  The dark clouds in the constellation of Chamaeleon have distances of 160-180
pc from the Sun and a total mass of ~5000 M_sun. The three main clouds, Cha I,
II, and III, have angular sizes of a few square degrees and maximum extinctions
of A_V=5-10. Most of the star formation in these clouds is occurring in Cha I,
with the remainder in Cha II. The current census of Cha I contains 237 known
members, 33 of which have spectral types indicative of brown dwarfs (>M6).
Approximately 50 members of Cha II have been identified, including a few brown
dwarfs. When interpreted with the evolutionary models of Chabrier and Baraffe,
the H-R diagram for Cha I exhibits a median age of ~2 Myr, making it coeval
with IC 348 and slightly older than Taurus (~1 Myr). The IMF of Cha I reaches a
maximum at a mass of 0.1-0.15 M_sun, and thus closely resembles the IMFs in IC
348 and the Orion Nebula Cluster. The disk fraction in Cha I is roughly
constant at ~50% from 0.01 to 0.3 M_sun and increases to ~65% at higher masses.
In comparison, IC 348 has a similar disk fraction at low masses but a much
lower disk fraction at M>1 M_sun, indicating that solar-type stars have longer
disk lifetimes in Cha I.
