c 44 n 



BUTTERCUPS BY THE ROADSIDE 



June 4, 1860. The clear brighitness of June was 

 well represented yesterday by the buttercups along 

 the roadside. Their yellow so glossy and varnished 

 within, but not without. Surely there is no reason 

 why the new butter should not be yellow now. 



Journal, xiii, 328. 



LUPINES 1 



June 5, 1852. The lupine is now in its glory. It is 

 the more important because it occurs in such ex- 

 tensive patches, even an acre or more together, and 

 of such a pleasing variety of colors, — purple, pink, 

 or lilac, and white, — especially with the sun on it, 

 when the transparency of the flower makes its color 

 changeable. It paints a whole hillside with its blue, 

 making such a field (if not meadow) as Proserpine 

 might have wandered in. Its leaf was made to be 

 covered with dewdrops. I am quite excited by this 

 prospect of blue flowers in clumps with narrow inter- 

 vals. Such a profusion of the heavenly, the elysian, 

 color, as if these were the Elysian Fields. They say 

 the seeds look like babies' faces, and hence the flower 

 is so named. No other flowers exhibit so much blue. 



' For various reasons (chiefly increased pasturage) the lupines in Con- 

 cord have largely disappeared. Repeated visits to the localities noted 

 by Thoreau have failed to reveal more than an occasional straggling 

 plant. H. W. G. 



