They habituated their wild hogs to return to the house from time to time by distributing corn for them once or twice a week. So I read that in Buenos Ayres they collect the horses into the corral twice a week to keep them tame in a degree.
Gathered the first strawberries to-day.
Observed on Fair Haven a tall pitch pine, such as some call yellow pine,—very smooth, yellowish, and destitute of branches to a great height. The outer and darker-colored bark appeared to have scaled off, leaving a fresh and smooth surface. At the ground, all round the tree, I saw what appeared to be the edges of the old surface scales, extending to two inches more in thickness. The bark was divided into large, smooth plates, one to two feet long and four to six inches wide.
I noticed that the cellular portion of the bark of the canoe birch log from which I stripped the epidermis a week or two ago was turned a complete brick-red color very striking to behold and reminding me of the red man and all strong, natural things,—the color of our blood somewhat. Under the epidermis it was still a sort of buff. The different colors of the various parts of this bark, at various times, fresh or stale, are extremely agreeable to my eye.
I found the white-pine-top full of staminate blossom-buds not yet fully grown or expanded, with a rich red tint like a tree full of fruit, but I could find no pistillate blossom.
The fugacious-petalled cistus, and the pink, and the lupines of various tints are seen together.
Our outside garments, which are often thin and fanciful and merely for show, are our epidermis, hanging loose and fantastic like that of the yellow birch, which may be cast off without harm, stripped off here and there without fatal injury; sometimes called cuticle and false skin. The vital principle wholly wanting in it; partakes not of the life of the plant. Our thicker and more essential garments are our cellular integument. When this is removed, the tree is said to be girdled and dies. Our shirt is the cortex, liber, or true bark, beneath which is found the alburnum or sap-wood, while the heart in old stocks is commonly rotten or has disappeared. As if we grew like trees, and were of the exogenous kind.
June 9. James Wood, Senior, told me to-day that Asa (?) Melvin’s father told him that he had seen alewives caught (many of them) in the meadow which we were crossing, on the west of Bateman’s Pond, where now there is no stream, and though it is wet you can walk everywhere; also one shad. He thinks that a great part of the meadow once belonged to the pond.
Gathered the Linnæa borealis.
June 11. Wednesday. Last night a beautiful summer night, not too warm, moon not quite full, after two or three rainy days. Walked to Fair Haven by railroad, returning by Potter’s pasture and Sudbury road. I feared at first that there would be too much white light, like the pale remains of daylight, and not a yellow, gloomy, dreamier light; that it would be like a candlelight by day; but when I got away from the town and deeper into the night, it was better. I hear whip-poor-wills, and see a few fireflies in the meadow.