THE FAUNA OF "RESERVOIR-PLANTS." 



187 



Land-Leech, a Land-Nemertean, lepidopterous larvae, larvae of a 

 Drone-fly (Eristalis), various Coleoptera, including a true Water- 

 Beetle (Copelatus), and a peculiar flattened Cockroach. The 

 Eristalis larva and the Copelatus are purely aquatic. They were 

 never found elsewhere but in Pandani, and indeed in several 

 localities where they were obtained there was no other water 

 for them to inhabit. The Pandanacece are confined to the Old 

 World tropics, and, regarded simply as reservoir-plants, they 



Fig. 2. — Various epiphytic Bromeliacece ; Costa Rica. (After Picado.) 



appear to occupy somewhat the same place in the Old World as 

 the Bromeliacece do in the New. 



It is to a consideration of these last, the Bromeliacece, most 

 important and most interesting of all reservoir-plants, that one 

 now passes. They have usually an exceedingly short stem and 

 a rosette of fleshy leaves arranged so as to form a kind of 

 funnel admirably adapted for holding water and debris. The 

 majority of forms are epiphytes, i. e., they grow, not on the 

 ground but on trunks and branches of trees, and it is with the 

 epiphytic kinds that we have to do. Some Bromeliacece grow 

 on the ground — the pineapple is one such— but these do not 



