22 August: During the morning, a walk down along the canal, where large numbers of hummingbirds were flying around the beautiful Impatiens fulva down along the bank of the Lecha. I shot several of them but had to fire often. Finally I bagged a Picus auratus, a very beautiful bird we had not yet obtained. It sat motionless on the tip of an acacia tree (Robinia pseudoacacia), and I brought it down with fine bird shot. A neighboring farmer brought me a hare, and in the afternoon I obtained the largest bullfrog I had yet seen, for with outstretched hind legs, it measured 12 inches, 6 lines in length. These frogs live along the banks of rivers and in swamps, like our Rana esculenta; other species live in dry forests. This afternoon Dr. Saynisch drove to Nazareth to make several natural history acquisitions for us.

Today we made ready for a five- to seven-day journey to the Delaware Gap and Mauch Chunk. Our landlord, Wöhler, will drive us with his horses. He knows the entire region with its rarities of nature and is himself a hunter. It was far preferable to travel this way with our own carriage rather than with the stage, for now we could stop whenever we wished, hunt, collect plants, etc. At five o’clock, temperature of 20°R [77°F, 25°C]. If this summer is any indication of what others are like, summers here are hotter and more uniform than in Europe, for, apart from several rainy days caused by thunderstorms, we have had very uniformly hot weather for all of July and August.