PHOCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD ENTOMOLOGICAL MEETING 937 



North-West and partly througli Northern China {e.g., Vanessa antiopa) ; 

 the Khasi Hills (and probably the other little-known Hill tracts of 

 Assam) have a strictly Oriental fauna and form a sub-region closely 

 related to that formed by the Burma Hill Tracts ; the South Indian 

 Hills, except the Nilgiris, are very httle known as regards their insect- 

 fauna, which is however very distinct from that of the North-Indian 

 Hills, and a line drawt\ East and West through the Palghat Gap, between 

 the Nilgiris and the Auamalais, seems to form a definite demarcation 

 between two faunal sub-regions, whilst the Ceylon Hills form a third 

 such sub-region. 



The Khasi Hills seem to be the richest locality for insects within 

 Indian limits and doubtless this remark might be extended to include 

 the Hill districts of Assam generally, but it must be confessed that 

 the surface of the ground has scarcely been scratched in any of these 

 Hill tracts, or indeed in any locaUty in India whether in the Hills or 

 Plams, so far as our knowledge of the insect population is concerned. 

 In a country where it is possible to discover some new and undescribed 

 insect on most days of any week in the year, and where our Imowledge 

 of the insect-fauna is so scanty even in the best-worked localities, no 

 keen collector or student of insects need ever be at a loss for occupa- 

 tion. Hill or Plain, wet or dry, cultivated area or jungle, all alike will 

 furnish a wealth of novelty. The Hills, however, as a whole will supply 

 a greater wealth of material, both of beautiful species and of those 

 interesting from the entomological view-point, and the collector in such 

 localities will daily come across the most interesting and at times bizarre 

 forms of insect hfe. Nor, in his appreciation of the individual forms, 

 should he neglect to notice more general facts, such as the great preva- 

 lence of gi-een-coloured insects in locaUties with a heavy rainfall and. 

 consequent very verdant vegetation. 



Desert tracts form the very antithesis of Hills but these also have 

 an interesting, though necessarily scanty, msect-fauna, of which practi- 

 cally nothing is known in India,* and an investigation of desert- living 

 forms of insect-life and a comparison of the different forms found in 

 the various desert tracts would be of considerable interest. 



Many insects are aquatic during the whole or only a part of their 

 existence and every more or less permanent body of water supports 

 a considerable insect-fauna, which comprises members of all the principal 

 Orders, and the aquatic insects of India as a whole form a complex 

 of which we know remarkably little aS yet, although special attention 



* See " Fauna of a. Desert Tract in Southern India " by Annandale and Wrcughton 

 in Mem. A. H. B. Vol. I, No. 10 (1906). 



