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  Going up Pine Hill, disturbed a partridge and her brood. She ran in deshabille directly to me, within four feet, while her young, not larger than a chicken just hatched, dispersed, flying along a foot or two from the ground, just over the bushes, for a rod or two. The mother kept close at hand to attract my attention, and mewed and clucked and made a noise as when a hawk is in sight. She stepped about and held her head above the hushes and clucked just like a hen. What a remarkable instinct that which keeps the young so silent and prevents their peeping and betraying themselves! The wild bird will run almost any risk to save her young. The young, I believe, make a fine sound at first in dispersing, something like a cherry-bird.

  Clover now reddens the fields. Grass in its prime. Comfrey in front of Stow’s well out some days apparently. With the roses now fairly begun I associate summer heats . . .

  Sundown.—To Clamshell Hill.

  Nightshade a day or two. The cracks made by cold in pastures in the winter are still quite distinct. Phleum or herd’s-grass (?). I sit on the Clamshell Hill at sunset . . .

  I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. He sits close to the edge of the water and is hard to find—hard to tell the direction, though you may be within three feet. I detect him chiefly by the motion of the great swelling bubble in his throat. A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P.M.! How serenely it ripples over the water! What a luxury life is to him! I have to use a little geometry to detect him. Am surprised at my discovery at last, while C. sits by incredulous. . . .

  A hawthorn grows near by, just out of bloom, twelve feet high—Cratægus Oxyacantha. A veronica at Peetweet Rock; forget which kind. A crow blackbird’s nest high in an elm by riverside just below the Island. C. [William Ellery Channing] climbed to it and got it . . .

  Sophia has sent me, in a letter from Worcester, part of an orchid in bloom, apparently Platanthera Hookeri (?), or smaller round-leafed orchis, from the Hermitage Wood, so called, northeast of the town . . .

  EGGS—.

  At Natural History Rooms. The egg found on ground in R. W. E.’s garden some weeks since cannot be the bobolink’s, for that is about as big as a bay-wing’s but more slender, dusky-white, with numerous brown and black blotches . . .

  P.M.—At [Benjamin Marston] Watson’s, Plymouth.

  W. has several varieties of the English hawthorn
(oxyacantha), pink and rose-colored, double and single, and very handsome now.

  His English oak is almost entirely, out of bloom, though I got some flowers. The biggest, which was set out in ’49, is about thirty feet high, and, as I measured, just twenty inches in circumference at four inches from the ground. A very rapid growth . . .

  I am struck with the beauty of the sorrel now, e.g. Lepidium campestre field. What a wholesome red! . . . (Journal, 12:201).

  At 7.30 P.M. I hear many toads, it being a warm night, but scarcely any hylodes . . . (Journal, 13:348).

  P.M. to prairie pond (Thoreau’s Minnesota Journey, 18).

  I did not write till to-night because I have not been into town since Monday morning [10 June]; I shall go in tomorrow morning and then take his letter. I have not done much but walk around since Monday, except to collect some of those shells I spoke of in my last letter and to get a few birds and a red squirrel, the only kind of squirrel that they have here. It has been very warm weather here but there has been a wind most of the time so we could bear it pretty well.

  We shall leave this place on Saturday morning [15 June] and go to St. Anthony and on Sunday morning we shall go down to St. Paul and I think we may go up to St Peters, or Minnesota, river to the lower Sioux agency where the indians are going to be paid off on the 18th and subsequent days. We shall not go however if we can not get good accommodations or if the fair is too high. If we do not go there we shall go to Redwing I suppose but I will write you again on Sunday and tell you if we go up there. I want you to direct to Redwing however as I asked Ed Neally to tell you to do some time ago. We are and have been having a very good time here. Mr. Thoreau is pretty well, and I am very well . . .

  I expect to be at home before the middle of July, I may say more before I put this in the post office. Good night.

Your loving son
Horace Mann