IN CALIFORNIA 177 



that are the will-o'-the-wisps of desert prospectors. 

 In March 1908, however, the present writer, camp- 

 ing with his wife in the same canon just below the 

 gorge of the Lone Palm and having no thought of 

 this fern of whose history he was then ignorant, 

 climbed one day down a dim trail to the stream for 

 a canteen of water. As he climbed back again he 

 plucked from a crevice in a rock, in passing, a few 

 fronds of a solitary fern plant that struck him 

 as something strange. Subsequent examination 

 proved the plant to be the long-sought Cheilanthes 

 Parishii! But the old fatality still clings to it. 

 Though I visited the place again and searched the 

 canon side over and over, no faintest sign of this 

 elusive fern could be found. To discover it seems 

 to be reserved to but one man at a time and but once 

 in his lifetime. Who the next will be, having a 

 receipt for this fern's seed, quien sdbe? 



The genus Cheilanthes, sparingly represented in 

 the East, is a somewhat common one in California 

 where ten species, all distinct from the eastern, have 

 been reported. Of these there are two, Cheilanthes 

 fibrillosa and C. amcena, even rarer than Cheilanthes 

 Parishii, for each has been collected but once. 

 In this genus the spore cases form about the mar- 

 gin of the leaflets roundish dots which are covered 

 by the turning back of the lobes or their segments, 



