I keep dry by following this blue guide

June 26.

Still hazy and dogdayish.

Go to the menagerie in the afternoon.

At 5 P. M., — river ten and a half inches above summer level, — cross the meadow to the Hemlocks.

The blue-eyed grass, now in its prime, occupies the drier and harder parts of the meadow, where I can walk dry-shod, but where the coarser sedge grows and it is lower and wetter there is none of it.

I keep dry by following this blue guide, and the grass is not very high about it. You cross the meadows dry-shod by following the winding lead of the blue-eyed grass, which grows only on the firmer, more elevated, and drier parts.

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast.

Under the Hemlocks, on the bare bank, apparently the Aira flexuosa, not long.

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders, etc. Leafets from one fortieth to one twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter. When separated from the continuous film of down they have a tendency to sink.

The Canada naiad (?), which I gathered yesterday, had perhaps bloomed. Thought I detected with my glass something like stamens about the little balls.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 26, 1860



Go to the menagerie in the afternoon. See June 26, 1851 ("Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always sur prised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts from Africa and Asia and also from South America, — on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard , — and their general similarity . All these wild animals — lions, tigers, chetas, leopards, etc . — have one hue, — tawny and commonly spotted or striped, — what you may call pard - color , a color and marking which I had not as sociated with America  These are wild beasts. What constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a tame one  How much more human the one than the other  Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal Bengal tiger or this leopard. They have the character and the importance of another order of men . The majestic lion, the king of beasts, he must retain his title ")

The hemlocks are too much grown now and are too dark a green to show the handsomest bead-work by contrast. See June 5, 1853 ("The fresh light green shoots of the hemlocks have now grown half an inch or an inch, spotting the trees, contrasting with the dark green of last year's foliage."); June 7, 1860  ("the bead-work of the hemlock"); June 11, 1859 ("Hemlocks are about at height of their beauty, with their fresh growth.")

Young black willows have sprouted and put forth their two minute round leafets where the cottony seeds have lodged in a scum against the alders. See, June 26, 1859 ("The black willow down . . . rests on the water by the sides of the stream, where caught by alders, etc., in narrow crescents ten and five feet long, at right angles with the bank, so thick and white ");  June 27, 1860 ("The black willow down is now washed up and collected against the alders and weeds."); June 29, 1857 ("The river is now whitened with the down of the black willow, and I am surprised to see a minute plant abundantly springing from its midst and greening it,. . ., — like grass growing in cotton in a tumbler.")