encies like the bureau of labour and the bureau of corporations have
been created for the purpose of gathering certain social and
industrial statistics, and the bureau of the census has been made a
permanent statistical office.

The Federal census office has been engaged in the compilation and
publication of statistics of many sorts. Among its important lines of
work may be mentioned frequent reports during the cotton ginning
season upon the amount of cotton ginned, supplemental census reports
upon occupations, on employees and wages, and on further
interpretation of various population tables, reports on street and
electric railways, on mines and quarries, on electric light and power
plants, on deaths in the registration area 1900-1904, on benevolent
institutions, on the insane, on paupers in almshouses, on the social
statistics of cities and on the census of manufactures in 1905.
Congress has recently entrusted it with still further duties, and it
has developed into the main statistical office of the Federal
government, finding its nearest analogue probably in the Imperial
Statistical Office in Berlin. (W. F. W.)

CENTAUREA, in botany, a genus of the natural order Compositae,
containing between four and five hundred species, and of wide
distribution, but with its principal centre in the Mediterranean region.
The plants are herbs with entire or cut often spiny-toothed leaves, and
ovoid or globose involucres surrounding a number of tubular, oblique or
two-lipped florets, the outer of which are usually larger and neuter,
the inner bisexual. Four species are native in Britain. _C. nigra_ is
knapweed, common in meadows and pastureland; _C. Cyanus_ is the
bluebottle or cornflower, a well-known cornfield weed; _C. Calcitrapa_
is star-thistle, a rare plant, found in dry waste places in the south of
England, and characterized by the rose-purple flower-heads enveloped by
involucral bracts which end in a long, stiff spine. Besides cornflower,
a few other species are worth growing as garden plants; they are readily
grown in ordinary soil:--_C. Cineraria_, a half-hardy perennial, native
of Italy, is remarkable for its white downy foliage; _C. babylonica_
(Levant) has large downy leaves and a tall spike of small yellow
flowers; _C. dealbata_ (Caucasus) is a low-growing plant with larger
rose-coloured heads; _C. macrocephala_ (Caucasus) has large yellow
heads; _C. montana_ (Pyrenees) large