Great numbers of pollywogs have apparently just changed into frogs.

July 20.

2 P. M. – To Walden.

Warm weather, — 86 at 2 P. M. (not so warm for a good while).

Emerson’s lot that was burnt, between the railroad and the pond, has been cut off within the last three months, and I notice that the oak sprouts have commonly met with a check after growing one or two feet, and small reddish leafets have again put forth at the extremity within a week or so, as in the spring.

Some of the oak sprouts are five to six feet high already. On his hill near by, where the wood was cut about two years ago, this second growth of the oaks, especially white oaks, is much more obvious, and commenced longer ago.

The shoots of this year are generally about two feet long, but the first foot consists of large dark green leaves which expanded early, before the shoot met with a check.

This is surmounted by another foot of smaller yellowish-green leaves. This is very generally the case, and produces a marked contrast. Dark green bushes surmounted by a light or yellowish-green growth.

Sometimes, in the first-mentioned sprout-land, you see where the first shoot withered, as if frost-bitten at the end, and often only some large buds have formed there as yet.

Many of these sprouts, the rankest of them, are fated to fall, being but slightly joined to the stump, riddled by ants there; and others are already prostrated.

Bathing on the side of the deep cove, I noticed just below the high-water line (of rubbish) quite a number of little pines which have just sprung up amid the stones and sand and wreck, some with the seed atop.

This, then, is the state of their coming up naturally. They have evidently been either washed up, or have blown across the ice or snow to this shore. If pitch pine, they were probably blown across the pond, for I have often seen them on their way across.

Both Scirpus subterminalis and debilis are now in bloom at the Pout’s Nest, the former the longest time, the water being very low and separated from the pond. The former out for some time, the latter not long.

Great numbers of pollywogs have apparently just changed into frogs.

At the pondlet on Hubbard’s land, now separated from the main pond by a stony bar, hundreds of small frogs are out on the shore, enjoying their new state of existence, masses of them, which, with constant plashing, go hopping into the water a rod or more before me, where they are very swift to conceal themselves in the mud at the bottom. Their bodies may be one and a half inches long or more.

I have rarely seen so many frogs together. Yet I hardly see one pollywog left in this pool.

Yet at the shore against Pout’s Nest I see many pollywogs, and some, with hind legs well grown beside tails tails, lie up close to the shore on the sand with their heads out like frogs, apparently already breathing air before losing their tails. They squat and cower there as I come by, just like frogs.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, July 20, 1860

Both Scirpus subterminalis [water bulrush]and debilis [weakstalk bulrush]are now in bloom at the Pout’s Nest. See July 19, 1859 ("Scirpus subterminalis, river off Hoar's and Cheney's, not long."); August 31,,1858 ("At the Pout’s Nest, Walden, I find the Scirpus debilis, apparently in prime, generally aslant");  September 15, 1858 ("I find, just rising above the target-weed at Pout’s Nest, Scirpus subterminalis, apparently recently out of bloom. The culms two to three feet along, appearing to rise half an inch above the spikes. The long, linear immersed leaves coming off and left below. ")

 "Pout’s Nest": HDT's name for Wyman's Meadow near Walden. See June 7, 1858 and note to July 26, 1860 (I see a bream swimming about in that smaller pool by Walden in Hubbard's Wood. . . So they may be well off in the Wyman meadow or Pout's Nest.") The pout referred to is the Brown Bullhead (Ameiurus nebulosus), also known as Horned Pout, Mud Pout or Mud Cat. See Place Names of Henry David Thoreau in Concord,