IN CALIFORNIA 181 



the Wailaki one of the tribes of that region this 

 fern, the same authority states, plays a pleasant 

 part. Its fronds are deeply divided into finger-like 

 lobes, and the coyote, which all Indians regard as 

 the shrewdest of animals, did not fail to observe 

 this peculiarity, and with an inventive genius 

 worthy of New England, to turn it to account. Kun- 

 ning in and out and upward along the fingers, he 

 made use of the frond as a counter to teach the ele- 

 ments of arithmetic to the little coyotes! Either 

 coyotes were smaller in that primeval day or ferns 

 larger, for a polypody a foot high is nowadays es- 

 teemed a large specimen. 



Two wiry ferns, both peculiar to California, that 

 are among the first which the amateur discovers, 

 are the so-called coffee fern and the bird-foot fern. 

 The march of civilization seems to have disturbed 

 these wildings rather less than most native ferns, 

 and one finds them on every sunny, rocky slope and 

 in sandy washes, hiding in the shelter of bushes or 

 any tangle of miscellaneous shrubby growth. They 

 enjoy a little shade but not too much. Like the 

 desert species already referred to, they have learned 

 the pleasures of a dessicated life, and as the dry 

 season progresses, their little skins become as tough 



medial virtues of capillaire, a syrup prepared from the juice of 

 maidenhair fern fronds. 



