Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/380

370 it. In one such I was surprised to see rutabaga turnips growing well and showing no effects of drouth, and still more surprised when the farmer showed me, with his hoe, that the earth was quite fresh and moist there only an inch beneath the surface. This he thought was the result of keeping the earth loose by cultivation.

July 10, 1853. The bream poised over its sandy nest on waving fin—how aboriginal! So it was poised here and watched its ova before the new world was known to the old. Still I see the little cavities of their nests along the shore.

July 10, 1854. The singing birds at present are (villageous) robin, chip-bird, warbling vireo, swallows; (rural) song-sparrow, seringo, flicker, king-bird, goldfinch, link of bobolink; cherry-bird; (sylvan) red-eye, tanager, wood-thrush, chewink, veery, oven-bird, all even at mid-day, cat-bird (full strain), whippoorwill, crows.

July 10, 1856. 5 Up Assabet. As I was bathing under the swamp white-oaks art; 6 heard a suppressed sound, often repeated, like perhaps the working of beer through a bunghole, which I already suspected to be produced by owls. I was uncertain whether it was far or near. Proceeding a dozen rods up stream on the south side, toward where a cat-bird was