Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/106

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Mrs. Hamilton’s, and on that day sees, just out, the fig wort, Scrophularia nodosa, and Osmorrhiza longistylis; on the next day the Heuchera hispida, on the prairie ("now in bloom at the East" he notes); the Carum Carui, "just fairly out," the Senecio tomentosus, the Platanthera bracteata (large-bracted green orchis), and in a wood, Amianthium, "especially a large form, but also a small form." In the afternoon of the same day, June 6, he finds "a wild pigeon’s nest in a young bass tree, ten feet from the ground, four or five rods south of Lake Calhoun; built over a broad fork of the tree, where a third slender twig divided it, and a fourth forked on it." To make this clearer, he drew on the page a slight sketch of the branching basswood, and then went on: "Built of slender hard twigs only, so open that I could see the eggs from the ground, and also so slight I could scarcely get to it without upsetting it. The bulk of the nest was six inches over; the ring of the concavity three-quarters of an inch thick, but irregular. At first (seeing the bird fly off) I thought it an unfinished nest."

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