Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/327

Rh and quarter of an inch wide, with a waving fringe about it, and another smaller opening close to it without any fringe, through both of which I see distinctly into the white interior of the fish. When I touch one, he instantly closes his shell, and, if taken out quickly, spurts water like a salt-water clam. Evidently taking in their food and straining it with short waving motion of the ciliæ, there they lie both under the pads and in the sun. The common carrot by the roadside, Daucus carota, is in some respects an interesting plant. Its umbel, as Bigelow says, is shaped like a bird's nest, and its large pinnatifid involucre, interlacing by its fine segments, resembles a fanciful ladies' work-basket.

July 3, 1853. The oven-bird's nest in Laurel Glen is near the edge of an open pine wood under a fallen pine twig and a heap of dry oak leaves. Within these on the ground is the nest with a dome-like top and an arched entrance of the whole height and width on one side. Lined within with dry pine needles. The chestnut behind my old house site is fully out, and apparently has been partly so for several days.

Black huckleberries.—Tansy on the causeway.

July 3, 1854. I hear the purple finch these days about the houses, à twitter witter weeter wee, à witter witter wee.