Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/94

84 tall, white erigeron just out. I think it is strigosum, but tinged with purple sometimes.

The bull-frogs are in full blast to-night. I do not hear a toad from my window, only the crickets beside. The toads I have but rarely heard of late. So there is an evening for the toads, and another for the bull-frogs.

June 9, 1854. To Well Meadow. The summer aspect of the river begins, perhaps, when the utricularia vulgaris is first seen on the surface, as yesterday.

As I go along the railroad causeway I see, in the cultivated ground, a lark flashing his white tail, and showing his handsome yellow breast with its black crescent, like an Indian locket. For a day or two I have heard the fine seringo note of the cherry birds, and seen them flying past, the only? birds, methinks, that I see in small flocks now, except swallows.

Find the great fringed orchis out apparently two or three days, two are almost fully out, two or three only budded; a large spike of peculiarly delicate, pale purple flowers growing in the luxuriant and shady swamp, amid hellebores, ferns, golden senecio, etc. It is remarkable that this, one of the fairest of all our flowers, should also be one of the rarest, for the most part, not seen at all The village belle never sees this more delicate belle of the swamp. How little