Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/90

80 cherries a very important one, yet Evelyn says, &quot;We may read that the peach was at first accounted so tender and delicate a tree as that it was believed to thrive only in Persia; and even in the days of Galen it grew no nearer than Egypt of all the Roman provinces, but was not seen in the city till about thirty years before Pliny's time;&quot; but now it is the principal crop cultivated in Lincoln in New England, and it is also cultivated extensively in the West, and on lands not half a dozen years vacated by the Indians. Also, &quot;It was six hundred and eighty years after the foundation of Rome ere Italy had tasted a cherry of their own, which, being then brought thither out of Pontus, did after one hundred and twenty years travel ad ultimos Britannos,&quot; and, I may add, Lincolnos. As Evelyn says, &quot;Methinks this should be a wonderful incitement.&quot;

He well says, &quot;a sobbing rain.&quot; Evelyn's love of his subject teaches him to use many expressive words He speaks of pines &quot;pearling out into gums.&quot; He talks of modifying the air as well as the soil about plants, making &quot;the remedy as well regional as topical.&quot; This suggests the propriety of Shakespeare's expression, &quot;the region cloud,&quot; region meaning thus upper regions relatively to the earth. He speaks of a &quot;dewie sperge or brush&quot; to be used instead of