SANTA CLARA 291 



The tracks of Spur i were supported on iron ties ballasted 

 with small rounded stones and for much of the way through 

 the bananas ran on a low embankment, intersected fre- 

 quently by "culverts" or short wooden trestles crossing 

 streams of swift-flowing water. Horsemen traveled along 

 the embankment until they came to a culvert, where a side 

 path led down from the tracks to the stream and ford and 

 up to the tracks again. Progress on horseback was only at 

 a walk and not much faster than that of the pedestrian who 

 could follow the tracks uninterruptedly across the culverts. 



As I walked along Spur i every now and then the brilliant 

 green-and-black-barred day-flying moth {Uranidia fulgens), 

 rose from the ground as I approached and fluttered on ahead 

 or into the bananas. A great heavy lumbering grasshopper 

 {Tceniopoda centurio) of Indian red, mottled with darker 

 colors and with short bright red wings edged with black, 

 sometimes crawled off into the grass; its weight seemed too 

 great for it to execute more than very short flights. At one 

 culvert, where the water was easy to reach and rippled over 

 small stones, were some dragonflies whose flight up and down 

 short reaches of the stream was so swift that I could not 

 recognize them. I stationed myself to watch and to catch 

 them. When several were together they flew so fast that 

 recognition and capture alike were impossible even at a 

 foot's distance. When one was alone, however, it flew more 

 slowly. I found that by holding the net a few inches above 

 the water, waiting until the insect was underneath and then 

 suddenly submerging it, the current carried the dragonfly 

 into the net. I thus secured in all six specimens of the 

 insect {Brechmorhoga prcecox) but it took about half an hour 

 in the full heat of the sun. 



There was localization in distribution too in the banana 

 field dragonflies. Near the end of the spur, four or five 

 yards from the tracks, was a narrow ditch containing a little 



