Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/170

160 The note of the cherry-bird is fine and ringing, but peculiar and very noticeable. With its crest it is a resolute and combative looking bird.

Meadow-sweet to-morrow.

June 16, 1855. See young and weak striped squirrels now-a-days with slender tails, asleep on horizontal boughs above their holes, or moving feebly about. Might catch them.

June 16, 1858. How agreeable and whole some the fragrance of the low blackberry blossoms, reminding one of all the rosaceous, fruit-bearing plants, so near and dear to our humanity. It is one of the most deliciously fragrant flowers, reminding of wholesome fruits.

June 16, 1860. It appears to me that the following phenomena occur simultaneously, say June 12, viz.: Heat about 85° at 2 True summer.

Hylodes cease to peep.

Purring frogs (Rana palustris) cease.

Lightning bugs first seen.

Bull-frogs trump generally.

Afternoon showers almost regular.

Turtles fairly and generally begin to lay.

June 17, 1840. Our lives will not attain to be spherical by lying on one or the other side forever, but only so far as we resign ourselves to the law of gravity in us, will our axis become