I. M. June [?] & Co., or Van Amburgh & Co., are engaged in a pecuniary speculation in which certain wild beasts are used as the counters. Cuvier & Co. are engaged in giving a course of lectures on Natural History. Now why could they not put head and means together for the benefit of mankind, and still get their living? The present institution is imperfect precisely because its object is to enrich Van Amburgh & Co., and their low aim unfits them for rendering any more valuable service; but no doubt the most valuable course would also be the most valuable in a pecuniary sense. No doubt a low self-interest is a better motive force to these enterprises than no interest at all; but a high self-interest, which consists with the greatest advantage of all, would be a better still. Item 2nd: Why have we not a decent pocket-map of the State of Massachusetts? There is the large map. Why is it not cut into half a dozen sheets and folded into a small cover for the pocket? Are there no travellers to use it? Well, to tell the truth, there are but few, and that’s the reason why. Men go by railroad, and State maps hanging in bar-rooms are small enough. The State has been admirably surveyed at a great cost, and yet Dearborn’s Pocket-Map is the best one we have! _Aug. 4._ Now the hardhack and meadow-sweet reign, the former one of our handsomest flowers, I think. The mayweed, too, dusty by the roadside, and in the fields I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half expanded. The grass is withered by the drought. The potatoes begin generally to flat down. The corn is tasselled out; its crosses show in all fields above the blades. The turnips are growing in its midst. As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadowsweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn. Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or was it flavor? It is now the royal month of August. When I hear this sound, I am as dry as the rye which is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with the season’s wine. The farmer is the most inoffensive of men, with his barns and cattle and poultry and grain and grass. I like the smell of his hay well enough, though as grass it may be in my way. The yellow Bethlehem-star still, and the yellow gerardia, and a bluish “savory-leaved aster.”