A very earnest and pressing business.

June 11. 

P. M. — To Assabet Bath. 

The fertile Salix alba is conspicuous now at a distance, in fruit, being yellowish and drooping. 

Hear the parti-colored warbler. 

Sylvia Americana

[Sylvia Americana [or "parti-colored warbler,"]:

 J J. Audubon's blue yellow-backed warbler,

 now Northern Parula warbler (Setophaga americana )]

Examine the stone-heaps. One is now a foot above water and quite sharp. They contain, apparently freshly piled up, from a wheelbarrow to a cartload of stones; but I can find no ova in them. 

I see a musquash dive head foremost (as he is swimming) in the usual way, being scared by me, but without making any noise.

Saw a painted turtle on the gravelly bank just south of the bath-place, west side, and suspected that she had just laid (it was mid-afternoon). So, examining the ground, I found the surface covered with loose lichens, etc., about one foot behind her, and digging, found five eggs just laid one and a half or two inches deep, under one side. It is remarkable how firmly they are packed in the soil, rather hard to extract, though but just buried. 

I notice that turtles which have just commenced digging will void considerable water when you take them up. This they appear to have carried up to wet the ground with. 

Saw half a dozen Emys insculpta preparing to dig now at mid-afternoon, and one or two had begun at the most gravelly spot there; but they would not proceed while I watched, though I waited nearly half an hour, but either rested perfectly still with heads drawn partly in, or, when a little further off, stood warily looking about with their necks stretched out, turning their dark and anxious-looking heads about. 

It seems a very earnest and pressing business they are upon. They have but a short season to do it in, and they run many risks. 

Having succeeded in finding the E. picta’s eggs, I thought I would look for the E. insculpta's at Abel Hosmer's rye-field. So, looking carefully to see where the ground had been recently disturbed, I dug with my hand and could directly feel the passage to the eggs, and so discovered two or three nests with their large and long eggs, – five eggs in one of them. It seems, then, that if you look carefully soon after the eggs are laid in such a place, you can find the nests, though rain or even a dewy night might conceal the spot. I saw half a dozen E. insculpta digging at mid-afternoon. 

Near a wall thereabouts, saw a little woodchuck, about a third grown, resting still on the grass within a rod of me, as gray as the oldest are, but it soon ran into the wall. 

Edward Hoar has seen the triosteum out, and Euphorbia Cyparissias (how long?), and a Raphanus Rapha nistrum, the last at Waltham; also Eriophorum polystachyon.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 11, 1858

The fertile Salix alba is conspicuous now at a distance, in fruit, being yellowish and drooping. See  May 10, 1854 ("I perceive the sweetness of the willows on the causeway."); May 10, 1858 ("For some days the Salix alba have shown their yellow wreaths here and there, suggesting the coming of the yellowbird, and now they are alive with them"); May 10, 1860 ("Salix alba flower in prime and resounding with the hum of bees.>".May 12, 1855 ("I perceive the fragrance of the Salix alba, now in bloom, more than an eighth of a mile distant. They now adorn the causeways with their yellow blossoms and resound with the hum of bumblebees,"); May 14, 1852 ("Going over the Corner causeway, the willow blossoms fill the air with a sweet fragrance, and I am ready to sing,")

The parti-colored warbler. See June 13, 1858 ("I hear and see the parti-colored warbler, blue yellow-backed, here on the spruce trees. It probably breeds here. [Ledum Swamp]"); June 22, 1856 ("The woods still resound with the note of my tweezer-bird, or Sylvia Americana.") See also A Book of the Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau, the parti-colored warbler (Sylvia Americana)

Examine the stone-heaps . . . but I can find no ova in them. See May 4, 1858 ("I asked [a fisherman] if he knew what fish made the stone-heaps in the river. He said the lamprey eel.”) May 8, 1858 ("Mr. Wright . . . an old fisherman, remembers the lamprey eels well, which he used to see in the Assabet there, but thinks that there have been none in the river for a dozen years and that the stone-heaps are not made by them . . .I saw one apparently just formed yesterday . . . I cannot detect any ova or young fishes or eels in the heap "); May 12, 1858 ("George, the carpenter, says that he used to see a great many stone-heaps in the Saco in Bartlett, near the White Mountains, like those in the Assabet, and that there were no lampreys there and they called them “snake-heaps.”)

I see a musquash dive head foremost (as he is swimming) in the usual way, being scared by me, but without making any noise. See August 13, 1853 ("Now and then a muskrat made the water boil , which dove or came up near by. They will move so suddenly in the water when alarmed as to make quite a report."); April 23, 1856 ("When near the Dove Rock saw a musquash crossing in front. He dived without noise in the middle of the river, and I saw by a bubble or two where he was crossing my course, a few feet before my boat. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Musquash

Saw a painted turtle on the gravelly bank just south of the bath-place, west side, and suspected that she had just laid.  See June 10, 1858 ("A painted turtle digging her nest in the road at 5.45 P. M") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Painted Turtle

I thought I would look for the E. insculpta's at Abel Hosmer's rye-field. See June 10, 1858 ("One E. insculpta is digging there about 7 P. M. Another great place for the last-named turtle to lay her eggs is that rye-field of Abel Hosmer's just north of the stone bridge . . . Apparently the E. insculpta are in the very midst of their laying now. ") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta)