by beholding the first faint reflection of genuine and unmixed moonlight on the eastern sand-bank while the horizon, yet red with day, was tingeing the western side.

  For some time I have noticed the grass whitish and killed at top by worms (?). The meadows are yellow with golden senecio. Marsh speedwell (Veronica scutellata), lilac-tinted, rather pretty. The mouse-ear forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa) has now extended its racemes (?) very much, and hangs over the edge of the brook. It is one of the most interesting minute flowers. It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending, for even flowers must be modest . . .