424 ^ YEAR OF COSTA RICAN NATURAL HISTORY 



grasshopper, whose dark-colored body looked to be six inches 

 or more in length, and whose hind wings were bright red. 

 It did not alight upon the ground, like most grasshoppers, 

 but upon the branches of trees upon which it walked with 

 ease. We were not able to catch it and ultimately it flew off", 

 giving us at least the opportunity of witnessing its strong 

 powers of flight. In the last days of January, in a forest 

 north of Santa Cruz, we secured one of these large insects 

 which may have been of the same species. This Santa Cruz 

 grasshopper, a female Tropidacris dux, has the body four 

 inches long, each wing, fore and hind, and each hind leg three 

 and three-quarters long. Since the wings when folded, as 

 in the act of walking, project an inch behind the body, the 

 total apparent length is four and three-fourths inches. At 

 the time of writing the colors have been lost to a great de- 

 gree because the insect was preserved in alcohol. The hind 

 wings still have a markedly reddish tinge throughout and 

 are bordered with blackish-brown externally. This latter 

 color is not sharply defined, as small patches of it extend 

 toward the wing base, occupying the centers of the "cells" 

 enclosed by the veins. The median dorsal ridge of the pro- 

 thorax is hardly arched, when viewed in profile, although 

 showing a division into five or more successive teeth or 

 rounded lobes. In the allied Titanacris this same ridge is 

 very distinctly convex. 



As usual, this charral was enclosed by a barbed wire fence. 

 On one of the wooden posts at a distance of four feet from the 

 ground was a termites' nest, which Professor Tristan photo- 

 graphed. The nest was 75 cm. high and 45 cm. thick. After 

 taking the picture we cut into the nest with a machete. 

 It contained thousands, if not a million termites, of which 

 we found nasuti, workers, and immature larger individuals 

 with rudimentary wings, but no true royalties or termito- 

 philes (insects living in amity or at least neutrality with 



