176 WITH THE FLOWERS AND TREES 



Springs. A rough, rocky trail leads from the desert 

 into this canon, anything but pleasant traveling to 

 the footman who struggles along it plucked at by 

 cat's-claw acacia, stabbed by cactus spines and 

 startled now and then by the sudden springing of 

 some equally frightened rattlesnake's insistent clat- 

 ter close to his feet. Conditions improve, however, 

 after the canon is well entered, and at about two 

 miles from the mouth you reach a narrowing gorge, 

 where a single Washingtonia palm makes a land- 

 mark known to every frequenter of the region. It 

 was just above this gorge, on the left bank of the 

 stream which there flows musically in a brushy 

 thicket, that Mr. Parish one March day picked a 

 few specimens of a fern that no one had ever 

 gathered before, and it was subsequently named in 

 his honor, Cheilanthes Parishii. In those days, a 

 generation ago, when California was still a good 

 deal of a terra incognita, there was nothing very 

 remarkable in turning up an undescribed plant or 

 two; but the noteworthy thing about the finding of 

 that little fern is that for twenty-seven years after- 

 wards, nobody, not even the discoverer himself who 

 visited the identical spot a year later, could find an- 

 other specimen, either in Andreas canon or any- 

 where else. The quest for Cheilanthes Parishii be- 

 came as baffling as the search for the lost mines 



