Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/147

137 another at suitable intervals. Men talk of the rich song of other birds, the thrasher, mockingbird, nightingale. But I doubt, I doubt. They know not what they say. There is as great an interval between the thrasher and the wood-thrush as between Thompson's &quot;Seasons&quot; and Homer. The sweetness of the day crystallizes in this morning coolness.

June 14, 1854. Caught a locust, properly harvest fly, drumming on a birch, which and  think like the septendecim, except that ours has not red eyes, but black ones. Harris says of the other kind, the dog-day cicada (canicularis) or harvest fly, that it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of dog days; that he has heard it for many years in succession, with few exceptions, on the 25th of July.

June 14, 1857. [Plymouth.] B. M. W tells me that he learns from pretty good authority that Webster once saw the sea serpent. It seems it was first seen in the bay between Mauomet and Plymouth Beach by a perfectly reliable witness (many years ago) who was accustomed to look out on the sea with his glass every morning the first thing, as regularly as he ate his breakfast. One morning he saw this monster, with a head somewhat like a horse's, raised some six feet above the water, and his body, the size of a cask, trailing behind. He was