74 -4 YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



vertical side of our glass graduate without other support 

 than its toes. When caught it secreted a quantity of sticky 

 mucus having a powerful and disagreeable odor, which it 

 was difficult to remove from the hands. 



The morning of May ii was not so bright as that of the 

 preceding day, although the sun was shining. We revisited 

 these same swampy spots but not a single individual of the 

 bright red species of dragonfly nor one of the peculiar frogs 

 was to be seen there, although we did find one of these frogs 

 later in the morning in the bottom of a nearby ditch. 



Other lanes were bordered only by the living fences of 

 poro. Such fence-rows are very pretty, especially when the 

 conspicuous red blossoms were seen in relief against the 

 deep blue sky, and the shade afforded by the trees — often 

 fifteen to twenty feet high — is most grateful but it is neither 

 dense enough nor constant enough to encourage a shadow- 

 loving fauna. 



But our "Shady Lane," really a continuation of the Calle 

 de las Monjas, although bordered primarily by the poro 

 fences, contained so many other trees that it was like a little 

 strip of woodland with a grassy path running through it. 

 At its upper end, the side vegetation consisted of young 

 Anona trees, thickets of blackberry, Xylosma^ lantanas, with 

 scattered higuerones. We once pulled off a few twigs from 

 these wild figs, finding the milky juice quite sticky. The 

 nearly spherical, brownish-black figs were about half an 

 inch long and filled with small dry fruits. There was no 

 pulp and no marked taste to the little fruits or to the figs 

 as a whole and they are not used as human food, but bats 

 are extremely fond of them. As the lane descended, the 

 higuerones were larger, real giants three to four feet in 

 diameter, some of them, and more closely clustered and as 

 the shade grew denser the trees were more thickly covered 

 with epiphytic plants such as bromeliads, orchids and Colum- 



