Water front of Panama City where the boats come in to market, in the early morning soon 

 after day break, loaded with fruit and vegetables from the neighboring islands 



NEW FAUNAL CONDITIONS IN THE 

 CANAL ZONE 



By H. E. Anthony 



With flash-light photographs taken by Mr. George Shiras and many photographs by the Author 



DURING the months of February 

 and March of this year it was 

 the good fortune of the author 

 to accompany, as an American Museum 

 representative, Mr. George Shiras, 3d, 

 on a trip to the Canal Zone. Mr. 

 Shiras desired to obtain photographs by 

 flash light of the animal life of that 

 region, a method of which he is one of 

 the foremost exponents to-day and 



Editorial Note: The expedition worked under 

 authority from the Canal Commission. It is of 

 -note that Colonel Goethals, as the first civil 

 governor of the Canal Zone, continues adherence 

 to the policy he maintained during the engineering 

 work in the region — namely, that the isthmus 

 shall be a game preserve. Exception to the 

 observance of the laws against shooting game 

 ■outside a short open season will be made only in 

 ^■avor of such occasional zoological expeditions 



which has yielded him some remarkable 

 results in temperate regions. It was 

 through his generosity that the Museum 

 was able to send a collector to Panama 

 with him. 



It was expected that faunal conditions 

 in the Canal Zone would be undergoing 

 abrupt changes because of the damming 

 of Gatun Lake and the consequent ex- 

 tensive high water. From a basin with 

 no lake worthy the name, with standing 

 water confined largely to marshy areas 

 except during the height of the rainy 

 season, the Gatun region has been trans- 

 formed by the huge dam at the locks 

 into a lake of one hundred and sixty-four 

 square miles in extent and a depth of 

 seventy to eighty feet in many places. 



239 



