xe th bP RESOH WADE > PONGES 
OF TELE MALEiACB Ay Re ON Ee. 
By N. ANNANDALE, D.Sc., F.A.S.B., Superintendent of the 
Indian Museum. 
The Malabar Zone is defined as consisting of the narrow 
strip of land on the west coast of Peninsular India between the 
Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea and of the Western Ghats 
themselves from the Tapti River in the northern part of Bombay 
proper to the extreme south of the Peninsula at Cape Comorin. 
The Western Ghats are a mountain-range (or rather a some- 
what interrupted series of ranges) about 800 miles long and occu- 
pying in Peninsular India somewhat the same position as the 
Andes do in South America. They have not, however, anything 
like the same relative importance from a geographical point of 
view, for as a whole they cannot be reckoned among the higher 
ranges of the Indian Empire and they become insignificant in 
every way if compared with the Himalayas. It is true that in 
the so-called High Range in the north of Travancore an altitude 
of over 9,000 feet above sea-level is attained and that there are 
numerous peaks of over 3,000 feet at other points; but on the 
eastern side the mountains fall away gradually in the northern 
part of the Ghats into the plateau of the Deccan trap, while in 
the south they are inextricably confused with the ranges of the 
central part of the Madras Presidency, so that, although their 
height is often striking when they are viewed from the plains 
that lie below them to the west, it is difficult to distinguish them 
as a separate range at all from the east. 
The freshwater sponges of the Malabar Zone were first studied 
by the late Dr. H. J. Carter over sixty years ago, but his 
investigations were confined to the Island of Bombay, the fauna 
of which is not nearly so characteristic as that of the Ghats. 
Recently large collections have been obtained by Mr. S. P. 
Agharkar of the Elphinstone College, Bombay, Mr. F. H. Gravely 
of the Indian Museum, Mr. R. Shunkara Narayana Pillay of the 
Trivandrum Museum, and myself in the Nasik, Poona, Satara 
and Ratnagiri districts of Bombay and in the Native State of 
Travancore. With this material in my hands I have thought it 
worth while to discuss the Spongillid fauna of the Malabar Zone 
as a whole. 
