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THE AMERICAN BOTANIST 



each and one had 24=. A surprise in this count was that there 

 were thirty heads with 21 rays each. When these numbers 

 are represented in the form of a graph, there are two peaks, 

 one on 13 and the other on 21. As a contrast to this species. 

 24:3 heads of the common Jerusalem artichoke (H. titberosus) 

 were counted. In this species the average number of rays is 12. 

 Three heads had but 8 rays and one had 15. The variation in 

 the latter species is much less than in H. grossc-serratus, and 

 the graph has a single peak. From this one might infer that 

 in H. grosse-scrratus there is a form included which might be 

 brought out by breeding. An interesting* piece of work would 

 be the counting of the ray-flowers of all our composites and 

 deciding what the average number in each species is. Counts 

 from different localities might be undertaken and counts in 

 different seasons made to discover the effects of soil, moisture, 

 etc., if any. The results would throw considerable light on 

 the tendency of plants to A'ary in different directions. 



Extract of A\Ttch Hazel. — Some idea of the number 

 of contusions and abrasions that are sustained by luckless hu- 

 manity in the course of a year may be gained from the fact 

 that the annual output of witch hazel extract is about twenty- 

 five thousand barrels. According to Gardening, the home of 

 the witch hazel industry is in Connecticut. The bulk of the 

 extract comes from a limited district in eastern ]\Iiddlesex 

 county. Xew York, Xew Hampshire and Massachusetts sup- 

 ply most of the remainder. The production of the extract is 

 quite simple. All that is recjuired is a primitive still and some 

 means of cutting the hazel brush into proper lengths. In a 

 similar Avay extract of wintergreen is made in New York and 

 Pennsylvania from birch twigs. It may be news to some that 

 birch is the source of wintergreen extract, but the oil contained 

 in the two plants is so near alike that it cannot be distinguished 

 chemically and that from the birch has long been substituted 

 for wintergreen since the difliculties in gathering an adequate 



