I see a toad only an inch and a quarter long.

May 13. 

Work in garden. I see a toad only an inch and a quarter long; so they must be several years growing. 

P. M. — To Leaning Hemlocks. 

A large bunch of oat spawn in meadow water. 

Scare up a black duck and apparently two summer ducks. 

Canoe birch, how long? 

Sternothaerus.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 13, 1857

A large bunch of oat spawn in meadow water.  See May 13, 1858 ("The large globular masses of oat spawn. . . look like a seedy fruit which is divested of its rind.”)See also May 6, 1856 (“Oat spawn showing little pollywogs (?) in meadow water.”); May 11, 1855 (“See oat-seed spawn — a mass as big as fist —- on bottom; of brown jelly composed of smaller globules, each with a fish-like tadpole, color of a seed.”) Compare April 4, 1857 (“very handsome spherical masses of transparent jelly, two and a half to three inches in diameter, suspended near the surface of some weed, as goldenrod or aster, and consisting of globules about a third of an inch in diameter, with a black or dark centre as big as a large shot.”)