14 Records of the Indian Museum. [Vor. XVIII, 
Dr. Annandale would therefore be represented by the Zirreh Lake 
and not by the adventitious bodies of water in Northern Seistan, 
which, in their present form, are perhaps not more than six or 
seven centuries old. 
‘‘ Whether the Shelagh is the original outlet of the whole body 
of water in times of exceptional flood also appears somewhat 
doubtfui, and it is also quite possible that it has acquired its 
present importance within late historical times as a result of the 
silting up of the eastern portion of Southern Seistan. Originally 
the exceptional floods need not have collected as they do now in 
a single channel, but may have reached the Zirreh Lake directly 
through the various distributaries of a delta. Much more informa- 
tion than is at present available would be necessary to settle these 
various points which nevertheless are of great importance and 
interest from the various points of view of history, geology and 
physical geography.’’ 
The fauna of the Hamun shows no evidence of ancient origin, 
or of evolution in a great lake. It is a very poor fauna, as may be 
seen most readily by comparing it with that of the lake of Tiberias, 
in which the water is actually salter though other conditions are 
rather more favourable. From the Lake of Tiberias! twenty-five 
species of fish are known, from the Hamun only two; from the 
former at least fifteen species of molluscs, from the latter only 
five; from the former two species of Polyzoa, from the latter the 
same number; from the former five species of sponges, from the 
latter two. Moreover, the fauna of the Seistan Lake is by no 
means a highly specialized one. The fish belong to genera com- 
mon either in the mountains of central Asia or in those of North- 
western India, the molluscs are closely related to widely-distributed 
Palaearctic forms, the sponges are cosmopolitan, while the Polyzoa 
are closely related either to tropical or to cosmopolitan forms. 
Had this fauna been lineally descended from that of a great lake, 
I cannot believe that it would have shown no trace of its origin.’ 
Moreover, subfossil shells found in the neighbourhood of the 
Hamun are identical with the recent ones. 
From all these facts and lines of argument it seems to me 
evident, firstly that the Hamun occupies in part the bed of an old 
salt lake, secondly that it has only a casual connection with that 
lake, and thirdly that in its present state it is of recent origin. 
There has been no biological continuity between the old lake and 
the recent one. I am not particularly concerned with the history 
and origin of the former, but I suppose that they were similar to 
those of other lakes in Persia.’ 
1 Annandale, YFourn. and Proc. As. Soc. Bengal (New Series), Vol. > IF 
Nos. 10 and 11, p. 437 (1915). 
2 See Annandale, Rec. Ind. Mus. XIV, p. 172 (1918). 
® See the works of Blanford and Huntington already cited, and also de 
Morgan’s note in Revue de L’Ecole D' Anthropologie for 1907 (Paris), pp. 214—- 
215. 
