Dragon-flies have begun to come out in numbers.

May 25. 

May 25,2019

Dragon-flies have begun to come out of their larva state in numbers, leaving the cases on the weeds, etc. See one tender and just out this forenoon.

Meadow fox-tail grass abundantly out (how long?), front of E. Hosmer's by bars and in E. Hubbard's meadow, front of meeting-house. 

The Salix petiolaris is either entire or serrate, and generally, I should now say, was becoming serrate, the later leaves, e. g. that one, a fertile one, nearly opposite the Shattuck oak. 

The river is quite high for the season, on account of the late rains. 

Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 25, 1859

Hear within a day or two what I call the sprayey note of the toad, different and later than its early ring.  See May 25, 1851 (“I hear the dreaming of the frogs.  So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer evening.”); May 25, 1855 ("Hear . . . the summer spray frog, amid the ring of toads.”); May 25, 1860  ("5 P.M. the toads ring loud and numerously, as if invigorated by this little moisture and coolness.”) See also  May 13, 1860 ("It is so warm that I hear the peculiar sprayey note of the toad generally at night."); May 16, 1853 ("Nature’appears to have passed a crisis. . ..  The sprayey dream of the toad has a new sound"); May 20, 1854 ("The steadily increasing sound of toads and frogs along the river with each successive warmer night is one of the most important peculiarities of the season. Their prevalence and loudness is in proportion to the increased temperature of the day. It is the first earth-song, beginning with the croakers, (the cricket's not yet), as if the very meads at last burst into a meadowy song."); June 12, 1855 (“I hear the toad, which I have called “spray frog” falsely, still. . . .A peculiarly rich, sprayey dreamer, now at 2 P. M.! . . . This rich, sprayey note possesses all the shore. It diffuses itself far and wide over the water and enters into every crevice of the noon, and you cannot tell whence it proceeds”); Compare May 25, 1852 ("I hear the first troonk of a bullfrog.”);  And see also June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog.") and note to May 6, 1858 ("I think that the different epochs in the revolution of the seasons may perhaps be best marked by the notes of reptiles. They express, as it were, the very feelings of the earth or nature.")(catologing the frogs of Massachsetts)