PEMBER: THE CoLorapO DESERT FOR FERNS 13 
acres, which is protected from the prevailing desert winds 
by outlying hills and mountains. This has a wonderful 
mineral, health-giving, hot spring, about which a little 
et has grown, called Palm Springs, which is becoming 
famous as a resort for consumptives; and many cures are 
reported. The mountain canyons that debouch into 
this basin are Chino, West, Andreas, Murray, Palm, and 
others. The last is the home of the famous Neowash- 
ingtonia filifera, and holds groves of it miles in length, 
the trees standing 70 to 90 feet high. These canyons 
have some splendid waterfalls and all can be followed far 
back into the range; but progress is slow, for they are 
full of rocks, boulders, cactus, mesquite, and a multitude 
of other stiff shrubs, all of which have thorns or fishhook = : 
claws that cling to one persistently all the way. oe 
It has been my fortune to have explored this entire — 
section at different times, but then I was collecting birds _ 
: for our home museum and devoting little time to _ a 
-ieal studies. : 
_Texplored this region in 1887, and again in 1890, and eae 
i February 1911 I found myself there once more; this. 
time for the purpose of collecting as many ferns as — . ° oe 
though knowing that the number would not be 
_As we approach the mouths of any of the canyons, and oS 
while yet the country is very arid, we find in abundance, — oo 
on the north side of the rocks and boulders, the beautiful ee 
Notholaena Parryi D. C. Eaton. ‘The little fronds: are 
to 4 inches long and have some resemblance to the 
cotton fern, N. N ewberryi D. C. Eaton. A little farther 
