Page:Summer - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/61

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
SUMMER.
51

Corydalis glauca, a delicate glaucous plant rarely met with, with delicate flesh-colored and yellow flowers, covered with a glaucous bloom, on dry rocky hills. Perhaps it suggests gentility. Set it down as early as middle of May or earlier. . . .

This morning I hear the note of young bluebirds in the air, which have recently taken wing, and the old birds keep up such a warbling and twittering as remind me of spring.

According to S——'s account, she must have seen an emperor moth, "pea-green with some thing like maple keys for tail," in a lady's hand in Cambridge to-day. So one may have come out of the chrysalid seen May 23d.

p. m. To Conanturn by boat. . . . Blue-eyed grass now begins to give that slaty blue tint to meadows.

The deep shadow of Conantum Cliff and of mere prominences in the hills, now at mid-afternoon as we row by, is very interesting. It is the most pleasing contrast of light and shade that I notice. Methinks that in winter a shadow is not attractive. The air is very clear, at least as we look from the river valley, and the land scape all swept and brushed. We seem to see to some depth into the side of Fair Haven Hill.

The side-saddle flowers are now in their prime. There are some very large ones here-