38o A YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



also called "corteza amarilla" and *'guayacan" in Costa 

 Rica. 



The potreros themselves were sun-burnt, while most crop 

 fields had had their stubble recently burnt over with fires 

 whose smoke was a marked feature of the western landscape 

 at this time of year. In the midst of such brown or black 

 stretches stood the guanacaste trees in fresh green foliage 

 waving in the breeze and thickly covered with seed pods now 

 turned to a rich Indian red. Many of the pods had fallen to 

 the ground and when shaken their seeds rattled most vigor- 

 ously. The pods are three to six inches in longest diameter, 

 curved on themselves in a circle, the ends of the pods some- 

 times even overlapping. The seeds, ten to fourteen in num- 

 ber, are elliptical, three-eighths inches long, dark brown 

 with a paler ellipse on each side. Although loose enough to 

 rattle, the seeds are not unattached but each one is fastened 

 at one end by a partly coiled yellow thread in its own sepa- 

 rate compartment of the pod. 



As I was about to get into my bed that night (April 8) I 

 found a most curious animal running over it. As may be 

 guessed, I found a variety of "animalitos" in beds in Costa 

 Rica, some of them indeed rather too large to be entitled to 

 that diminutive, but this was the most extraordinary of all 

 I met in such situations. It was Ammotrecha stolli, one of 

 the group of Arachnids known as Solpugids. Its body was 

 three-eighths of an inch long, although when its legs were 

 spread out as in moving it covered more than half an inch. 

 Its short fore-body bore a pair of jaws longer than itself, 

 pointing forward, each terminating in a pincer whose jaws, 

 upper and lower, were of equal length, toothed along their 

 opposing edges and had sharp curved tips. Behind these 

 appendages was one pair of five-jointed palps and then four 

 pairs of legs. The palps, on the whole, were thicker and 

 longer than any of the legs except the fourth or last pair. 



