Army Officer Describes Animals, Birds, Reptiles of Panama Canal Jungle. The blank spaces on the world's map have been dwindling so rapidly I that it is a bit surprising to rend of ' a great wilderness unmapped, uninhabited un-inhabited and practically unknown alongside one of the great American thoroughfares. In his account in Natural Nat-ural History, Lieut.-Col. Tounsend Whelen states that a passage cut from the Panama canal some five miles through a tangled second growth of small trees and other vegetation leads to n gigantic wall of verdure, and this is the beginning of the primeval jungle jun-gle comprising most of the eastern portion of the Republic of Tanama, and extending about ,'!00 miles in length by 50 to 100 miles in width. In this strange new world one can wander unimpeded by thorns and creepers, in a climate oddly cool and balmy. The vegetation is most impressive, impres-sive, even terrifying giant moras, borigen, cavanillesia, ceibas, rubber and fig rising limbless 100 to 200 feet, with tops spreading to shut out the sky, and a lower growth of many kinds of slender tree ferns and palms, developed in semi-darkness, that shorten one's view without hindering progress. Hardly anywhere can one see more than 50 yards. The jungle is alive with a wonderful bird life, which is distributed in zones of altitude alti-tude on the mountain slopes and locally lo-cally from the ground to the tree tops quail, tinamou and pheasants being I common near the earth's surface, wrens, humming birds, thrushes and other species, in the low-bush level ; doves, guans, owls and trogons, half way up, and parrots, parrakeets, macaws, ma-caws, toucans and cotingas, under the leafy roof. Tapir, deer, peccaries and other mammals, are abundant, though shy. The many serpents do little harm, the chief dangers being malaria, getting get-ting lost and falling branches and fruits.