xii Report on the Zoological Survey of India 



Research. 



(a) Zoology. 



Zoological research undertaken in the laboratories of the Indian 

 Museum is mainly of two sorts — taxonomic and 



Taxonomic research. faunistic. In both branches the work is also 

 geographical, and indeed it is impossible to draw a definite dividing 

 line. The taxonomic side of our investigations consists chiefly in 

 the classification of certain parts of the vast collections that have 

 accumulated, and are now accumulating much more rapidly than 

 heretofore, in the store-rooms of the Museum, So far as possible, 

 all collections are sorted out on their receipt into the main groups 

 represented. There are definite places for unnamed specimens of 

 each of the principal orders of the animal kingdom. Each officer 

 has always some particular order or family in hand. As soon as 

 the accumulated material permits, he sets to work to revise the 

 Indian (or in some cases the Oriental) species of the group at which 

 he is working, and finally produces either a short paper or a more 

 lengthy monograph as the result of his research. In this way, in 

 the first year of the Survey's official existence. Dr. Gravely has 

 been working at the beetles of the family Passalidse, Mr. Kemp 

 at certain families and genera of the Indo-Pacific Decapod Crustacea, 

 Dr. Chaudhuri at the freshwater fish of various parts of Asia and 

 I myself at the • Indian tortoises. Mr. E. Brunetti, though not a 

 member of the staf?, has also worked at the Oriental Diptera, while 

 Mr. C. A. Paiva, Special Entomological Assistant, has begun to 

 study the water-bugs. In the work of the scientific officers it is 

 a recognized principle that the study of the geographical distribution 

 of species cannot be divorced from that of their taxonomic position. 

 It is only when this principle is recognized that taxonomy can be 

 legitimately regarded as survey work. So far .as may be, also, we 

 feel bound, with the special opportunities for investigation we enjoy 

 in a tropical country, to consider the biology of animals in reference 

 to their systematic position. The great drawback to all purely 

 systematic work undertaken by zoologists who are not acquainted 

 with the living fauna is that they are ahnost bound to ignore 

 the question of adaptation to environment. 



Our faunistic differs in degree rather than in kind from our 

 taxonomic work. It exists at present mainly 



Faunistic researcli. -^ ^^^e study of the fauna of certain lakes and 

 estuaries in relation to geography and biology and in particular 

 to the correlation between environment, general physiology and 

 form. In the year 1914 Mr. Kemp and I, occasionally with the 

 assistance of Dr. Chaudhuri and Dr. Gravely, made very large 

 collections and extensive observations on the fauna of the Chilka 

 Lake in Orissa and the Ganjam District of Madras. Previously, 

 in 1912, I had studied while on leave the fauna of the Lake of Tiberias 

 in Palestine, while more recently, in 1915 and 1916, I investigated 

 that of three large lakes in different parts of Eastern Asia, namely, 



