The ring of the toad.

May 1. 

Friday. 2 p.m. — First notice the ring of the toad, as I am crossing the Common in front of the meeting-house. 

There is a cool and breezy south wind, and the ring of the first toad leaks into the general stream of sound, unnoticed by most, as the mill-brook empties into the river and the voyager cannot tell if he is above or below its mouth. The bell was ringing for town meeting, and every one heard it, but none heard this older and more universal bell, rung by more native Americans all the land over. It is a sound from amid the waves of the aerial sea, that breaks on our ears with the surf of the air, a sound that is almost breathed with the wind, taken into the lungs instead of being heard by the ears. It comes from far over or through the troughs of the aerial sea, like a petrel, and who can guess by what pool the singer sits? whether behind the meeting-house horse-sheds, or from over the burying- ground hill, or from the riverside? 

A new reign has commenced. Bufo the First has ascended to his throne, the surface of the earth, led into office by the south wind. Bufo the Double-chinned inflates his throat. Attend to his message. Take off your greatcoats, swains! and prepare for the summer campaign. Hop a few paces further toward your goals. The measures I shall advocate are warmth, moisture, and low-flying insects. 

White-throated sparrow in shrub oaks by Walden road. 

Is that moss with little green pendulous fruit on reddish stems Bryum pyriform? 

Apparently a skunk has picked up what I took to be the dead shrew in the Goose Pond Path. How they ransack the paths these nights ! The ground is spotted with their probings. 

Plucked the Arum triphyllum, three inches high, with its acrid corm (solid bulb), from the edge of Saw Mill Brook. 

It is foolish for a man to accumulate material wealth chiefly, houses and land. Our stock in life, our real estate, is that amount of thought which we have had, which we have thought out. The ground we have thus created is forever pasturage for our thoughts. I fall back on to visions which I have had. What else adds to my possessions and makes me rich in all lands? If you have ever done any work with these finest tools, the imagination and fancy and reason, it is a new creation, independent on the world, and a possession forever. You have laid up something against a rainy day. You have to that extent cleared the wilderness. Is a house but a gall on the face of the earth, a nidus which some insect has provided for its young?

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 1, 1857

Apparently a skunk has picked up what I took to be the dead shrew in the Goose Pond Path. See July 31, 1856 ("Another short-tailed shrew dead in the wood-path."); July 12, 1856 (“I have found them thus three or four times before. . . .Have I not commonly noticed them dead after rain?”)

Plucked the Arum triphyllum, three inches high, with its acrid corm. See May 19, 1851 ("Find the Arum triphyllum and the nodding trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant's Swamp.")