David Ballard, age 12, of Charleston., W. a., for his question:

What is a rain forest?

In tropical regions, we call a rain forest a jungle. The vegetation is very dense and very varied. There are tall evergreen trees towering above dense thickets. The foliage is evergreen and most of the leaves are large and shiny. Tangles of vines hang in festoons among the trees and orchids perch in the branches.

A tropical jungle of this kind needs 100 inches of rainfall a year, and usually gets much more. They exist along the Amazon river of South America, in tropical west kfrica, in parts of India and on some of the Malay islands, Temperate rain forests exist outside the tropics in Tierra del Fuego, in parts of New Zealand, parts of Japan and Australia. Here the rainfall is just as heavy, but the trees and plants are typical of those found growing in other temperate regions.