in Thoreau’s Journal:
I notice the downy-swaddled plants now & in the fall, the fragrant life everlasting and the rib-wort-innocents born in a cloud.

Those algae I saw the other day in John Hosmers ditch were the most like seaweed than anything else I have seen in the country—- they made me look at the whole earth as a seashore. reminded me of Nereids-sea nymphs, triton-Proteus &c &c-made the ditches fabulate in an older than the arrowheaded character. Better learn this strange character which nature uses to day -than the Sanskrit-books in the brooks-