Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/64

54 but they have laid their eggs in very few. I find none whole. Here is one which has made its hole with the hind part of its shell and its tail, apparently They are remarkably circumspect, and it is difficult to see one working. They stop instantly and draw in their heads, and do not move till you are out of sight, and then probably try a new place. They have dabbled in the sand and left the marks of their tails all around.

The black oaks, birches, etc., are covered with ephemerae of various sizes and colors, with one, two, or three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i. e., about seven. I am covered with them and much incommoded.

The air over the river meadows is saturated with sweetness, but I look round in vain for the source, on the yellowish sensitive fern and the reddish eupatorium springing up.

From time to time at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bull-frog, like a triton's horn. I am struck now by the large, light-purple, Viola palmatas rising above the grass near the river.

Of oak leaves, there is the small, firm, few-lobed, wholesome, dark-green shrub oak leaf, light beneath.

The more or less deeply cut, and more or less dark green, or sometimes reddish, black oak, not light beneath. These two, bristle-pointed.