126 Bog-Trotting for OrcKids 



I rode to the end of the car line, near which I turned 

 off into a thicket, and over a bridge above the milldam. 

 On either hand broad fields of marsh-land stretched out 

 to meet the low, rolling hills. To the right, a path led 

 up the slopes of a cow-pasture, along a little stream to 

 West Rock. The damp hillside was carpeted with 

 Innocence or Bluets (^Houstoniacoeruled), and numerous 

 colonies of violets ; and amid the moss-grown hillocks, 

 in the woods, the Dog's-Tooth Lily {Erythro7iium 

 Americanuni) nodded its yellow bell. This lily, so 

 long designated Dog's-Tooth Violet, is a plant having 

 a broad continental range, — found from Nova Scotia to 

 Florida, and from Maine to Arkansas. In the South 

 it blooms in March, in the North in May. It grows 

 not only in the low coast hills and valleys, but is known 

 to thrive at an altitude of 5500 feet in Virginia and in 

 the North, 



The leaves of Dog's-Tooth Lily resemble a species 

 of Orchis known to Dioscorides as Satyrion Erythro- 

 nium, from which Linnaeus in 1753 coined the present 

 generic name Erythronium, signifying "red," for the 

 genus of Dog's-Tooth Lilies. Wherever the appended 

 term of ** Violet" originated for these lilies is not 

 known. According to Frederick H. Blodgett : "In 

 one of the old botanies in the library of the Agricul- 

 tural Department (Washington), there is a colored 

 plate, illustrating the European species with the name 

 Viola dens-canis, with pen notes, giving the later and 

 more modem names also." ' That the plant was al- 



' F. H. Blodgett, The Plant World, p. 52, March, 1902. 



