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Fine
weather. P.M. -To White Pond. One or two myrtle-birds in their fall dress, with brown head and shoulders, two whitish bars on wings, and bright-yellow rump. Sit on Clamshell, looking up the smooth stream. Two blue herons, or " herns, " as Goodwin calls them, fly sluggishly up the stream. Interesting even is a stake, with its reflection, left standing in the still river by some fisherman. Again we have smooth waters, yellow foliage, and faint warbling birds, etc., as in spring. The year thus repeats itself. Catch some of those dancing little fuzzy gnats in the air there over the shelly bank, and these are black, with black plumes, unlike those last seen over the Cassandra Pond. Brushed a spectrum, ghost-horse, off my face in a birch wood, by the J. P. Brown cold Heart-Leaf Pond. Head sornewhat like a striped shake. That pond is drier than I ever saw it, perhaps - all but a couple of square rods in the middle - and now covered with cyperus, etc. See what must be a solitary tattler feeding by the water's edge, and it has tracked the mud all about. It cannot be the Tringa pectoralis, for it has no conspicuous white chin, nor black dashes on the throat, nor brown on the back and wings, and I think I see the round white spots on its wings. The lespedeza leaves are all withered and ready to fall in the frosty hollows near Nut Meadow, and in the swamps the ground is already strewn with the first maple leaves, concealing the springiness of the soil, and many plants are prostrate there, November-like. High up in Nut Meadow, the very brook - push aside the half-withered grass which (the farmer disdaining to cut it) conceals it - is as cool as a spring, being near its sources. Take perhaps our last bath in White Pond for the year. Half a dozen F. hyemalis about. Looking toward the sun, some fields reflect a light sheen from low webs of gossamer which thickly cover the stubble and grass. On our way, near the Hosmer moraine, let off some pasture thistle-down. One steadily rose from my hand, freighted with its seed, till it was several hundred feet high, and then passed out of sight eastward. Its down was particularly spreading or open. Is not here a hint to balloonists? Astronomers can calculate the orbit of that thistle-down called the comet, now in the northwest sky, conveying its nucleus, which may not be so solid as a thistle's seed, somewhither, but what astronomer can calculate the orbit of my thistle-down and tell where it will deposit its precious freight at last? It may still be travelling when I am sleeping. September 29, 1858 Other Entries October 29 November 1 November 6 November 10 November 11 November 14 November 20 November 27 December 6 December 16 January 7 February 21 February 25 March 1 March 7 March 11 March 19 April 3 May 1 May 3 May 9 May 10 May 19 May 20 May 24 May 26 May 27 May 29 May 31 June 3 June 9 June 10 June 11 June 14 June 16 July 4 July 15 August 13 August 15 August 16 August 18 August 20 August 22 August 23 September 1 September 26 |