I noticed the button-bush, May 25th, around an elevated pond or mud-hole, its leaves just beginning to expand. This slight amount of green contrasted with its dark, craggly [sic], naked-looking stem and branches—as if subsiding waters had left them bare—looked Dantesque and infernal. It is not a handsome bush at this season, it is so slow to put out its leaves and hide its naked and unsightly stems.
The Andromeda ligustrina is late to leave out.
Malus excelsa; amara; florida; palustris; gratissima; ramosa; spinosa; ferruginea; aromatica; aurea; rubiginosa; odorata; tristis; officinalis!! herbacea; vulgaris; æstivalis; autumnalis; riparia; versicolor; communis; farinosa; super septa pendens;[187] Malus sepium; vinum Novæ-Angliæ; succosa; sæpe formicis præoccupata; vermiculosa aut verminosa aut a vermibus corrupta vel erosa; Malus semper virens et viridis; cholera-morbifera or dysenterifera; M. sylvestripaludosa, excelsa et ramosa superne, difficilis conscendere, (fructus difficillimus stringere, parvus et durus); Cortex picis perforata or perterebata; rupestris; agrestis; arvensis; Assabettia; Railroad Apple; Musketaquidensis; Dew Apple (rorifera); the apple whose fruit we tasted in our youth which grows passim et nusquam, (Malus cujus fructum ineunte ætate gustavi quæ passim et nusquam viget); our own particular apple; Malus numquam legata vel stricta; cortice muscosâ; Malus viæ-ferreæ; sylvatica in sylvis densissimis.[188]
May 30. Friday. There was a Concord man once who had a foxhound named Burgoyne. He called him Bugīne. A good name.[189]
May 31. Pedestrium solatium in apricis locis; nodosa.[190]
V
JUNE, 1851
(ÆT. 33)
June 3. Tuesday. Lectured in Worcester last Saturday, and walked to As- or Hasnebumskit Hill in Paxton the next day. Said to be the highest land in Worcester County except Wachusett.
Met Mr. Blake, Brown, Chamberlin, Hinsdale, Miss Butman (?), Wyman, Conant.
Returned to Boston yesterday. Conversed with John Downes, who is connected with the Coast Survey, is printing tables for astronomical, geodesic, and other uses. He tells me that he once saw the common sucker in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving them with their mouths.
Dr. Harris suggests that the mountain cranberry which I saw at Ktaadn was the Vaccinium Vitis-Idæa, cow-berry, because it was edible and not the Uva-Ursi, or bear-berry, which we have in Concord.