Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/118

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
108
SUMMER.

eggs, it runs the risk of having its entrails plucked out. That is the reason that the box turtle, which lives entirely on the land, is made to shut itself up entirely within its shell, and I suspect that the mud tortoise only comes forth by night. What need the turtle has of some homy shield over those weaker parts, avenues to its entrails. I saw several of these painted turtles dead on the bottom.

Already I see those handsome fungi on the red maple leaves, yellow within, with a green centre, then the light red ring deepening to crimson.

On our way up, we eat our dinner at Eice's shore, and looked over the meadows covered there with waving sedge, light glaucous as it is bent by the wind, reflecting a grayish or light glaucous light from its under-side.

Looking at a hill-side of young trees, what various shades of green. The oaks generally are a light, tender, and yellowish-green. The white birches dark green now. The maples dark and silvery.

The white lily-pads, reddish, and showing their crimson under-sides from time to time, when the wind blows hardest.

June 12, 1851. Listen to music religiously, as if it were the last strain you might hear.

There would be this advantage in traveling in