Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/71

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hill Annursnac, in its New England variety, but in this western form not before seen by Thoreau.


The fine southernwood or wormwood scented plant is very plentiful on the bluff side. Also one of the new senecios, with stem leaves pinnatifid, out sometimes. A little plant gone to seed with white pods, and a small white cruciferous plant was also on this side.

In a marshy spot behind our hotel, up a slope, was a large, podded, rose-colored flower.

I had seen the common strawberry at Redwood, and found the butterweed a prevalent weed where the Indians had cultivated.


Appropriate to this mention of cultivation by the Indians, may be quoted what the Swiss naturalist, Édouard Desor, told Thoreau in 1850 about the Indian ignorance of specific names for the many wildflowers by which they were surrounded in their prairie or woodland wigwams. Many years ago Ellery Channing copied from Henry's Journal, 1850, p. 145, this passage into a fly-leaf of