Wood tortoises on the Assabet

September 19

Up Assabet.

Do I see wood tortoises on this branch only?

About a week since, Mr. Thurston told me of his being carried by a brother minister to hear some music on the shore of a pond in Harvard, produced by the lapse of the waves on some stones.

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

Do I see wood tortoises on this branch only? See September 15, 1855 ("An Emys insculpta which I mistook for dead, under water near shore; head and legs and tail hanging down straight. Turned it over, and to my surprise found it coupled with another. It was at first difficult to separate them with a paddle"); September 16, 1854 ("I see a wood tortoise in the woods. Why is it there now?"); October 21, 1857 (" I saw wood tortoises coupled up the Assabet, the back of the upper above water. It held the lower with its claws about the head, and they were not to be parted. "); November 11, 1859 ("I observed, October 23d, wood turtles copulating in the Assabet."); November 14, 1855 ("A clear, bright, warm afternoon. A painted tortoise swimming under water and a wood tortoise out on the bank.”) Compare March 28, 1857 (".Do I ever see a yellow-spot turtle in the river?"); April 1, 1857 ("Up Assabet. See an Emys guttata sunning on the bank. I had forgotten whether I ever saw it in this river") See also  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Wood Turtle (Emys insculpta)