Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/41

 over the prairie in Illinois, as at Cape Cod, at mid-day. Heard the whippoorwill at Dunleith (?). Saw a large hawk or eagle, a pair (blackish) over the bluffs on the Mississippi; larks on the prairies in Illinois and Michigan, and along the Mississippi; crows along that river, and the blue jay, kingfisher, and passenger pigeon,—the latter Horace Mann saw in Illinois. At St. Anthony I saw a red-headed woodpecker on a telegraph-post within a stone’s throw of the post-office.

So much for the birds. Of the trees, shrubs, and flowers we have this account:

From the back of the town (St. Anthony) to the bur-oaks, a mile or more, the largest trees two feet in diameter, or averaging one foot; and thirty feet high; what oaks and maples are they? I see the sugar-maple and a little of the white. What Juglandacæ?—butternut and hickory; the celtis (?) willows and grasses. The bur-oaks are low and spreading; the bark generally darker than a white oak which grows in the woods.