1921I.| N. ANNANDALE: Fauna of Seistan. 245 
Eastern Europe, Western and Central Asia. The third Batrachian, 
Rana cyanophlyctis, has a much more peculiar geographical distri- 
bution—from near Aden to Penang. It is perhaps the commonest 
and most universally distributed of the Indian frogs, at all alti- 
tudes up to nearly 7,000 feet, but east of the Bay of Bengal becomes 
extremely rare. Throughout the greater part of its range no 
racial characters have been discovered, but in Seistan it is said 
to be distinguished by the size of its eyes and tympanum. If 
this -be so—I have seen no specimens of the race setstanica of 
Nikolsky—the race provides evidence of the complete isolation of 
Seistan from other parts of the range of the species. 
The number of fish (9 species in 7 genera) known from Seistan 
is small considering that the country possesses that rarest of 
phenomena in Central Asia and Persia, a freshwater lake; but here 
again the same facts are illustrated. This becomes clearer if we 
examine the fish-fauna in detail. Of the nine species three belong 
to the Central Asiatic subfamily Schizothoracinae, which are in a 
sense anadromous fish though far separated from the sea, three to 
the Cyprininae, which may be regarded as the dominant group 
in the great suborder Cyprinoidea, perhaps the most successful and 
characteristic of all the non-migratory freshwater fish, and three to 
the Cobitidae, a family of wide range in the Palaearctic and 
Oriental Regions and modified primarily for life on or in a soft 
bottom in water of no great speed. 
Of the three Schizothoracinae one (Schizothorax zarudmyt) is 
indigenous to Seistan, but is little more than a local race of a 
species found in mountain streams at much higher altitudes to the 
north-east, another is identical with a species of similar habitat, 
namely Schizopygopsis stoliczkae, while the third has been known 
hitherto from Waziristan in the extreme east of the mass of moun- 
tains that forms the ultimate barrier between the Oriental and 
Palaearctic Regions in the Indian Empire. This is Schizocypris 
brucei. ‘The Schizothoracinae are the most characteristic of the 
fish of the highlands of Central Asia, and particularly of the northern 
watershed of the Himalayas and Hindu Kush. A few species, 
including some of the least modified forms, have made their way 
across the great divide and live in the streams of the southern 
watershed and even in those on the lower slopes of the Himalayas 
and in the plains immediately at their base. It is not to these 
forms that the Schizothoracinae of Seistan are related, but to true 
Central Asiatic species. 
The Cyprininae of Seistan belong to two genera, Discognathus 
and Scaphiodon. The latter seems to have its headquaters in 
Baluchistan and not to be essentially a mountain-dweller, while 
Discognathus, which is replaced in India by the closely allied but 
more specialized genus Garva, occurs in Syria, Mesopotamia, E. 
Persia, Baluchistan and Waziristan on the North-West Frontier of 
India. Neither genus is found in the highlands of Central Asia, 
and though both live commonly in hilly country, neither inhabits 
high mountainous regions. 
