Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/278

268. She is most significant to a lover. If I have no friend, what is Nature to me? She ceases to be morally significant.

Is not this period more than any other distinguished for flowers when roses, swamp pinks, morning glories, arethusas, orchises, blue-flags, epilobiums, mountain laurel, and white lilies are all in blossom at once.

June 30, 1860. Try the temperature of the springs and pond. At 2.15, the atmosphere north of house is 83° above zero.

The same afternoon, the water of the boiling spring, 45°.

Our well, after pumping, 49°.

Brister's spring, 49°.

Walden Pond at bottom, in four feet of water, 71°.

River at one rod from shore, 77°.

(2, July 1, the air is 77° and the river 75°.)

I see that the temperature of the boiling spring, on the 6th of March, 1846, was also 45°, and I suspect it varies very little throughout the year.

In sand, both by day and night, you find the heat to be permanently greatest some three inches below the surface. It is so to-day, and this is about the depth at which the tortoises place their eggs, where the temperature is