Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/246

236 shorter bush, with more rigid and darker leaves, and dark, blue berries, with often a sort of wooliness on them. Both these are now in their prime. These are the first berries after strawberries, or the first and, I think, the sweetest bush berries, somewhat like high blueberries, but not so hard. Much eaten by insects, worms, etc., as big as the largest blueberries or peas. These are the &quot;service berries&quot; which the Indians of the north and the Canadians use &quot;la poire&quot; of the latter. They, by a little, precede the early blueberry (though H brought two quarts of the last, day before yesterday), being now in their prime, while blueberries are but just beginning. I never saw nearly so many before. It is a very agreeable surprise. I hear the cherry-birds and others about me, no doubt attracted by this fruit. It is owing to some peculiarity of the season that they bear fruit. I have picked a quart of them for a pudding. I felt all the while I was picking them, in the low, light, waving, shrubby wood they make, as if I were in a foreign country. Several old farmers say, &quot;Well, though I have lived seventy years, I never saw nor heard of them.&quot; I think them a delicious berry. No doubt they require only to be more abundant every year to be appreciated.

I think it must be the purple finch with the crimson head and shoulders which I see and