The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs.

June 6.

Tuesday.

I perceive the sweetness of the locust blossoms fifteen or twenty rods off as I go down the street.

P. M. – To Assabet Bathing-Place and return by stone bridge.

I see now great baggy light-green puffs on the panicled andromeda, some with a reddish side, two or three inches through.

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two.

A slender rush, flowered at the top, at bathing-place, some time.

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. I see where they have just been digging in the sand or gravel in a hundred places on the southerly sides of hills and banks near the river, but they have laid their eggs in very few. I find none whole.

Here is one which has made its hole with the hind part of its shell and its tail apparently, and the ground is wet under it. They make a great deal of water at these times, apparently to soften the earth or to give it consistency, or both.

They are remarkably circumspect, and it is difficult to see one working. They stop instantly and draw in their heads, and do not move till you are out of sight, and then probably try a new place.

They have dabbled in the sand and left the marks of their tails all around.

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. I am covered with them and much incommoded.

There is garlic by the wall, not yet out.

The air over the river meadows is saturated with sweetness, but I look round in vain on the yellowish sensitive fern and the reddish eupatorium springing up.

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn.


H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 6, 1854

The Stellaria longifolia has been out, apparently, a day or two. See June 6, 1859 ("Stellaria longifolia, at Well Meadow Head, how long?") See also June 8, 1856 ("Stellaria longrfolia opposite Barbarea Shore not yet out")

The painted tortoises are nowadays laying their eggs. See  June 6, 1858 ("See three or four Emys insculpta about, making their holes in the gravelly bank south of Assabet Bath"); June 6, 1855 ("I see a yellow-spotted tortoise twenty rods from river, and a painted one four rods from it which has just made a hole for her eggs.");  June 7, 1854 ("Yesterday I saw the painted and the wood tortoise out."); June 10, 1857 ("A wood tortoise making a hole for her eggs just like a picta's hole.") See also A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, the Painted Turtle (Emys picta); A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Wood Turtlw (Emys insculpta);  A Book of the Seasons, by Henry Thoreau, The Yellow-Spotted Turtle (Emys guttata)

The black oaks, birches, etc., etc., are covered with ephemeræ of various sizes and colors, with one, two, three, or no streamers, ready to take wing at evening, i.e. about seven. See June 2, 1854 "The whole atmosphere over the river was full of shad-flies.") . . .It was a great flight of ephemera"); June 9, 1854 ("The air is now full of shad-flies, and there is an incessant sound made by the fishes leaping for their evening meal.”); June 8, 1856 (“My boat being by chance at the same place where it was in ’54, I noticed a great flight of ephemera”); June 9, 1856 ("Again, about seven, the ephemera came out, in numbers as many as last night, ... and the fishes leap as before.")

From time to time, at mid-afternoon, is heard the trump of a bullfrog, like a Triton's horn. See May 10, 1858 (" I hear the first regular bullfrog's trump. . . . This sound, heard low and far off over meadows when the warmer hours have come, grandly inaugurates the summer."); May 25, 1855 ("Heard the first regular bullfrog’s trump on the 18th; none since."); June 1, 1853 ("The hylodes are no longer heard. The bullfrogs begin to trump.”); June 4, 1853 ("The bullfrog now begins to be heard at night regularly; has taken the place of the hylodes."); June 13, 1851 ("The different frogs mark the seasons pretty well,- the peeping hyla, the dreaming frog, and the bullfrog . . . The bullfrog belongs to summer."); June 15, 1860 ("The bullfrogs now commonly trump at night, and the mosquitoes are now really troublesome.”)

From time to time, at

mid-afternoon, is heard the 

trump of a bullfrog