Cambridge, Mass.
1909
Nov. 7 [November 7, 1909]
(No 4) 
  We left the Pond about noon and spent the
following hour revisiting certain of the places in the
Fresh Pond Swamp where we had not been together
for many years if, indeed, since the old collecting days
in the early seventies. The swamps were everywhere
dry, partly, no doubt, because of the lack of rain
during the past two years but also, perhaps, because
the works of draining them by widening and deepening
Alewife Brook has already far advanced. It was
begun, I understand, sometime early last summer.
When I went to Concord on October 16th last I
saw, from the car window, as the train crossed
the brook just beyond North Cambridge Junction, a
small array of men throwing out dirt from the
bottom of the bank both above and below the
railroad bridge. Today we found it perfectly