Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/106

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

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."

96