Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/181

grass, near a walnut, a whitish object, like a stone with a white top, or a skunk erect, for it was black below. It was an enormous toadstool, or fungus, a sharply conical parasol in the form of a sugar loaf, slightly turned up at the edges, which were rent half an inch for every inch or two. The whole length was sixteen inches. The pileus, or cap, was six inches long by seven in width at the rim, though it appeared longer than wide. . . . The stem was about one inch in diameter and naked. The top of the cap was quite white within and without, not smooth, but with a stringy kind of scales turned upward at the edge. These declined downward into a coarse hoariness, as if the compact white fibres had been burst by the spreading gills. It looked much like an old felt hat pushed up into a cone, its rim all ragged, with some meal shaken upon it. It was almost big enough for a child's head. It was so delicate and fragile that its whole cap trembled at the least touch, and as I could not lay it down without injuring it, I was obliged to carry it home all the way in my hand, erect, while I paddled my boat with one hand. It was a wonder how its soft cone ever broke through the earth. Such growths ally our age to those earlier periods which geology reveals. I wondered if it had not some relation to the skunk, though not in odor, yet in its color and the gen-