THE BANANA RIVER COUNTRY 309 



vious visit, at least as long as the sun shone, and had the 

 day remained bright later than i P. M. I should have found 

 still others. 



Lizards and members of the salamander and frog groups 

 were extremely abundant almost everywhere in the Banana 

 River Region at this time. I made no attempt to gather 

 any lizards — which were very speedy for one thing! — and I 

 neglected the salamanders, but some of the frogs attracted 

 my attention, as they must everyone's who sees them, on 

 account of their bright colors. The most abundant {Den- 

 drobates typographus) was bright, flaming red with some 

 irregular black marks on the under surface, and three-quar- 

 ters to an inch in length. Less abundant but not rare was 

 a pale greenish-blue frog (Z). tinctorius) with black stripes 

 and spots over the whole body including the legs; the body 

 was one and three-quarters to two inches long. Few ani- 

 mals exceed this frog in color variations. Dr. Gadow {Cam- 

 bridge Natural History^ vol. viii, pp. 272-273 and fig. 53) 

 gives examples of their very great range and mentions that 

 the animal's specific name is due to the secretion from its 

 skin being used to dye the green Amazon-parrots, the sub- 

 sequently appearing young feathers being yellow instead of 

 green. The secretion is also said to be used as an arrow 

 poison by Colombian Indians. Individuals of D. tinctorius 

 may very closely resemble in color those of another Costa 

 Rican frog, Atelopus varius. Externally the former may be 

 distinguished by the tips of the fingers and toes having bifid 

 pads, the toes not webbed and the head in dorsal or ventral 

 view less pointed at the muzzle. A. varius has the same 

 tips undivided and the toes webbed, but also shows many 

 color variations. Gunther has given some colored figures 

 of these in the Biologia Centrali-Americana and says: "The 

 ground-colour is black, the ornamental colours pink, yel- 

 low and green. The latter are distributed in various pat- 



