The Boston collection

June 13. 

To Boston. 

My rail's egg of June 1st looks like that of the Virginia rail in the Boston collection. 

A boy brought me a remarkably large cuckoo's egg on the 11th. Was it not that of the yellow-billed? The one in the collection looks like it. This one at B. is not only larger but lighter- colored. 

In the plates of Hooker's "Flora Boreali-Americana," the leaves of Vaccinium coespitosum are not so wide as the fruit; yet mine of Tuckerman's Ravine may be it.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 13, 1859

My rail's egg of June 1st. See June 1, 1859 ("Some boys found yesterday, in tussock of sedge amid some flags in a wet place in Cyrus Hosmer's meadow, west of the willow-row, six inches above the water, the nest evidently of a rail, with seven eggs.I got one to-day. It is cream-colored, sprinkled with reddish-brown spots and more internal purplish ones, on most eggs (not on mine) chiefly about the larger end.")

A large cuckoo's egg. See June 5, 1856 ("A cuckoo’s nest with three light bluish-green eggs partly developed, short with rounded ends, nearly of a size;"); see also June 10, 1856 ("The cuckoo of June 5th has deserted her nest, and I find the fragments of egg-shells in it; probably because I found it.")

Mine of Tuckerman's Ravine. See July 19, 1858 (summing up the prevailing plants on Mt. Washington.)