300 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



The location of the Superintendent's house on the hill 

 made it much more pleasant as regards temperature, as it 

 usually received more wind. The two-storied house, with 

 verandas on all sides, was connected with an office over 

 which were two bedrooms and one of these I occupied. The 

 house presented a very attractive appearance, due to the 

 hanging baskets of ferns and other plants with which Mr. 

 and Mrs. Veitch had adorned it. In front were a few euca- 

 lyptus, cocoanut and orange trees. A garden had been 

 started and on one side were breadfruit trees. A fallen leaf 

 from one of these last was twenty-nine and a half inches 

 long. It was deeply divided into five pointed lobes on each 

 side of the midrib and glossy green. 



Mr. and Mrs. Veitch were English and had lived in South 

 Africa before coming to Costa Rica. Before he became 

 Superintendent here, they were at Chirripo Farm when 

 the floods of December, 1908, came down the Chirripo 

 River at midnight carrying away seven houses just above 

 theirs and the iron railroad bridge and flowing a foot deep 

 across the office in their first floor. Expecting their house 

 to go next, Mrs. Veitch, her daughter and two negro women 

 servants were put into a dugout at 2 A. M. in pitchy dark- 

 ness amid the roaring of the flood and the boat was then 

 dragged by a rope, while Mr. Veitch waded behind guiding 

 it, to the foreman's house which was a little higher up. The 

 next day, the floods having subsided a little, they returned 

 to their own house, but other freshets came and before the 

 floods were over they left their house seven times on account 

 of threatening danger. The house here at Philadelphia 

 South was situated on a hill of reddish gravelly clay (ap- 

 parently without pebbles), and seemed entirely free from 

 the possibility of danger from floods. 



Back of the house were many pineapple plants for the 

 family's use, the stable yards for the horses, mules and cows, 



