A NATURALIST IN NICARAGUA, 89 



OBSEEYATIOjSTS of a KATUKALIST m NICARAGUA. 



~]y /f~R. CHARLES BELT has given us, in an interesting volume, 

 -iV_L the results of his natural history studies during a residence of 

 four years in Nicaragua. His opportunities were excellent, and he has 

 the faculty of turning them to good account. He found the climate 

 of the region of almost uninterrupted summer, with abundant rainfall 

 excepting in localities on the western slopes of mountains, and con- 

 sequently a great profusion of animal and vegetable forms of life. 



The eastern belt of the country is described as one unbroken forest, 

 where perennial moisture reigns in the soil, perennial summer in the 

 air, and vegetation luxuriates in ceaseless activity. Unknown are the 

 autumn tints of English woods and the unrivaled splendors of the 

 foliage of Canada. The trees do not grow in clusters, like our firs and 

 oaks, but crowd upon each other in unsocial rivalry, struggling to 

 keep their upper branches and leaves in the sunlight. A vast net- 

 work of cable-like plants entangles the trees, and gorgeous air-plants 

 dangle everywhere. 



The central belt is of elevated grounds and grassy savannahs, but 

 the Pacific slope is of rich, deep soil of decomposing tufas, where 

 tropical fruits are abundant and prolific. It is an interesting fact that 

 the mountains show everywhere traces of former glaciers. Enormous 

 bowlders, beds of bowlder-clay and unstratified gravels, and rocks 

 with smoothed rounded surfaces, suggest the former presence of ice. 



In the profusion of animal life the struggle for existence is intense 

 and incessant, and Mr. Belt was at once impressed with the extent to 

 which protective coloring and other mimetic resemblances were found 

 to exist. Thus wasps and stinging ants have hosts of imitators among 

 moths, beetles, and bugs. A curious longicorn beetle was found cov- 

 ered with long brown and black hairs, closely resembling hairy cater- 

 pillars, common in the bushes, but which birds are known not to touch. 

 The well-known phasma, or leaf-insect, escapes danger and eludes ob- 

 servation by its wonderful resemblance to leaves ; and one species of 

 this insect, in its larval stage, is called the moss-insect, and so closely 

 resembles the moss it inhabits as not to be distinguished from it unless 

 disturbed. The same is true of spiders which assume a resemblance 

 to the petals of flowers in which they hide. 



A curious green lizard was common in the wild-canes and grass, 

 having leaf-like expansions, on account of which it was with great 

 difficulty detected ; and a spider so closely resembled, in form and 

 color, a black ant, that it was mistaken for that insect. It had, more- 

 over a habit of elevating its fore-legs so as to exactly resemble an- 

 tennae. Various species of stinging ants, which no bird would touch, 

 were mimicked by spiders which were not distasteful to birds, as Mr. 

 Belt proved. 



