HARVARD COSTA RICA EXPEDITION ADDS TO COLLECTION OF PLANTS

(Editor's Note: The following article on the Harvard-Costa Rice expedition of the past winter was written especially for the Crimson by W. S. Thomas '32, who spent the winter in Costa Rica as assistant to Dr. C. W. Dodge of Harvard.)

A land, so unique in the abundance and tameness of its wild life, that one can approach to within a few feet of wandering monkey bands, catch armadillos with one's bare hands, and startle gorgeous blue and flame macaws, the giants of the parrot family from nearby branches, is not a mythical Paradise, but Guanacaste, isolated, northwestern province of Costa Rica, in Central America.

On February 23 Harvard's Costa Rica Expedition for plant collections, under the leadership of Dr. C. W. Dodge, Director of the Farlow Herbarium, returned to San Jose, Costa Rica's highland capital, after a month and half's sojourn in Guanacaste. With two, huge, native-made chests of cedar and bulky presses, all loaded with the 5000 specimens, the colectors felt repaid for their hours of horse-back travel and forest excursions on foot, where it was generally necessary to cut a way through tangled vegetation with a machete, the typical, sword-like knife of the New World tropics. But the physical hardships were almost negligible. Thanks to the unstinting hospitality of large land-owners, Harvard's representatives enjoyed many comforts and courtesies on their visits to sugar farms, cattle ranches, and coffee fincas.

See Carnival

Headquarters were made in Liberia, a quaint, sunbaked town and the political center of Guanacaste, where, in the weeks of January, the temperature for several hours each day averaged 108 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a fortunate circumstances that gave the botanists privilege of witnessing the yearly carnival or Fiestas Civicas, held in Liberia in the last days of January. Being the center of the cattle country where most citizens carry revolvers at their belts, the town, with its gaily popular celebrations, attracted the native cowboys or sabaneros. They rode in from long distances on fine horses, their saddles decorated in the most colorful of leathers, but these otherwise well-dressed horsemen rode in their stirrups bare-footed. The traditional square dances, queens, representing the two orders of society, football games, and sweetly melodious marimba concerts in the moonlight were all features of the ceremonies. Particularly impressive, though, were the bull-riding contests, held in a special plaza and attended by a large audience, which in breathless excitement, watched the infuriated bulls buck their riders, who stuck tenaciously to the smooth saddles and used spurs vigorously without a thought to impending danger.

Gather Specimens

Verano, the dry, summer season of Spanish-America, left its mark in parched river beds and many leafless trees, some bearing weird green fruits, others ablaze with blossoms, yellow, white or pink. These conditions in the lowlands made plant hunting not as favorable as in the hills, for there vegetation grew thickly because of the continual moisture, supplied by low-lying clouds. Here scores of odd lichens, curious, climbling epiphytic plants, growing on all available tree trunks in the darkly forested places gave witness to the unending persistency of jungle life, besides affording rich material for the steel cases of the Farlow and Gray Herbaria back in Cambridge. Not equipped for extensive zoological work, the collectors, nevertheless, bore home some animals, including bats, reptiles, insects, and amphibians for the Museum of Comparative Zoology.