Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/114

104 the woods. I observe and appreciate the shade, as it were the shadow of each particular leaf on the ground. I think that this peculiar darkness of the shade, of the foliage as seen between you and the sky, is not accounted for merely by saying that we have not yet got accustomed to clothed trees, but the leaves are rapidly acquiring a darker green, are more and more opaque, and, beside, the sky is lit with the intensest light. It reminds me of the thunder-cloud and the dark eyelash of summer. Great cumuli are slowly drifting in the intensest blue sky, with glowing white borders. The red-eye sings incessant, and the more indolent yellow-throated vireo, and the creeper, and perhaps the redstart? or else it is the parti-colored warbler.

I perceive that scent from the young, sweet fern shoots and withered blossoms, which made the first settlers of Concord to faint on their journey.

See a bream's nest, two and one fourth feet in diameter, laboriously scooped out, and the sur rounding bottom for a diameter of eight feet! comparatively white and clean, while all beyond is mud, leaves, etc., and a very large, green, and cupreous bream, with a red spot on the operculum, is poised over the centre, while half a dozen shiners are hovering about, apparently watching a chance to steal the spawn.