Canoe birches by road to Dakin’s. Cuticle stripped off; inner bark dead and scaling off; new (inner) bark formed. The Solomon’s-seals are fruited now, with finely red-dotted berries. There was one original name well given, _Buster_ Kendal.[295] The fragrance of the clethra fills the air by watersides. In the hollows where in winter is a pond, the grass is short, thick, and green still, and here and there are tufts pulled up as if by the mouth of cows. Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe birch and White Pond,—_Helianthus divaricatus_. _Lespedeza capitata_, shrubby lespedeza, White Pond road and Marlborough road. _L. polystachya_, hairy lespedeza, Corner road beyond Hubbard’s Bridge. _Aug. 20._ 2 P. M.—To Lee’s Bridge _via_ Hubbard’s Wood, Potter’s field, Conantum, returning by Abel Minott’s house, Clematis Brook, Baker’s pine plain, and railroad. I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two, and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he lies concealed,—for I pull away the withered grass with my hands,—uttering his night-like creak, with a vibratory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers. They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of the year. They are remarkably secret and unobserved, considering how much noise they make. Every milkman has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his cart to go in search of one? I see smaller ones moving stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices in each other’s song? It would be a curious ear, indeed, that distinguished the species of the crickets which it heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing. They are shy as birds, these little bodies. Those nearest me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly whence the sound proceeds. Perhaps this wariness is necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer. They are somewhat protected by the universalness of the sound, each one’s song being merged and lost in the general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth’s axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain, which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season, night or day.