530 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [N.S., XVIII, 
are not sea-salts. Its fauna includes no marine or maritime 
species and is interesting chiefly because, having been derived 
necessarily from the highlands of Afghanistan and Baluchistan, 
it is to a large extent a high-mountain fauna adapted to live 
in a comparatively low swampy depression. This is note- 
worthy particularly among the fish, several species of which are 
identical with, or very closely related to, forms known otherwise 
from great altitudes in Central Asia. A distinct reduction in 
the size of the fins may be noted in certain species. The fauna 
of sponges and polyzoa, on the other hand, is interesting on 
account of its Indian affinities, while the molluscs belong to 
what I have called elsewhere the “ Afghan” type. 
f normal inland lakes within the limits of the Indian 
Empire by far the most interesting as yet investigated is the 
Inlé Lake on the limestone plateau of the Southern Shan States. 
The fauna of this lake was collected by Dr. F. H. Gravely and 
myself in the early part of 1917. It proved so interesting in 
many respects that [ paid the lake a second visit in the spring 
of 1922, accompanied by Dr. Sunder Lal Hora and ‘ 
H. Srinivasa Rao. The fauna is remarkably distinct, especially 
in fish and molluscs Many of the former are very small and 
brightly coloured, with large eyes and poorly developed tactile 
organs. These characters appear to be correlated with the 
exceptional clearness and limpidity of the water of the lake and 
this again is due to its peculiar chemical composition, in which 
salts of lime and magnesium are abundant. The molluscs, 
possibly ' in correlation with the presence of these salts, have 
in some species remarkably sculptured shells and exhibit ex- 
traordinary plasticity and individual variability. It was 
chiefly to study these phenomena that I visited the lake for 
a second time. The results of the second tour are not yet 
worked out; those of the first are contained in Rec. Ind. Mus., 
XIV (1918). 
Other Indian lakes of which the fauna has been studied 
in the period under review are those of Kashmir and Kumaon 
in the Himalayas and of Manipur on the Burmese frontier of 
Assam. The lakes of Kumaon were visited some years ago 

fish are not distinctive. Although some of the lakes are deep, 
there does not seem to be any specialized deep-water fauna. 


' A recent, detailed, chemical examination of the water and of the 
shells themselves, undertaken in the Indian Institute of Science at Banga- 
lore, render this less probable than it formerly appeared. 
