HIGH JUNGLE (379 pp.)William BeebeDuell, Sloan & Pearce ($4.50).
Whether or not William Beebe's discoveries put him among the great naturalists, his best books have as much charm and descriptive power as anything of the sort since Darwin's Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. In Beebe's career, High Jungle covers the Venezuelan phase, which began in 1945 after Beebe had abandoned his underseas adventures (during which he had successfully stared sharks out of countenance)* and returned to the job he loved best, the study of the jungle.
In the subtropical mountain rain forest, or "high jungle," of...