Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/214

204 in other directions is five or six times as far. I knew it was a bad time to try my experiment just after such heavy rains and when the pines are effete,–a little too late. The wind was now blowing quite strong from the northeast, whereas all the pollen I had seen hitherto had been collected on the northeast sides of ponds by a southwest wind. I approached the pond from the northeast, and looking over it, and carefully along the shore there, could detect no pollen. I then proceeded to walk round it, but still could detect none. I then said to myself, if there was any here before the rain and northeast wind, it must have been on the northeast side, and then have been washed over quite to or on the shore. I looked there carefully, stooping down, and was gratified to find after all a distinct yellow line of pollen dust, about half an inch wide, or washing off to two or three times that width, quite on the edge, and some dead twigs which I took up from the wet shore were completely coated with it as with sulphur. This yellow line reached half a rod along the southwest side, and I then detected a little of the dust slightly graying the surface for two or three feet out there. When I thought I had failed, I was much pleased to detect after all this distinct yellow line revealing unmistakably the presence of pines in the neighborhood, and thus