Abstract
AS a preliminary to the faunistic study of Barkuda, one of several islands in the Chilka Lake, Dr. N. Annandale has investigated its climate, physical structure, palaeontology, and vegetation. The lake is a maritime one in the extreme north-east of Gan jam, and is connected with the Bay of Bengal. The island, some three hundred acres in extent, though isolated for terrestrial animals, is within the range of insects of feeble flight and that of dispersal for many seeds. The climate is that of the coasts of the Circars to the south and Orissa to the north. The physical structure is simple and the geological formation uniform; the rocks are the quartz schists of the Gan jam Malias. The changes in the shore water-level, though of faunistic importance, scarcely affect the vegetation. The rocks contain no fossils, but sub-fossil molluscan shells abound in the soil of the island and the sand of its shores. These shells indicate that the island, as such, is recent; the age of the rocks has no bearing on its existing biological features.
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The Flora of an Indian Island. Nature 111, 378 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111378a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111378a0