BARRO COLORADO ISLAND BIOLOGICAL STATION 
By ALFRED O. Gross, PH. D. 
Bowdoin Oollege, Brunswick, Me. 
[With 9 plates] 
The great value of a biological laboratory offering facilities for 
the study of living creatures in their natural environment has long 
been recognized, and as a consequence we find excellent institutions 
of this nature located in favorable situations throughout the tem- 
perate regions of North America. Until recently, however, the 
student of animal and plant life has not been given the opportunities 
of a laboratory in the Tropics where the jungle offers a virgin field 
in a new world of life. 
Our knowledge of life in the jungle has been more or less limited 
to collections made by various expeditions sent out by museums and 
individuals interested in the Tropics. Too-often the primary object 
of these expeditions has been to secure large numbers of specimens, 
whereas a detailed study of these creatures has been secondary and 
limited to random notes taken at the time the specimens were col- 
lected. The success of these expeditions has been measured, and 
necessarily so, by the number of specimens collected, rather than by 
the hours and days of study devoted to the behavior of a single indi- 
vidual. The pioneer work of collecting is basic and must be done 
first, but as far as the birds and mammals of the American Tropics 
are concerned we now have a fairly complete knowledge of the 
species to be found, and the time is ripe for more intensive life his- 
tory work. Such work, however, can not be carried on in the jungle 
to the best advantage without the facilities of a laboratory located in 
the midst of the field of operations. 
I am indebted to Dr. Thomas Barbour of the Museum of Compara- 
tive Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. and to Prof. Alexander G. Ruthven 
of the University of Michigan for making it possible for me to spend 
the summer, June to September, 1925, in studying the birds in a 
jungle laboratory, the Laboratory of the Institute for Research in 
Tropical America located on Barro Colorado Island, Canal Zone. 
Barro Colorado Island is the largest island in Gatun Lake, formed 
at the time the Chagres River was dammed in constructing the canal. 
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