* * * * * Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in the fields. When the frogs dream, and the grass waves, and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat disposes to bathe in the ponds and streams, then is summer begun. June 9th, 1850, Walden is still rising, though the rains have ceased and the river has fallen very much. I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover the surface of the pond. Most of the pines at the north-northwest end have none, and on some there is only one pollen-bearing flower. * * * * * I saw a striped snake which the fire in the woods had killed, stiffened and partially blackened by the flames, with its body partly coiled up and raised from the ground, and its head still erect as if ready to dart out its tongue and strike its foe. No creature can exhibit more venom than a snake, even when it is not venomous, strictly speaking. The fire ascended the oak trees very swiftly by the moss which fringed them. * * * * * It has a singular effect on us when we hear the geologist apply his terms to Judea,—speak of “limestone” and “blocks of trap and conglomerate, boulders of sandstone and quartz” there. Or think of a chemical analysis of the water of the Dead Sea! The pitch and white pines are two years or more maturing their seed. Certain rites are practiced by the Smrities (among the Hindoos) at the digging of wells. In early times the Brahmans, though they were the legislators of India, possessed no executive power and lived in poverty; yet they were for the most part independent and respected. Galbraith’s Math. Tables, Edinburgh, 1834. For descriptions of instruments he refers to Jones’s edition of Adam’s Geom. and Graphical Essays, Biot’s Traité d’Astronomie Physique, Base du Système Métrique, Woodhouse’s, Vince’s, and Pearson’s Treatises of Astronomy. For problems connected with trigonometrical surveying, to the third volume of Hutton’s Course of Math. by Dr. O. Gregory, Baron Zach’s work on the Attraction of Mountains, the Base du Système de Métrique Décimal, and Puissant’s Géodesie. Olive or red seems the fittest color for a man, a denizen of the woods. The _pale white man_! I do not wonder that the African pitied him.[19] The white pine cones are now two inches long, curved sickle-like from the topmost branches, reminding you of the tropical trees which bear their fruit at their heads.[20] The life in us is like the water in the river; it may rise this year higher than ever it was known to before and flood the uplands—even this may be the eventful year—and drown out all our muskrats.[21] There [are] as many strata at different levels of life as there are leaves in a book. Most men probably have lived in two or three. When on the higher levels we can remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we cannot remember the higher.