1878.] ` The Runners of Erythronium Americanum. 453 
hear the crack of the gun wielded by the wanton hands of 
thoughtless boys and ignorant men, which announces to our ears 
the painful fact that another of our most useful friends has been 
murdered. It is none the less murder, because it is called “sport.” 
It is to be hoped that the efforts of our naturalists will event- 
ually be successful in rendering apparent to our law makers the 
necessity for more stringent protective laws with provisions for 
the sure and speedy punishment of the avicide. 
~——10: 
THE RUNNERS OF ERYTHRONIUM AMERICANUM. 
BY EDWARD POTTS. 
HE botanist or amateur flower collector who wanders at this 
season of the year (early in May) along the woodland stream or 
loamy hillside, can hardly fail to observe numerous colorless stems, 
forming, as it were, little loops three or four inches in length, on or 
near the ground, both ends being buried beneath the surface. If 
his curiosity should lead to a closer examination, he will find 
that while one end is firmly rooted, the other yields readily to his 
effort to withdraw it, and proves to be, not a root, as he may 
have at first supposed, but a stem, smooth and of uniform 
diameter, excepting at the end, where it enlarges into an oval 
knob, which, later in the season, is further developed as a true 
bulb, and ultimately planted by the growth force of this slender 
stem at the depth of three or four inches in the loose wood- 
mould. If he should trace the same stem backward, carefully 
loosening the earth to avoid breaking it, he would find that it had 
its origin with two or three others, in the lower extremity of a 
similar bulb, pear-shaped, somewhat flattened, perhaps one-half an 
inch long by one-quarter in thickness, to the upper end of which 
may still cling a single withered leaf. Should he visit the same 
locality a few weeks later, he will find that leaf and stems have 
both disappeared and that the little bulb he saw in the process of 
being planted by such a deft and delicate finger has thrown out 
a radiating group of roots from zear the lower end and, showing 
no other signs of growth, has evidently settled itself to await the 
developments of another Springtime. 
A whole year is a long time for our botanist to wait the solu- 
tion of his problem as to genus and species ; so we will anticipate 
the result of his observations next year. The April sun will 
hardly have begun to warm the south fronting hillsides, ere our — 
