The ripple marks on the sandy bottom of Flint’s Pond, where the rushes grow, feel hard to the feet of the wader, though the sand is really soft,—made firm perchance by the weight of the water.[28] The rushes over the water are white with the exuviæ, the skeletons, of insects,—like blossoms,—which have deposited their eggs on their tops. The skeletons looked like those of shad-flies, though some living insects were not. I have seen crimson-colored eggs painting the leaves of the black birch quite beautifully. * * * * * And now the ascending sun has contracted the shadow of the solitary tree, and they are compelled to seek the neighboring wood for shelter. _June 21._ The flowers of the white pine are now in their prime, but I see none of their pollen on the pond. * * * * * This piece of rural pantomime, this bucolic, is enacted before me every day. Far over the hills on that fair hillside, I look into the pastoral age. * * * * * But these are only the disadvantages of a fire. It is without doubt an advantage on the whole. It sweeps and ventilates the forest floor, and makes it clear and clean. It is nature’s besom. By destroying the punier underwood it gives prominence to the larger and sturdier trees, and makes a wood in which you can go and come. I have often remarked with how much more comfort and pleasure I could walk in woods through which a fire had run the previous year. It will clean the forest floor like a broom perfectly smooth and clear,—no twigs left to crackle underfoot, the dead and rotten wood removed,—and thus in the course of two or three years new huckleberry fields are created for the town,—for birds and men. When the lightning burns the forest its Director makes no apology to man, and I was but His agent. Perhaps we owe to this accident partly some of the noblest natural parks. It is inspiriting to walk amid the fresh green sprouts of grass and shrubbery pushing upward through the charred surface with more vigorous growth. * * * * * Wherever a man goes men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions.[29] Sometimes an arrowhead is found with the mouldering shaft still attached. (_Vide_ Charles Hubbard.) A little boy from Compton, R. I., told me that his father found an arrowhead sticking in a dead tree and nearly buried in it. Where is the hand that drew that bow? The arrow shot by the Indian is still found occasionally, sticking in the trees of our forest. It is astonishing how much information is to be got out of very unpromising witnesses. A wise man will avail himself of the observation of all. Every boy and simpleton has been an observer in some field,—so many more senses they are, differently located. Will inquire of eyes what they have seen, of ears what they have heard, of hands what they have done, of feet where they have been.