Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/105

 an Indian Mission stood the ground is now &quot;overgrown with sumach and covered with gopher heaps." At half-past three in the afternoon &quot;a horned lark soared very high over the prairie, and sang the same twittering note &quot; heard so often by the Assabet. The next day he hears the cuckoo, sees a young eagle eating a blue jay, and notes that the Arabis lævigata is there the common one. Thus does this poet-naturalist, making his long last journey ostensibly in search of restored health, forget to record what is happening to his failing body, but devotes his hours as at home to the most minute and faithful record of what Nature had to show this favorite child of hers.

It will be noticed in the account of travelling expenses, soon to be given, that no dates occur between May 31 and June 19. During most of this time Thoreau was botanizing and fixing the dates of the blossoming of plants, or acquiring other facts in natural history which he thought important, however trivial they may seem to the casual reader. Thus, on the 5th of June he was at