June 4, 1857. p. m. To Bare Hill. . . . One thing that chiefly distinguishes this season from three weeks ago is that fine serene undertone or earth-song, as we go by sunny brooks and hillsides, the creak of crickets, which affects our thoughts so favorably, imparting its own serenity. It is time now to bring our philosophy out of doors. Our thoughts pillow themselves unconsciously in the trough of this serene rippling sea of sound. Now first we begin to be peripatetics. No longer our ears can be content with the bald echoing earth, but everywhere recline on the spring-cushion of a cricket's chirp. These rills that ripple from every hillside become at length a universal sea of sound, nourishing our ears when we are most unconscious. . . . In the high pasture behind Jacob Baker's, soon after coming out of the wood, I scare up a baywing. She runs several rods close to the ground through the thin grass, and then lurks behind tussocks, etc. The nest has four eggs, dull pinkish white with brown spots. It is low in the ground, made of stubble lined with white horse-hair.
June, 4, 1860. The foliage of the elms over the street is dense and heavy already, comparatively. The black-poll warblers appear to have left, and some others, if not the warblers generally, with this first clear, bright, and warm
