Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/182

172 impression it made. It suggests a vegetative force which may almost make man tremble for his dominion. It carries me back to the era of the formation of the coal measures, the age of the Saurus and the Pliosaurus, and when bull-frogs were as big as bulls. Its stem had something massy about it, like an oak, large in proportion to the weight it had to support (though not perhaps to the size of the cap), like the vast hollow columns under some piazzas, whose caps have hardly weight enough to hold their tops together. It made you think of pictures of parasols of Chinese mandarins, or it might have been used by the great fossil bullfrog in his walks. What part does it play in the economy of the world? I have just been out (7.30 ) to show my fungus. It is so fragile I was obliged to walk at a funereal pace for fear of jarring it. It is so delicately balanced that it falls to one side on the least inclination. It is rapidly curling up on the edge, and the rents increasing, until it is completely fringed, and is an inch wider there. It is melting in the sun and light, black drops and streams falling on my hand, and fragments of the black-fringed rim falling on the sidewalk. Evidently such a plant can only be seen in perfection in the early morning. It is a creature of the night, like the great moth. It is