_May 25._ A fine, freshening air, a little hazy, that bathes and washes everything, saving the day from extreme heat. Walked to the hills south of Wayland by the road by Deacon Farrar’s. First vista just beyond Merron’s (?), looking west down a valley, with a verdant-columned elm at the extremity of the vale and the blue hills and horizon beyond. These are the resting-places in a walk. We love to see any part of the earth tinged with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial color. I wonder that houses are not oftener located mainly that they may command particular rare prospects, every convenience yielding to this. The farmer would never suspect what it was you were buying, and such sites would be the cheapest of any. A site where you might avail yourself of the art of Nature for three thousand years, which could never be materially changed or taken from you, a noble inheritance for your children. The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved. They command no price in the market. Men will pay something to look into a travelling showman’s box, but not to look upon the fairest prospects on the earth. A vista where you have the near green horizon contrasted with the distant blue one, terrestrial with celestial earth. The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in our neighborhood. Where men of enlarged views may be educated. An unchangeable kind of wealth, a _real_ estate. There we found the celandine in blossom and the _Ranunculus bulbosus_, which we afterwards saw _double_ in Wayland, having nine petals. The _Pyrus arbutifolia_, variety _melanocarpa_. Gray makes also the variety _erythrocarpa_. Is this the late red choke-berry of the swamps? and is the former the earlier black one of the swamps? By Farrar’s the _Nepeta Glechoma_, a kind of mint. Linnæus calls it _Glechoma hederacea_. Looks somewhat like catnep. The marsh-marigold, _Caltha palustris_, improperly called cowslip. The white oak, _Quercus alba_. And the commonest scrub oak, the bear or black oak, _Q. ilicifolia_. The chinquapin, or dwarf chestnut, oak, the smallest of our oaks, _Q. prinoides_. The _Cratægus coccinea_ (?), or scarlet-fruited thorn (?) Another glorious vista with a wide horizon at the yellow Dutch house, just over the Wayland line, by the black spruce, heavy and dark as night, which we could see two or three miles as a landmark. Now at least, before the deciduous trees have fully expanded their leaves, it is remarkably black. It is more stoutly and irregularly branched than Holbrook’s spruces—has a much darker foliage; but the cone scales of both are slightly waved or notched. Are they, then, both black spruce? The cones are enough like, and the thickness of the leaves; their color enough unlike. Here is a view of the Jenkins house, the fish-pole house, and Wachusett beyond.