378 NEW JERSEY STATE AGRICULTURAL 



walked to and from the grounds to his house, and, one day in 

 October, an hour was taken for the gathering of a set of the heads 

 of this strong-scented weed. A photograph was taken of the 

 collection (Plate XXVII.), the heads being laid down as they 

 were gathered, and, therefore, without any order and no attempts 

 were made to exclude duplicates. In general, the heads are placed 

 with the flowers uppermost as they stand in nature, but a few 

 exceptions to this are made to show the appearance of the invo- 

 lucre as seen looking from below. By glancing along the six 

 somewhat irregnlar rows, it is seen that some heads are much 

 larger than others, which might be due, in some part, to the age 

 of the flowers and the size of the plant but even in this it was 

 noted in the occasional study of the subject that small heads may 

 be borne by large plants in rich ground while large heads, but 

 few in number, are sometimes produced by small plants that were 

 growing in the hard and poor soil of the roadside. In other 

 words, while unfavorable conditions may dwarf every part of the 

 plant there is, nevertheless, a wide range of variation in the 

 number of the individual flowers and the size of the head of 

 blossoms among plants that are seemingly similarly situated. 



Perhaps the part that shows at once the greatest range of 

 variation is in the conspicuous ray flowers. They are more fre- 

 quently thirteen than any other number, a fact that has been 

 dwelt upon by Professor De Vries in connection with other 

 members of the sunflower family of plants; but in number they 

 vary far less than in their size and shape. It is seen that some 

 are quite short and broad, and need to lap each other at the base, 

 while other heads have the rays long and narrow, with a space 

 between them at the base of nearly their own width ; others are 

 flat and deeply notched at the free end, and some are inclined to 

 be "quill" shaped; in fact, a head was found in which the rays 

 were truly tubular, but this is not in the Plate. 



In a similar cursory way a study was made of the "wild car- 

 rot" (Daucus Carota L.) , and samples of the umbels placed in 

 press. This species is very variable in many of its parts, and 

 perhaps no more so in the inflorescence than elsewhere, but it 

 admits more readily of a photographic record. The individual 

 flowers are so small that but little attention was paid to them, 



