Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/108

 very webbed feet and a peculiar snout, three sixteenths of an inch long. The head looked much like ours, and there was a short pointed tail. The whole creature was very flat, with a shell about seven or more inches long, and in depth about an inch and a half.

June 7th and 8th he sees a plant &quot;like young and downy oak shoots, just as they come out,&quot; and in the oak openings mixed with hazel, willow, and aspen, he finds roses, the smooth sumac, the lonicera, and the Seneca snakeroot (polygala Senega) just begun to blossom. The Thaspium aureum, of the apterum variety, he finds here very common amid bushes in the openings, and on lower ground. &quot;On these prairies the prevailing golden-rod, judging from the rudimentary leaf, and withered stem and head, is the Solidago rigida, and it is very abundant all over the prairie.&quot; The common lithospermum is the canescens. &quot;Parry says its root furnishes a dye commonly used by the Indians. Of the thaspium there are two forms common on the prairie, and perhaps the one varies into the other.&quot; He sees the Betula pumila,