Rattlesnake grass is ripe. The pods of the _Asclepias pulchra_ stand up pointedly like slender vases on a salver,— an open salver truly! Those of the _Asclepias Syriaca_ hang down. The interregnum in the blossoming of flowers being _well_ over, many small flowers blossom now in the low grounds, having just reached their summer. It is now dry enough, and they feel the heat their tenderness required. The autumnal flowers,—goldenrods, asters, and johnswort,—though they have made demonstrations, have not yet commenced to reign. The tansy is already getting stale; it is perhaps the first conspicuous yellow flower that passes from the stage.[311] In Hubbard’s Swamp, where the blueberries, dangleberries, and especially the pyrus or choke-berries were so abundant last summer, there is now perhaps not one (unless a blueberry) to be found. Where the choke-berries held on all last winter, the black and the red. The common skullcap (_Scutellaria galericulata_), quite a handsome and middling-large blue flower. _Lobelia pallida_ still. Pointed cleavers or clivers (_Galium asprellum_). Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard’s meadow?[312] Did I find the dwarf tree-primrose in Hubbard’s meadow to-day? _Stachys aspera_, hedge-nettle or woundwort, a rather handsome purplish flower. The capsules of the _Iris versicolor_, or blue flag, are now ready for humming [?]. Elderberries are ripe. _Aug. 25. Monday._ What the little regular, rounded, light-blue flower in Heywood Brook which I make Class V, Order 1? Also the small purplish flower growing on the mud in Hubbard’s meadow, perchance C. XIV, with one pistil? What the bean vine in the garden, Class VIII, Order 1? I do not find the name of the large white polygonum of the river. Was it the filiform ranunculus which I found on Hubbard’s shore? _Hypericum Virginicum_, mixed yellow and purple. The black rough fruit of the skunk-cabbage, though green within, barely rising above the level of the ground; you see where it has been cut in two by the mowers in the meadows. _Polygonum amphibium_, red, in river. _Lysimachia hybrida_ still. Checkerberry in bloom. Blue-eyed grass still. _Rhus copallina_, mountain or dwarf sumach. I now know all of the _Rhus_ genus in Bigelow. We have all but the staghorn in Concord. What a miserable name has the _Gratiola aurea_, hedge hyssop! Whose hedge does it grow by, pray, in this part of the world?[313] _Aug. 26._ A cool and even piercing wind blows to-day, making all shrubs to bow and trees to wave; such as we could not have had in July. I speak not of its coolness but its strength and steadiness. The wind and the coldness increased as the day advanced, and finally the wind went down with the sun. I was compelled to put on an extra coat for my walk. The ground is strewn with windfalls, and much fruit will consequently be lost.