Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/110

 among them the larger yellow lady’s-slipper.&quot; There he saw the Maryland yellow-throat, of a purple hue, and was rejoiced to find a rose-breasted grosbeak's nest.

It was ten feet high up in a young bass, and had four eggs in it,—green, spotted with brown, the larger end of some almost all brown. The whole nest was six to eight inches in diameter, and about four inches high; the inside diameter about three inches and its inside depth two inches. The outside was built of coarser weed-stems and some climbing herbaceous vine; the rest was made of finer brown weed-stems, at last quite fine like root fibres within. The male bird was on the nest, and when scared off kept within three or four feet. The eggs were fresh.

Of course they were not disturbed by Thoreau, except to note their colors. He then passed on to note in the woods northwest of the lake the red oak, the basswood, and the hop-hornbeam or Ostrya. Geraniums and thaspiums, he says, are exceedingly abundant in the brushy woods and oak