The season of pollywogs at Moore's Swamp on Bedford Road.

May 19. 

A. M. — Surveying D. Shattuck's wood-lot beyond Peter's. 

See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp on Bedford road.

Digging again to find a stake in woods, came across a nest or colony of wood ants, yellowish or sand-color, a third of an inch long, with their white grubs, now squirming, still larger, and emitting that same pungent spicy odor, perhaps too pungent to be compared with lemon-peel. 

This is the second time I have found them in this way this spring (vide April 28th). Is not the pungent scent emitted by wasps quite similar? 

I see the ferns all blackened on the hillside next the meadow, by the frost within a night or two. 

That ant scent is not at all sickening, but tonic, and reminds me of a bitter flavor like that of peach-meats.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1857

See myriads of minute pollywogs, recently hatched, in the water of Moore's Swamp. See May 20, 1856 ("At Moore’s Swamp on Bedford road, myriads of pollywogs half an inch long darken or blacken the shore, chiefly head as yet.");  May 31, 1857 ("In the ditches in Moore's Swamp on the new Bedford road, the myriads of pollywogs, now three quarters of an inch long, crowding close to the edge, make a continuous black edging to the pool a foot wide. I see where thousands have been left high and dry and are now trodden into the sand, yet preserving their forms, spotting it with black."); June 15, 1855 ("To Moore’s Swamp. . . . Many pollywogs an inch long."); June 20, 1854 ("A cloud of minute black pollywogs in a muddy pool.")

This is the second time I have found them in this way this spring. See April 28, 1857 ("Looking for an "old pine stump" mentioned in a deed . . .we turned up. . .a large body of short, chunked, yellowish ants . . . a very strong penetrating scent, yet agreeable and very spicy . . .very strong lemon-peel.")

May 19.  See A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, May 19

A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau

"A book, each page written in its own season,

out-of-doors, in its own locality.”

~edited, assembled and rewritten by zphx © 2009-2021