Now the dorbug comes humming by, the first I have heard this year. In three months it will be the Harvest Moon. I cannot easily believe it. Why not call this the Traveller’s Moon? It would be as true to call the last (the May) the Planter’s Moon as it is to call September’s the Harvest Moon, for the farmers use one about as little as the other. Perhaps this is the Whip-poor-will’s Moon. The bullfrog now, which I have not heard before, this evening. It is nearly nine. They are much less common and their note more intermittent than that of the dreamers. I scared up a bird on a _low_ bush, perchance on its nest. It is rare that you start them at night from such places. Peabody says that the nighthawk retires to rest about the time the whip-poor-will begins its song. The whip-poor-will begins now at 7.30. I hear the nighthawk after 9 o’clock. He says it flies low in the evening, but it also flies high, as it must needs do to make the booming sound. I hear the lowing of cows occasionally, and the barking of dogs. The pond by moonlight, which may make the object in a walk, suggests little to be said. Where there was only one firefly in a dozen rods, I hastily ran to one which had crawled up to the top of a grass-head and exhibited its light, and instantly another sailed in to it, showing its light also; but my presence made them extinguish their lights. The latter retreated, and the former crawled slowly down the stem. It appeared to me that the first was a female who thus revealed her place to the male, who was also making known his neighborhood as he hovered about, both showing their lights that they might come together. It was like a mistress who had climbed to the turrets of her castle and exhibited there a blazing taper for a signal, while her lover had displayed his light on the plain. If perchance she might have any lovers abroad. Not much before 10 o’clock does the moonlight night begin. When man is asleep and day fairly forgotten, then is the beauty of moonlight seen over lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding.[209] Then let me walk in a diversified country, of hill and dale, with heavy woods one side, and copses and scattered trees and bushes enough to give me shadows. Returning, a mist is on the river. The river is taken into the womb of Nature again. Now is the clover month, but haying is not yet begun. * * * * * Evening.—Went to Nawshawtuct by North Branch. Overtaken by a slight shower. The same increased fragrance from the ground—sweet-fern, etc.—as in the night, and for the like reason probably. The houstonias still blossom freshly, as I believe they continue to do all summer. The fever-root in blossom; pictured in Bigelow’s “Medical Botany.” _Triosteum perfoliatum_, near the top of Hill, under the wall, looks somewhat like a milkweed. The _Viburnum dentatum_, very regularly toothed, just ready to blossom; sometimes called arrow-wood.