THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 59 



we cannot fail to sympathize, is able to bloom. But it has some 

 ofain for its losses. Commonly it has more than one runner 

 which not only multiplies its chances of success, but multiplies 

 the species as well, so that what started at the surface as a sin- 

 gle bulb may be several when it blooms. When the bulbs have 

 reached a proper depth, they stop sending out runners, and de- 

 vote their energies to producing blossoms. The plant is called 

 yellow lily in some sections, and John Burroughs has proposed 

 for it the name of fawn lily, in allusion to its spotted leaves. 



The rapidity with which the early flowers spring up every- 

 where is remarkable, but no less so than their equally rapid 

 disappearance a few weeks or months later. Before mid-sum- 

 mer all traces of many of them will have vanished, and the oth- 

 ers will be overshadowed by summer flowers. Yet somewhere 

 in the earth, the spring flowers will be almost prepared for a 

 new spring. When the cold autumn mornings and bright 

 days take the semblance of another vernal season they are oc- 

 casionally beguiled to put forth. More than thirty different 

 species of spring flowers have been known to bloom thus in 

 autumn. 



SAGE BRUSH AND CACTUS. 



BY EARL LYND JOHNSTON. 



<<QAGE Brush and Cactus!" I well remember as a school- 

 ^ boy of reading in the geographies of these plants as the 

 "characteristic vegetation" of the western portion of our coun- 

 try known as the Great Plains. At that time I had little or no 

 conception as to what that really meant. The cactus I knew 

 well and often wondered if the sage brush was as repulsive 

 in appearance and at the same time pitying and wondering how 

 the people managed to live "out west." However much I felt 

 for these people I was soon to learn that they little needed my 

 sympathy. 



I caught my first glimpse of the prairie and prairie plant 

 life on a Christmas day a few years ago. As I crossed the 



