Turtle season.

September 15.

P. M. — Up Assabet. 

See many painted tortoise scales being shed, half erect on their backs. 

An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead, under water near shore; head and legs and tail hanging down straight. Turned it over, and to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle. 

I see many scales from the sternum of tortoises. 

Three weeks ago saw many brown thrashers, cat birds, robins, etc., on wild cherries. They are worth raising for the birds about you, though objectionable on account of caterpillars.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, September 15, 1855

Many scales from the sternum of tortoises . . .See August 31, 1856 ("A painted tortoise shedding its scales.”); September 3, 1856 (Painted tortoises with . . . fresh clean black scales . . ."); September 22, 1855 ("Many tortoise-scales about the river now.").

An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead . . . coupled with another. See October 21, 1857 ("I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted."); November 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta) and A Year in the Life of a Wood Turtle ("In late November. . .you might expect Wood Turtles in Vermont to be hunkered down in their hibernacula. Instead, I spotted 15 Wood Turtles, most of which were active underwater, including two mating pairs.")