Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/144

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
134
SUMMER.

leaves and those ring spots on maple leaves I see to-day, exactly the same pattern with last year's, and the crimson frosting on the black birch leaves I saw the other day. Then there are the huckleberry apples and the large green puffs on the panicled andromeda, and also I see now the very light or whitish solid and juicy apples on the swamp pink with a fungus-like smell when broken.

Erigeron strigosum. Some white, some purplish, common now, and daisy-like. I put it rather early on the 9th.

Instead of the white lily which requires mud or the sweet flag, here grows the blue flag in the water, thinly about the shore. The color of the flower harmonizes singularly with the water. With our boat's prow to the shore, we sat half an hour this evening, listening to the bull-frogs. What imperturbable fellows! One sits perfectly still behind some blades of grass while the dog is chasing others within two feet. Some are quite handsome, large, and spotted. We see here and there light-colored, greenish, or white spots on the bottom, where a fish—a bream, perhaps—has picked away all the dead wood and leaves for her nest over a space of eighteen inches or more. Young bream, from one to three inches long, light- colored and transparent, are swimming