JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIII. 
that vicinity, we should have regarded the episode in a somewhat less light' 
hearted manner ; and incidentally had the only ‘ land-lubber ’ present been the 
culprit he would not have been allowed to forget it for many a long day ! 
The Nicobarese to a certain extent use fish traps, consisting of baskets made 
of spht rattan cane, but, in Nankauri Harbour at any rate, fish are usually- 
speared, either from a canoe or by the men wading in water up to their waists. 
Whenever a fish is ‘ spotted ’ the man slowly and quietly approaches until he is 
within striking distance and then hurls his fish-spear, which is armed with 
five or six barbed iron prongs. The usual result is a clean miss, but occasionally 
a good-sized fish is struck and captured. 
As one would naturally expect in a race that lives and moves and has its 
being by the sea, the children’s games largely consist in imitating their parents’ 
chief occupation, and in most families we find that the youngsters are the proud 
possessors of toy boats, some of them being models of the native outrigger 
canoe, while others are crude models of either the sampan, carried by the 
Burmese or Chinese Trading craft, or the pulling-cutters and whalers of Bri' 
tish ships. Occasionally these models are fitted with masts and sails and one 
not infrequently finds one riding at anchor a few feet out from the beach. 
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are, as a study of the contours of 
the ocean bed clearly shows, the top-most peaks of a great mountain range 
that has a height of approximately 15,000 feet, for on either side of the chaui 
of islands the sea-bed rapidly sinks to a depth of 2,000 fathom? or more. This 
great mountain chain, which is a continuation of the Arakan Hills of Burma 
and links on at its southern end with the mountains of Sumatra, is supposed to 
be a part of the great Alpine-Himalayan system that was gradually thrown 
up during the Miocene and early Pliocene periods. There are two breaks in 
the continuity of the ridge, which extends in a curved line for nearly 700 miles,- 
The northern and lesser gap separates the Andamans from the Nicobars and 
is known as Ten-Degree Channel, in which the depth of water is about 550 fathoms. 
The southern break, or the Great channel, separates the Nicobars from Sumatra, 
and here the depth of water over the ridge is nearly 800 fathoms. According 
to Professor Suess* the whole of the Andaman Sea was at one time dry land 
and formed a continuation to the south of the present basins of the Irrawadi and 
Sitang Rivers. If this be so, then the whole of the Andaman-Sumatra ridge 
must have formed one connected mountain chain and have been continuous with 
the main land. To geologists the subsidence or elevation of a small area of the 
earth’s crust through a distance of 10,000 feet is a minor affair, when compared 
with such collosal convulsions as those which gave rise to the appearance and sub- 
sequent disappearance of huge areas of surface such as the theoretical continent 
of Gondwana land. From a study of the Mammalian and Avian fauna of the 
Nicobars and Andamans Boden Kloss reached the conclusion that these islands 
have never either been part of the main land or in any way directly connected 
with it. On the other hand the presence of numbers of Reptilia, the occurrence 
of numerous land and fresh water molluscs, which according to Godwin-Austen 
show an undoubted affinity to the molluscan fauna of Burma, and the presence 
of fresh-water Crustacea, such as Palaemon and Caridina, seem to me to indicate 
that there must have been a connection with the main land and that this was 
followed at some later period by an almost, though not quite complete, submer- 
gence. This appears to have been followed in turn by a second period of eleva- 
tion, which, so far as one can judge, is still progressing. 
The geological formation of all the islands directly or indirectly connected 
with Nankauri Harbour, namely Nankauri, Camorta, Kachal and Trmkat, 
shows that at one time this area was almost, if not entirely, submerged. The 
Suess, “ The Face of the Earth,” Vol. I, English Authorised Translation. 
