238 Records of the Indian Museum. [Vor. XVInE 
December, a very poor fauna. This is not altogether surprising, 
for the water in most of them is at that season intermittent, being 
shut off for several days each week. Even, however, where the 
stoppage of the flow does not cause desiccation and where a spe- 
cies of broad-leafed Potamogeton flourishes very few macroscopic 
animals could be found and even insects and Entomostraca were 
extremely scarce, if not altogether absent. The only crustacean 
obtained from this habitat was a single specimen of the Concho- 
stracous Leptestherta tenuis. A small Tipulid fly (Symflecta elong- 
ata), the only species in our collection described from Persia proper, 
was common on the damp mud at the edge of similar channels and 
probably bred in them. 
In the garden of the British Consulate at Nasratabad we 
examined an artificial water-course which had, however, a much 
richer vegetation and fauna, probably owing to the fact that it 
was less liable to desiccation and received the benefit of manure 
applied to the garden through which it flowed. Its flow was, how- 
ever, intermittent like that of the irrigation channels outside, from 
one of which it received its supply. The vegetation consisted 
mainly of a narrow-leafed species of Potamogeton and of Zanni- 
chellia palustris, but a filamentous green alga forming cloud-like 
masses was also abundant. The water was fresh or practically so. 
The fauna was sufficiently rich to be treated group by group. 
Fisu.—Shoals of the small Cyprinid Discognathus adiscus oc- 
curred, remaining at the bottom in the day-time but rising to the 
surface in the evening. Among them was found a single specimen 
of D. phryne. The first species is known only from Seistan, while 
the second is common in the hill-country of Baluchistan. 
MoLLuscA.—The same molluscs were found as in the pools on 
the parade-ground hard by, namely Limnaea bactriana, Gyraulus 
euphraticus, G. convexiusculus and Corbicula fluminalis. No differ- 
ence in the shell of any of these species could be discovered. A few 
empty shells of Segmentina calathus, a widely distributed North 
Indian species, were also obtained from this channel. 
ARTHROPODA.—The insects and Entomostraca of the channel 
were the same, or practically the same, as those of the pools on the 
parade-ground. 
OLIGOCHAETA.—The little Oligochaete worm Nats communis 
var. pumjabensis was found in considerable abundance and in in- 
teresting circumstances. It inhabited small mucilaginous tubes, 
probably stolen from a Dipterous iarva, in masses of filamentous 
algae and to each of the tubes a colony of the polyzoon Lopho podetla 
cartert was attached. N. communis is a cosmopolitan species and 
the var. punjabensis is common in Northern India. Col. Stephenson! 
found among our specimens of this little worm a single individual 
probably belonging to another species common in North India, 
namely Chaetogaster punjabensis. 
| Stephenson, Mem. Ind. Mus. VII, p. 196 (1920). 
