Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/143

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SUMMER.
133

Peabody says that the night-hawk retires to rest about the time the whippoorwill begins its song. The whippoorwill begins now at half-past seven. I hear the night-hawk after nine o'clock. He says the latter flies low in the evening, but it also flies high, as it must needs do to make the booming sound.

Not much before ten o'clock does the moonlight night begin, when man is asleep and day fairly forgotten. Then is the beauty of moonlight seen upon lonely pastures where cattle are silently feeding. Then let me walk in a diversified country of hill and dale, with heavy woods on one side, and copses and scattered trees enough to give me shadows. As I return, a mist is on the river, which is thus taken into the bosom of Nature again.

June 14, 1852. Saw a wild rose from the cars in Weston. The early red roses are out in gardens at home.

June 14, 1853. p. m. To White's Pond. Heard the first locust from amid the shrubs by the roadside. He comes with heat.

Snake sloughs are found nowadays, bleached and whitish.

I observed the cotton of aphides on the alders yesterday and to-day. How regularly these phenomena appear, even the stains or spots or galls on leaves, as that bright yellow on blackberry