6 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



behind the low coastal plain. The buildings were sur- 

 rounded hy beautifully kept and luxuriant gardens, from 

 which the Doctor gave A. an armful of flowers. Among 

 them were pink and white oleanders, camellias, a pretty 

 flower new to us which Dr. Echeverria called "Jupiter," 

 cotton, hibiscus and a euphorbiaceous plant resembling 

 Poinsettia but with some of the bracts wholly red while 

 others were red at the base only, the rest of the bract being 

 bright green. 



Close to the hospital were the towers of the wireless tele- 

 graph, while west of it were railroad tracks which follow the 

 shore line north and west. The coast here consists of a coral 

 rock which forms clifl"s, reaching a height of a hundred feet 

 in some places, and flat reefs which are washed by the tide. 

 Dr. Echeverria thought the reefs were still forming, as a cer- 

 tain reef now visible, although awash, was not so when he 

 first came to the hospital. Professor Pittler mentions the ex- 

 istence of corals in the swamps separating the Blanco and 

 Cuba Rivers in the neighborhood of Moin, five or six kilo- 

 meters from the sea; "in the midst of an extraordinary vege- 

 tation rise, here and there, pillars of the same material, naked 

 and branching, like one sees along the reefs of the coast and 

 which appear to have been washed by the waves only yester- 

 day." These various observations indicate a gradual eleva- 

 tion of the coast in this region. The rock forming the cliff's 

 was In some places compact and solid, in others loose, in the 

 form of Irregular fragments one to six inches in diameter em- 

 bedded In a yellow clay. 



In the tidal pools, on May 8, 1910, were Neritina snails, 

 small sea-urchin shells (I saw no living urchins) and crabs 

 with quadrangular carapaces. On shore also crabs were the 

 most abundant animals, particularly a species with a squar- 

 ish slaty-blue carapace about four inches wide. Their 

 burrows were everywhere in the holes of the rock or In the 



