ey THE AOUATIC ‘CHELONA OF THe 
MPA: EG AuNeAGD: 1) fr, ACN DD JIS) Ros. eA ee 
By N. ANNANDALE, D.Sc., F.A.S.B., Superintendent, 
Indian Museum. 
The smaller streams that join to form the Mahanaddi (liter- 
ally the ‘‘ Great River’’) rise in various mountain-ranges in the 
Central Provinces of India and their united waters flow eastwards 
through Orissa to the Bay of Bengal, which they reach by 
several mouths. The Mahanaddi river-system is thus, on the 
eastern side, the most northerly system of any importance in 
Peninsular India properly so called, that is to say India south of 
the Ganges and the Indus. From the Gangetic system it is not 
separated either by any great distance or by any very important 
“natural barrier; the most northerly mouth of the Mahanaddi is 
hardly more than 100 miles south of that of the R. Hughli, and 
there are neither mountain-ranges nor deserts between them. 
Almost all that is known of the aquatic chelonia of the Maha- 
naddi river-system is contained in a paper by the late Dr. W. T. 
Blanford published in the Journal of the Astatic Soctety of Bengal 
in 1870 and entitled ‘‘ Notes on some Reptilia and Amphibia 
from Central India.’’ In preparing my recent account of the 
Indian Trionychidae (Rec. Ind. Mus., VII, pp. 151-180) I had 
before me most of the specimens of that family collected by 
Dr. Blanford but was unable, for lack of further material, to add 
much to what he had written. Now, however, thanks to the 
assistance given me by Mrs. F. deMonte of Cuttack in Orissa, 
Mr. T. Southwell, Deputy Director of Fisheries, Bengal, and 
Mr. B. L. Chaudhuri of the Indian Museum, it has become 
possible to deal in a more satisfactory manner both with Dr. 
Blanford’s specimens and with those that have recently been 
acquired. Even so, I have only been able to prove the existence 
in the Mahanaddi and its tributaries of four aquatic tortoises, 
although at least eleven species that may be called strictly aquatic 
haunt the waters of the Ganges. These eleven species are the 
following :— 
Trionyx gangeticus | Hardella thurgi 
Trionyx hurum Batagur baska 7 
Emyda granosa : Trionychi- Kachuga lineata Testudini- 
Pelochelys cantoris t dae. Kachuga dhouehena dae. 
Chitra indica Kachuga smithit | 
} Kachuga tectum | 
