for the year 1916-17. xiii 



Lake Biwa in Japan, the Tai-Hu in the Kiangsu Province of China 

 and the Tale Sap in the peninsular part of Siam. The material 

 from all these three expeditions, as well as that from the Inle Lake 

 and from other localities visited on tour by members of the Survey, 

 is now being studied in Calcutta, more particularly by Mr. Kemp 

 and myself, with a view to the possible discovery of general principles 

 underlying the faunistic peculiarities of the different types of lakes. 

 So far as we have gone at present we have been struck "rather by the 

 extreme diversity of the animal communities of different Eastern 

 lakes than by any common phenomena. Certain characters , seem to 

 be characteristic of deep-water forms, but one finds, forms with, 

 precisely the same characters occurring from time to time in very 

 shallow water, and it is clear that' the number of factors to be 

 taken into consideration in estimating the faunistic peculiarities of 

 any one lake is not only very large, but depends almost as much 

 on the way in which the different factors are combined as on the 

 factors themselves. 



(6) Anthropology. 



The Anthropological Section of the Indian Museum has been 



e X , . , left in the hands of the Zoological Survey and 



Somatological re- .1 t^- , . . _ ^ ^ 1 1 , . 



search. *^® JJirector remams m charge of the ethnologic 



cal gallery. Physical anthropology certainly 

 finds a more appropriate place in the Zoological Survey than in any 

 other research department at present constituted in India. For 

 some years past I have been attempting to develop this branch 

 of investigation in our laboratories, in which a fairly complete set of 

 anthropometrical instruments has been installed. Most anthropolo- 

 gists would, I think, admit that the accepted system of anthropo' 

 metry, though it has received the imprimatur of several international 

 congresses, is by no means successful in elucidating the differences 

 and relationships between allied races of the human species. No 

 zoologist would attempt to base a description of an animal solely 

 on data such as it provides ; if he did so in the first instance he would 

 be careful to indicate precisely the points in which it differed from 

 allied forms. In human beings a practised eye can always recognize 

 differences that it is beyond the power of anthropometry to express. 

 The object of my investigations has been, therefore, not so much 

 to discover the measurable differences between different races and 

 individuals as to enquire what the visible differences mean and how 

 they can be best expressed. With this object in view I have taken a 

 large series of full-figure photographs of representatives of, the different 

 races that constitute the extremely mixed population of Calcutta. 

 These photographs have all been taken to scale and so far as possible 

 under the same conditions. Measurements have also been obtained 

 of a large proportion of the persons photographed. It has naturally 

 been very difficult to obtain subjects for these experiments and every 

 effort has been made to avoid offending racial or otker susceptibilities, 



