How many turtles put into the river?

May 19

Put my little turtles into the river. They had not noticeably increased in size, – or hardly. Three had died within a week for want of attention, two mud turtles and one musk turtle. Two were missing, one mud and one musk. Five musk were put into the river.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, May 19, 1855

Little mud turtles. See April 1, 1858 ("I see on the wet mud a little snapping turtle evidently hatched last year . . . Talk of great heads, look at this one!");  June 7, 1854 (“Now I see a snapping turtle . . . It had just been excavating.”); August 26, 1854 ("Open one of my snapping turtle's eggs . . . When I behold this monster thus steadily advancing toward maturity, all nature abetting, I am convinced that there must be an irresistible necessity for mud turtles."); September 11, 1852 ("Genius is like the snapping-turtle born with a great developed head.");  September 16, 1854 ("I find the mud turtle’s eggs at the Desert all hatched, one still left in the nest . . . At length it puts out its head and legs, turns itself round, and crawls to the water.");

Little musk turtles. See September 9, 1854 ("I find a little hole, three quarters of an inch or an inch over, above my small tortoise eggs, and find a young tortoise coming out . . . It is the Sternothærus odoratus — already has the strong scent — and now has drawn in its head and legs.");  September 11, 1854 ("Measured to-day the little Sternothærus odoratus which came out the ground in the garden September 9th . . . It does not so much impress me as an infantile beginning of life as an epitome of all the past of turtledom and of the earth. I think of it as the result of all the turtles that have been.")  See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musk Turtle (Sternothaerus odoratus)