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 (_Houstonia cærulea_), and numerous colonies of violets; and amid the moss-grown hillocks, in the woods, the Dog’s-Tooth Lily (_Erythronium Americanum_) 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 Erythronium_, from which Linnæus 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 Agricultural 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 modern names also.”[39] That the plant was always considered a lily, however, instead of a violet is evident. [Illustration: “_White, innocent twigs of apple, idly swaying,_ _Shed a suave fragrance on the flattered breeze._” JOHN S. VAN CLEVE.] Dr. Rembert Dodoens, as early as 1578, thus described it: “This low base herbe, hath, for the most part but two leaves, speckled with great red spots, betwixt which springeth up a little tender stalke or stem with one floure at the top hanging downeward, which hath certaine small leaves growing together like an arch or haute, and like the wild lily.” (The _Amarillis_ of the Spaniards.) “The names of this herbe now are called _Denticulus canis_ and _Dens caninus_, and others call it _Satyrion Erythronium_, wherewithall notwithstanding it has no similitude.”[40] It was known to Dioscorides as _Lilium sylvestre_, and Dodoens remarks that “It may well be called such,” since the flower, when “it hangs downeward toward the grounde, is much like the wild lilies, saving it is smaller.”[41] Dioscorides (23-77 A.D.) knew this plant as _Ephemeron non lethale_, which was also known in Latin as _Lilium sylvestre_.