for ihc years If) 77-20. xv 



will be able to publish liis memoir on the subject. The most im- 

 portant result of a strictly practical kind is his discovery in common 

 species of Limncea and Planorbids, both in Calcutta and in the Wynaad 

 in south-western India, of a cercaria which is morphologically almost 

 indistinguishable from that of Scliistosomum japonicum, a serious parasite 

 of man in China and Japan. He has published an account of this 

 animal illustrated with a plate, which is reproduced here (plate D). in 

 Vol. XVI of the Records of the Indian Museum. There is no reason 

 to regard the species as otherwise than indigenous, but whether it is 

 conspecific with any of the Schistosomatids already described from 

 cattle in India, and whether its sexual generation is actually parasitic 

 in man are questions that still remain to be solved. 



Another branch of the same enquiry has had for its object the dis- 

 covery of the possibility or otherwise of infecting indigenous fresh- 

 water molluscs with the miracidia of Scliistosomum hcematohium from a 

 patient who had contracted the disease in Egypt. The experiments 

 for this purpose were conducted first by Dr. Kemp and latterly by Major 

 Sewell. They were carried out at all seasons and on all species of 

 Gastropod molluscs common in the Calcutta tanks. In not a single 

 individual was any trace of infection by the human parasite discovered, 

 although many other cercariae were naturally abundant in some of the 

 snails. The methods employed were those recommended by Leiper. 



Anthropological Investigations. — In my last report I referred to 

 anthropometrical investigations then in progress in the Indian Museum. 

 The prosecution of these investigations has been rendered difficult for 

 various reasons, especially by the necessity of long absences from Calcutta 

 on my part and by certain causes connected with the war. The 

 measurements of Anglo-Indians taken in our laboratories are now, 

 however, being analysed mathematically by Mr. P. Mahalanobis, Pro- 

 fessor of Physics in the Presidency College, Calcutta, in collaboration 

 with whom I hope that it will now be possible to achieve results of a 

 satisfactory nature. I must express my thanks to Dr. K. S. Koy who 

 helped me greatly in obtaining the measurements. At the meeting of 

 the Indian Science Congress at Nagpur I gave an address on fallacies in 

 Anthropometric methods. This address wdll be published, elaborately 

 illustrated with photographs, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of 

 Bengal shortly, and will be discussed at the first meeting of the new Inter- 

 national Congress of Anthropology to be held in Paris next September. 



In accordance with the plan set forth at the beginning of this section 

 it is necessary for me to pass over with a bare mention the taxonomic 

 and anatomical work carried out in the last three years on the fishes 

 by Dr. B. L. Chaudhuri, on the Oriental Diptera by Mr. E. Brunetti, 

 on the Decapod Crustacea by Dr. S. W. Kemp, and on various groups 

 of insects by Dr. F. H. Gravely, Dr. Baini Prashad and the late Mr. 

 C. A. Paiva. These researches can be more conveniently dealt with, 

 in so fa:' as they are still in progress, at a later stage and in a subse- 

 quent report. Their value is known to all students of the groups with 

 which they are concerned. The important investigations of the 

 parasites of fish undertaken in our laboratories by members of the local 



