190 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



banks on either side of the track. Thick, impenetrable bush, all 

 swamps beneath, skirt the greater part of these lines, and here 

 the big, blue Morphos (M. peleides) fly fearlessly through the 

 dense undergrowth, giving the breathless entomologist only a 

 very meagre chance of effecting the capture of one of these 

 magnificent creatures, as it flops across the track to pass from 

 one snake-haunted bush to the other. 



The snakes are very bad in Costa Eica, and we were con- 

 stantly being warned to "be careful." A small and very 

 beautiful scarlet and spotted species, commonly known as the 

 coral snake, being especially dangerous — scarcely ever did any- 

 one bitten by this venomous brute recover ; and as for the blood 

 snake, a rather larger species, dark crimson in colour, death 

 with blood oozing from every pore of the body was the certain 

 result of too close an acquaintance there ! I only once saw one 

 of these blood snakes, which was in a ravine near a mountain 

 stream in the neighbourhood of San Jose ; it was not more than 

 a yard off when I first caught sight of it, but looking upon me 

 with evident suspicion, it cleared instantly, a course of action 

 which, all things considered, was scarcely to be regretted. 



What struck me most about the collecting in Costa Eica is 

 the immense variety of species, comparatively few of which were 

 ever represented by any very great number of specimens. By 

 far the commonest butterfly in every district we visited was 

 Anartia fatima ; it was common in the swampy lowlands, and 

 common, too, in the wet grassy lanes round San Jose (3400 feet), 

 in fact, common everywhere. Some of the Callidryas were also 

 abundant in certain places, where they would sit in clusters 

 on a patch of wet mud, and get up when disturbed in such 

 bewildering multitudes that, in one's anxiety to net the rarer 

 species amongst them, and only those in prime condition, it 

 often resulted in very few being netted at all ; for they are shy 

 butterflies, and when once disturbed, they do not very readily 

 re-assemble at the same spot. The Heliconidae were well repre- 

 sented everywhere, but no one species could ever be said to 

 swarm, and several of them were decidedly rare. We did better 

 in the neighbourhood of San Jose than anywhere else, especially 

 in July, but this was, I think, largely owing to the fact that 

 the facilities of penetrating into the surrounding country were 

 certainly greater than at Limon or Guapiles, though this last- 

 named place was wonderfully fascinating in the abundance and 

 beauty of the species occurring there, and wonderfully fearsome 

 as regards the accommodation to be obtained in its one and 

 only inn ! 



It was a never-ceasing mortification to me that there were 

 no tracks leading through those prolific forest swamps of the 

 lowlands, or even if there was a small path, it soon came to an 

 end, and, moreover, more often than not was rendered useless and 



