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plants of minor interest. The Great Bullrush ( Scerpus lacustris L.) 
is a widely distributed plant, ranging from the Atlantic to the 
. Pacific and from British America to the tropics. The stalks and 
leaves are commonly used by many tribes for mats and baskets ; 
the pollen, beaten off and collected on a cloth, is-sometimes made 
into cake. The thick fleshy rootstock of var. occidentalis Wats., 
the « Tule” of the Pacific States, is baked and eaten by hungry 
Indians. Gen. J. Bidwell describes a honey produced abundantly 
on a form of “tule” in Nevada, and eagerly gathered by the 
natives. 
Two species of Cyperus, the Chufa (C. esculentus L.) and the 
Nut-Grass (C. rotundus L.) are extremely noxious weeds in the 
eastern and southern States on account of their rapid propaga- 
tion by tuberiferous stolons and difficult extirpation. The Indians, 
however, looked upon them with favor because of the small edible 
tubers, specially those of Chufa, which are sweet and palatable, 
and even now occasionally planted as food for swine. 
Finally, it remains to mention one Fern, the Common Brake 
or Bracken (Preris aguilina L.), the most widely distributed of the 
order. The blackish rootstocks are eaten in parts of Europe and 
by some of our Pacific Indians. ‘They have a pungency,” say 
Lewis and Clarke, “which was disagreeable to us, though the 
natives eat them voraciously, and they seem to be very nutritious.” 
FRUITS, 
The Indians eat not only all the native fruits which we eat and 
have more or less improved, but also many others for which we 
have never cultivated a taste. It is only of these specially aborigi- 
nal fruits that Ivshallsspeak. 
In the Cactus Family the genus Opuntia, economically speak- 
ing, is probably the most important. Even the fruit of our little 
Prickly Pear (O. vulgaris Haw.) is not entirely worthless, but it is 
in the arid regions of the Southwest that we find a majority of our 
50 native species in their best development. The fruit has a pecu- 
liar and mucilaginous taste, sometimes pleasantly acid, but often 
insipid and mawkish. It contains little nutriment, but quenches 
thirst in the desert. O. Engelmanni Salm, ranging from the mouth 
of the Rio Grande to the Pacific, is the most noteworthy ; not 
