320 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



I was ready to return. On arriving there I walked upstream 

 along the same (left) bank, first through bananas and cacao 

 trees and then along the stony beaches which lay a few inches 

 to five feet above the water. The general character of the 

 river was much like that of the Banana River but the water 

 was shallower and clearer, this day at least. 



On the beaches were many caiman tracks, some foot- 

 prints being five to six inches across. The only caiman I 

 saw was about four feet in length; it was lying in mud at 

 the water's edge, only its head exposed to the air. It slid 

 into the water as I approached but only went a short dis- 

 tance, for a few minutes later I was on a higher bank and saw 

 it distinctly in the shallow water. I threw a stick at it, 

 whereupon it turned around very violently, raising a great 

 cloud of mud, and disappeared. Subsequently I saw one of 

 about the same size in the shallow water at the opposite 

 side of the river, but it may not have been the same one. 



There were many fish of all sizes in the Bananito, as there 

 had been in the Banana River when I was there, also many 

 shrimps {PalcBmon jamaicensis). The small fishes from 

 the Bananito proved to be Gambusia {Priapichthys) annec- 

 tens. 



Here and there along the river was growing an acacia iden- 

 tified by Professor Pittier as Acacia campeachiana ^ = cochle- 

 acantha) five feet or so in height. It resembled the bull's 

 horn thorn described in Chapters XVII and XVIII, but had 

 a less woody stem or trunk and paired thorns not curved nor 

 inclined toward each but nearly at right angles to the stem 

 bearing them. There were no little fruit-like bodies at the 

 tips of the young leaflets, but along the mid-rib of each leaf 

 was a row of urn-shaped glands, one at the base of each of 

 the twenty-seven or more pairs of pinnae. Even in the dried 



'This is the campeachiana of Miller, of the eighteenth century Gardener's Diction- 

 ary, not the campecheana of Schenck, 1914. 



