Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/152

142 notes in which he is unrivaled, as if his kind had learned this and no more, anciently.

I perceive, as formerly, a white froth dripping from the pitch pines just at the base of the new shoots. It has no taste.

The polly wogs in the pond are now full-tailed. The hickory leaves are blackened by a recent frost, which reminds me that this is near their northern limit.

The rapidity with which the grass grows is remarkable. The 25th of May I walked to the hills in Wayland, and when I returned across lots do not remember that I had much occasion to think of the grass, or to go round any fields to avoid treading on it. But just a week afterward, at Worcester, it was high and waving in the fields, and I was to some extent confined to the road, and the same was the case here. Apparently in a month you get from fields which you can cross without hesitation, to haying time. It has grown you hardly know when, be the weather what it may, sunshine or storm.

I start up a solitary woodcock in the shade of some copse; it goes off with a startled, rattling, hurried note.

After walking by night several times, I now walk by day, but I am not aware of any crowning advantage in it. I see small objects better, but it does not enlighten me any. The day is more trivial.