$ THE GARDEN BOOK OF CALIFORNIA 



and your cool drink will taste all the fresher and cooler for 

 the suggestive surroundings. 



No Southern California collection would be complete in 

 my eyes without a number of our own beautiful native* ferns. 

 While not so rank or so large as the ferns of the North, yet 

 there is an exquisite delicacy about our Southern adiantums 

 and polypodiums that should not be overlooked. The "gold- 

 back" and "silver-back ferns," as the gymnogrammes are 

 popularly called, are interesting, and the cheilanthes are all 

 very dainty little wood sprites. Two fine aspidiums, two 

 aspleniums, and Woodwardia radicans are easily transplant- 

 ed to civilized gardens. Many of our ferns are really Mex- 

 ican species that have strayed over the border and give rise 

 to many scientific theories as to whether they belong to species 

 almost extinct or whether they have been recently evolved, 

 and will become in time more generally distributed. As one 

 looks at the delicate little ferns growing on the hills and in 

 the ravines, it seems almost incredible that man owes to them 

 largely for the great stores of coal, petroleum and other 

 carbonaceous substances upon which this age is dependent 

 for so much; for it is a well-known fact that to ferns and 

 other cryptograms has belonged the task of transforming 

 the carbon in the atmosphere, to the ground in solid form, 

 where in Nature's laboratory it has been transformed into 

 the substance that we use commercially. 



So frequently do I hear people about me confuse the 

 beautiful decorative asparagus so commonly grown in Cali- 

 fornia with the ferns, that I shall spend a few moments 



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