1040 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol. XXVIII. 
physiological j)eculiaritics. Its mouth is situated on the lower surface of the head 
and immediately behind the mouth there is a large flattened disk by means of 
which it can adhere to any solid object. Most of the species of the genus*, which 
are numerous in the hilly districts of India and Burma, inhabit rapid-ruiming 
water and cling by means of their disk to rocks or stones in the current. Such a 
habitat does not afford the same facilities for watching the mode of life as does 
the lake -bungalow. One usually sees the fish swimming out in a clumsy manner 
from a mass of weeds, moving forward by abrupt and awkward jerks of its tail. 
It swims to one of the house-posts, to which it affixes itself by means of its disk. 
It spreads out both its paired fins flat against the post like a couple of fans on 
each side of its body. With its sharji upper jaw it then scrapes from the post 
the minute algae and Polyzoa which cover the wood. These are prevented from 
escaping by the deep fold of skin that forms a false uj)per lip, and are swallowed 
as they are set free. As it feeds the fish moves gradually up the post, thrusting 
itself upward by hardly perceptible movements of its tail. 
These are the fish most abundaiit beneath the bungalow ; but others are also 
to be seen occasionally : for instance, the two stickle-back eels {Mastacem- 
belus caudiocellatus and M. oafesii) peculiar to the Inle Lake system. Mr. Tate 
Regant of the Bi-itish ]\Iuseum believes that it is to their family, or at any rate 
sub-order, Chrnulhuria belongs, and doubtless he is right at any rate as to the 
sub-order. But as the most salient characters of the Stickle-back Eels are the 
spines on their backs and their peculiar fleshy snouts, neither of which charac- 
ters Chaudhuria possesses, it is a remarkably isolated little fish. 
I have mentioned twelve different kinds of fish as living beneath the Lake 
Bungalow, but this by no means exhausts the fish-fauna of the lake, from which 
no less than thirty-five or thirty-six species have been recorded. Of these, three 
are mud-loving forms of wide distribution in Eastern Asia, but found in the lake 
only among the floating islands at the edge. They are the two amphibious eels 
Moriopterus alhusand Amphipnous cuchia and the Black Cat fish Clarias batracMis. 
The last is regarded as one of the best edible fish in the lake, but is a foul 
feeder and the flesh is too soft to my taste. The Shans will not eat the 
eels, the fle.sh of which they believe to produce leprosy, probably on account 
of the livid mottled colour of their skins. The Intha, or true Sons of the Lake, 
have no such prejudice. 
Among the islands at the edge, but near the surface under floating grass and 
water-weeds, a very different fish is found. It is even smaller than the two little 
fish that live amongst the thickets under the bungalow, hardly attaining the 
length of half an inch, but still more gorgeous in colouration. Its ground-colour, 
so to speak, is deep crimson and it bears on its sides a series of deep blue bars. 
At the base of its tail there is a large round eye-like black spot surrounded by a 
pale ring. The name of this fish is 21 icrorasbora eri/thromicron. It is probably 
the smallest of the whole of the great carp family. For a trivial name I would 
suggest that of the Crimson Minnowlet. 
The other species in the fish-fauna call for no very sj)ecial notice, though several' 
of them are peculiar to the lake. They belong to the carp family in a wide sense 
with the exception of the wide-ranging Freshwater Herring {Notopterus 
notopterus) and Striped Murrel {Ophiocephalus striatus), but thi-ee of them are 
small loaches of the family Cobitidae in a restricted sense. Further particulars 
may be found in my paper in Vol. XIV of the Records of the Indian Museum. 
The method of fishing used in the Inle Lake are almost as diverse as the species 
of fish. The most striking to the visitor who is there in March are the use of float- 
ing islands as decoys for fish, and the manoeuvres of the spearing parties, to’ 
seen daily on the lake especially on the day before one of the local markets. 
* See Hora, Rec. Ind. Mus. XXII, pp. 633-687, pis. xxiv-xxvi (1921). 
t Regan. Ann. Not. (O’) 111, p. 198, (1919). 
