56 THE AMERICAN BOTANIST. 



wood lumber are found in the manufacture of furniture, 

 cooperage, musical instruments, vehicles, agricultural imple- 

 ments, car building and house finishing. Of the woods in 

 greatest demand, oak is easily the leader. It is in great de- 

 mand for furniture and the interior finish of cars and houses. 

 Hickory is most used by the makers of vehicles and agricul- 

 tural implements, though other woods are also used. Oak is 

 also indispensible for tight cooperage, but elm is depended 

 upon for slack cooperage, that is packages that do not need 

 to hold liquids. Some of the woods which a shortage of the 

 best grades is bringing upon the market are tupelo (Nyssa) 

 red gum (Liquidainbar) beech, cottonwood and sycamore, and 

 even these are fast disappearing. Unless we soon provide 

 means to continue our supply of timber it looks as if the next 

 generation will have to do without wood. 



A Visitor from California. — Last summer a strange- 

 looking plant appeared along the Illinois Central railroad 

 tracks at Rantoul, Illinois. Its small yellow flowers showed 

 that it belonged to the Borage family, where our heliotropes 

 and bluebells are also placed, but it was totally unlike any of 

 the plants described in our manuals. Finally it was found to 

 be Amsinckia intermedia, a plant which apparently has no 

 common name, and is a native of the coast of California. Of 

 course the seeds of the plant, in making this long journey, 

 were caried in a freight car, but just how one can not find out. 

 It would be interesting to know the exact source of the plant, 

 and to follow it step by step through the many hundred miles 

 of its wanderings until at last it reached the earth and grew 

 here in Illinois. 



