Some Humbugs of Science 127 



quently met with." But the same plant 

 may also bear sterile and fertile flowers on 

 different heads. 



Thus much about this plant and more, 

 because I remember noting it as a child 

 and marking the beauty of its deep-cut 

 foliage ; enough like that of a young tomato 

 to make a green boy look twice at it, and 

 later, when a florist showed to me with 

 pride ^grevillea robusta from his hot-house, 

 it occurred to me that he was slow for not 

 doing as much for a greener, spryer plant 

 that was like it, the ragweed. I never 

 knew how they called it until I had grown 

 up, because such things are so common 

 that nobody cares for the name of them, 

 and because there is not in all literature, 

 so far as I know, any description which is 

 intelligible to the unscientific reader. I 

 am not fully convinced by Gray's as- 

 surance that the fertile flowers are " sessile 

 in the axil of leaves and bracts, at the base 

 of the racemes of sterile heads ; sterile in- 

 volucres flattish or top-shaped, of 7-12 

 scales united into a cup, containing 5~ 2 

 funnel-form staminate flowers with slender 



