t
as brittle as glass. Its companions on the lower part of its range are
Cryptogramma acrostichoides and Phegopteris alpestris, the latter with
soft, delicate fronds, not in the least like those of Rock fern, though
it grows on the rocks where the snow lies longest. Pellaea Bridgesii,
with blue-green, narrow, simply-pinnate fronds, is about the same size
as Breweri and ranks next to it as a mountaineer, growing in fissures,
wet or dry, and around the edges of boulders that are resting on glacier
pavements with no fissures whatever. About a thousand feet lower we
find the smaller, more abundant P. densa on ledges and boulder-strewn,
fissured pavements, watered until late in summer from oozing currents,
derived from lingering snowbanks. It is, or rather was, extremely
abundant between the foot of the Nevada and the head of the Vernal Fall,
but visitors with great industry have dug out almost every root, so that
now one has to scramble in out-of-the-way places to find it. The three
species of Cheilanthes in the Valley--C. californica, C. gracillima, and
myriophylla, with beautiful two-to-four-pinnate fronds, an inch to five
inches long, adorn the stupendous walls however dry and sheer. The
exceedingly delicate californica is so rare that I have found it only
once. The others are abundant and are sometimes accompanied by the
little gold fern, Gymnogramme triangularis, and rarely by the curious
little Botrychium simplex, some of them less than an inch high. The
finest of all the rock ferns is Adiantum pedatum, lover of waterfalls
and the finest spray-dust. The homes it loves best are over-leaning,
cave-like hollows, beside the larger falls, where it can wet its fingers
with their dewy spray. Many of these moss-lined chambers contain
thousands of these delightful ferns, clinging to mossy walls by the
slightest hold, reaching out their delicate finger-fronds on dark,
shining stalks, sensitive and tremulous, throbbing in unison with every
movement and tone of the falling water, moving each division of the
frond separately at times, as if fingering the music.

May and June are the main bloom-months of the year. Both the flowers
and falls are then at their best. By the first of August the midsummer
glories of the Valley are past their prime. The young birds are then out
of their nests. Most of the plants have gone to seed; berries are ripe;
autumn tints begin to kindle and burn over meadow and grove, and a soft
mellow haze in the