454 Mode of Extrication of the American Silk-Worm Moth. [July, 
sleeping bulb will waken and reach up into the moist spring air 
a single glossy leaf, spotted or blotched all over with spaces of 
darker shade, which he will then recognize, or any child could 
tell him, is the sterile condition of his misnamed though favorite 
Dog Tooth Violet (Erythronium Americanum). 
Soon after the leaf has fully developed, spreading forth its rich 
juices to the influence of sun and air, three or four stolons or 
runners, such as already described, will protrude at the lower 
extremity of the bulb, and, promptly turning upwards, will be 
seen bursting through the surface of the ground, reaching up an 
inch or two into the air and then in a wavering, uncertain way 
burying themselves again in the earth to plant the bulb that shall 
repeat the same process next year. 
As is well known, in its single leaf condition this plant never 
blooms. In this second year of its existence, therefore, the bulb 
cannot have fulfilled its whole mission; if, and we admit it to 
be an assumption not proven, the law of nature would give to 
every individual at least the chance to reproduce itself by means 
of perfected seed. By the “rd year, then, we presume the bulb 
will have attained the strength necessary to enable it to send up 
two leaves and a flower stalk and become what it should have 
been called, a lily indeed, with its pendulous golden bell. 
In the lily family, propagation by means of lateral or axillary 
bulbs (as a compensation, perhaps, for the frequent failure to 
perfect their seeds) is familiar to every one; but I cannot find 
that these partially aerial runners of the Beythroniom, by which 
it projects its bulbs sometimes to the distance of a foot from the 
parent plant, have been previously noticed. It may be well to 
add that these’ observations refer especially to one locality in 
what is known as Sweet Briar Glen, Fairmount Park, Philadel- 
phia; that the mode of propagation described, is the universal 
habit of the plant, the writer is not prepared to assert. 
:0: 
THE MODE OF EXTRICATION OF THE AMERICAN 
SILK-WORM MOTH. 
BY D. C. MCLAREN. 
HORTLY after reading Dr, Packard’s article in the June num- 
ber of the “ NATURALIST,” it was the writer’s good fortune to 
observe the entire process of extrication in the case of a large and 
fine male specimen of Telea Polyphemus. 
