THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 13 



cago. During a visit there last summer, I found on vacant 

 land adjoining one of the great parks, Cladium mariscoides, 

 Carex Miihlenhergii, Potentilla argentea, and numerous other 

 species which one would hardly expect to find in the heart of 

 a great city. Down nearer the business centre, on made 

 ground along the lake front I found the rather rare Heleo- 

 chloa schoenoides and Roripa sylvestris. On my return trip, 

 having noticed Dipsacus sylvestris at Joliet I ventured to tres- 

 pass on friend Clute's botanical hunting ground for some speci- 

 mens of "teasel" — a weed truly but one I have seen only at 

 Joliet and in central Indiana. Among the rank spiny plants 

 I found also Conringia orientalis. In a neglected back yard 

 nearer home, I found Verhascum phlomoides and Polygonum 

 cuspidatum in most vigorous luxuriance, while along the sid- 

 ings of railway switchyards in the same city were found 

 Alyssum alyssoides and, as a chance visitor — but making the 

 most of its new surroundings. — Amsinckia spectahilis. — M. 

 P. Somes, lozva City, lozua. 



The Year's Plant Products. — From the soil 

 and the air, during the last season, the plants culti- 

 vated by man in the United States have built up 

 products valued at the vast sum of nearly nine thous- 

 and million dollars. Corn comes first with a value 

 of seventeen hundred million dollars, king cotton follows with 

 eight hundred and fifty millions, wheat seven hundred and 

 twenty-five millions, hay six hundred and seventy-five millions, 

 oats four hundred millions and potatoes half as much as oats. 

 Reducing the increase to daily amounts it is seen that every 

 day of the 120 days during which the corn crop was growing, 

 this single crop added about fifteen millions of dollars to our 

 capital. And all this vast gain of all the crops, began as car- 

 bon dioxide and water in the cells of the plant, — cells so small 

 as to be invisible to the naked eye. 



