292 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



slowly-flowing water. The six or eight species found here 

 were all different from those on the larger swift-flowing 

 streams. 



The road which had been cut into the forest for a distance 

 of 2300 meters in direct continuation of Spur i had not 

 been entirely cleared but here and there was filled with grass 

 and shrubs, at other places was open with rain-water puddles 

 on its clay surface. The forest immediately bordering this 

 road had few palms but these increased in number to the 

 eastward. 



Crossing a pasture with cattle, horses and mules, directly 

 opposite the Guacimo farmhouse, brought me into another 

 part of the bananas. Following a very narrow gauge tram 

 track and then a log-hauling trail, I reached a piece of forest 

 where palms were largely in the ascendant although exoge- 

 nous trees were not lacking. The trail was in places com- 

 pletely overarched and was then dark and muddy. In one 

 of these dark spots, amidst a tangle of lianas where the net 

 was not usable, I caught in my fingers a great dragonfly 

 {Gynacantha membranalis) never before known north of 

 Chiriqui. It was three and one-quarter inches long, with a 

 wing-spread of four and a half inches; it had brilliant metallic 

 green eyes and a reddish-brown patch on the bases of the 

 hind wings. 



At another lighter place there was on the ground what at 

 first looked like a long, slender, wriggling, whitish worm, 

 but a second, nearer glance showed at once that it was a 

 procession of termites ("white ants" or "wood ants," which 

 of course are not ants at all). The procession issued from a 

 hole at the surface of the ground on one side of the trail, 

 the objective point being a tunnel running up a small tree 

 to a nest on the opposite side. The trail was about two feet 

 wide but there was water and wet mud in the middle so that 

 to cross on dry land the route lay down one side of the trail 



