Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/59

Rh and cracks. It is not likely that the owner has sprinkled seed here.

June 5, 1856. Everywhere now in dry pitch-pine woods stand the red lady's slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad, curving green leaves (some even in swamps), upholding their rich, striped, drooping sack.

A cuckoo's nest with three light bluish-green eggs, partly developed, short, with rounded ends, nearly of a size; in a black cherry-tree that had been lopped three feet from the ground, amid the thick sprouts; of twigs, lined with green leaves, pine needles, etc., and edged with some dry, branchy weeds. The bird stole off silently at first.

[June 10. The cuckoo of June 5 has deserted her nest, and I find the fragments of eggshells in it; probably because I found it.]

June 5, 1857. I am interested in each contemporary plant in my vicinity, and have attained to a certain acquaintance with the larger ones. They are cohabitants with me of this part of the planet, and they bear familiar names. Yet how essentially wild they are, as wild really as those strange fossil plants whose impression I see on my coal. Yet I can imagine that some race gathered those too with as much admiration and knew them as intimately as I do these,