Science: Tropical Research

A novel laboratory has been created in the Canal Zone. When the Canal was built, Gatun Dam was erected across the valley of the Chagres River. The result was the creation of not only a deep-water channel from the Gatun locks to Gaillard Cut, but also a great lake, some 164 square miles in extent, which developed from the drowning of the lands on both sides of the main channel. This body of water is known as Gatun Lake.

When the dam was completed and the waters of the Chagres backed up, flooding the valley, the higher eminences of the foothills of the Cordilleran mountain chain rose out of the waters as islands. While the waters were rising, the animal life of the tropical valley took refuge on the higher ground on the shores and islands. On the latter this life is now isolated. Naturally, a wide variety of life is collected on some of these small islands.

Gov. J. J. Morrow, of the Canal Zone, brother of Dwight W. Morrow (a partner in J. P. Morgan & Co.), set aside Barro Colorado Island, one of the group, as a natural preserve for the wild life of the region. The island is some six square miles in area, lies only about two miles from the Isthmian Railway.

Here the Institute for Research in Tropical America, founded by the National Research Council, has opened a laboratory, although in reality the entire island is the laboratory. Dr. David Fairchilds, chief plant explorer of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, was present at the opening of the “laboratory.” Several prominent scientists are already at work there.

The island is said to harbor amphibians “of new and strange habits,” species of insects “never described,” 2,000 species of “strange and exotic” plants. Moreover, it “abounds” in anteaters, sloths, armadillos, peccaries, tapirs, agoutis, coatis, ocelots, jaguars, several kinds of bat monkeys and “black howlers.”