370 A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



was extremely muddy so that in many places the horses 

 sank so deeply that the mud reached to their bellies, and 

 the lower half of the tail soon became a solid stiff rope. My 

 horse was small and gentle and at times seemed hardly able 

 to pull its legs out of the slime and go forward, but slowly it 

 succeeded. All of the road was not as bad as this but the 

 bad exceeded the good. 



Our route lay over a rolling country; the altitude of the 

 point where we turned back was 1900 feet by my aneroid, 

 therefore 300 feet lower than Turrucares station. Pro- 

 fessor Tristan rode with my net in his hand and caught sev- 

 eral dragonflies while so mounted. 



A walk to the southwest from Turrucares on the morning 

 of December 22 took us along dry shadeless roads and occa- 

 sionally into potreros. Professor Tristan wanted some ear- 

 wigs and termites but found few of either. An elderly peon 

 left his yoke of oxen standing in the road to show us where 

 he thought some large termite nests had been, but they had 

 disappeared. On the way we passed through a rice-field 

 from which the rice had been harvested but through the 

 stubble were scattered rows of ''maiz de Guinea" — Guinea 

 corn. The plants were of the height of maize or Indian 

 corn and with very similar stalks and leaves. The grains 

 are smaller than those of maize and are not arranged on a 

 cob or spike but in a compound panicle five to six inches 

 long and three to four inches across. This plant is used 

 only for feeding cattle and perhaps other live stock. It is 

 planted before the rice and as it ripens later is left standing 

 when the rice is cut. 



Occasionally we passed a guacimo tree (Guazuma ulmi- 

 folia), a member of the family Sterculiaceae, with downy 

 asymmetrical leaves four and one-half inches long and one 

 and one-half inches wide, acute at the tips and with serrated 

 edges; the fruits were covered with conical points or tu- 



