Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/165

Rh each. Presently I saw a skunk making off with an undulating motion, a white streak above and a parallel and broader black one below; undoubtedly the robber.

A sweet brier, apparently yesterday.

Coming along I heard a singular sound as of a bird in distress amid the bushes, and turned to relieve it. Next thought of a squirrel in an apple-tree barking at me. Then found that it came from a hole in the ground under my feet, a loud sound between a grunting and a wheezing, yet not unlike the sound a red squirrel sometimes makes, though louder. Looking down the hole, I saw the tail and hind quarters of a wood-chuck which seemed to be contending with another farther in. Reaching down carefully I took hold of the tail, and though I had to pull very hard indeed, I drew him out between the rocks, a bouncing, great fat fellow, and tossed him a little way down the hill. As soon as he recovered from his bewilderment he made for the hole again, but I barring the way, he ran elsewhere.

To Baker Farm by boat.

Was that a smaller bittern or a meadow-hen that we started from out the button-bushes? What places for the mud-hen beneath the stems of the button-bushes along the shore, all shaggy with rootlets, as if all the weeds the river