tricity we have had this summer. We have often, in common seasons, heavy showers, with very sharp lightning, and thunder which echoes grandly among our hills. We have known the lightning to strike seven times in the course of an hour, in the village and the immediate neighborhood, twice in the lake, and five times on the land; but very happily, no serious accident occurred on that occasion, though one or two persons were stunned. This summer we have hardly seen a flash.
First melons to-day.
Wednesday, August 1st.—Pleasant; walked over Mill Bridge in the afternoon. Gathered a fine bunch of the crimson lobelia by the river-side. What an exquisite shade of red lies on the petals of this brilliant plant! It reminds one that the Russian word for beauty and for red is said to be the same—krasnoi, as M. de Ségur gives it; most of us would probably consider rose-color or blue as more beautiful, but certainly the inimitable, vivid and yet delicate tint of the lobelia, may claim to be identical with krasnoi, or beauty. The blue lobelia, also very handsome in its way, is not found here, though very common on the Mohawk.
Walking through a wood, found hawk-wort and asters in bloom, also a handsome rattlesnake plantain, or Goodyera, with its veined leaves and fragrant spike of white flowers; this is one of the plants formerly thought to cure the bite of the rattlesnake, though little credit is given to the notion now-a-days.
Thursday, 2d.—Long drive down the valley.
There is not a single town of any size within a distance of forty miles, yet already the rural population of this county is quite large. The whole country, within a wide circuit north, south, east and west, partakes of the same general character; mountain
