Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/189

Rh sand was quite firm. I took out forty-two eggs closely packed, and Dugan says he had previously taken one. They are dirty, white and spherical, a little more than one and a six teenth of an inch in diameter, soft-shelled so that my finger left a permanent dimple in them. It was now ten days since they had been laid, and a little more than half of each was darker colored (probably the lower half) and the other, white and dry-looking. I opened one, but could detect no organization with the unarmed eye. The halves of the shell, as soon as emptied, curled up as we see them where the skunks have sucked them. They must all have been laid at one time. If it were not for the skunks and probably other animals, we should be overrun with them. Who can tell how many tortoise eggs are buried in this small desert.

Often certain words or syllables which have suggested themselves remind one better of a bird's strain than the most elaborate and closest imitation.

June 18, 1855. To Hemlocks. At 3, as I walked up the bank by the Hemlocks, I saw a painted tortoise just beginning its hole. Then another a dozen rods from the river on the bare, barren field near some pitch pines, where the earth was covered with cladonias, cinquefoil, sorrel, etc. Its hole was about two thirds done.