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1892
JAINA BIBLIOGRAPHY
A large proportion of the fauna of Paresnäth is identical with that of the Ganges valley and a smaller proportion apparently endemic on the hill, a Himalayan element can also be detected which is totally absent from the surrounding plains ANNANDALE N. Notes on the fauna of Paresnath Hill, Western Bengal, Rec, Ind. Mus. 7, 33-49, 1942).
The Himalayan element in the fauna represented by such forms as Phlebotomus major and Sepsis cynipsea among the Diptera, Haphsa nicomache among the Rhynchota, Thysia Wallichic among the beetles, and Lygosoma sikkimense among the lizards.
Although winged insects might be flown with comparative ease across the Ganges valley from the Nepal foot-hills to Paresnāth, it is quite impossible that a lizard could be carried in this way. It is impossible more over that the eggs of L. Sikkimense could be transported in a living condition by birds, for they perish within a short period of being removed from the damp moss in which they are laid. We must therefore seek for a geographical explanation of the occurance of the lizard on an isolated hill top two hundred miles from its present abode (AMANDALE-ibid).
There is no reason whatsoever to think that the individuals living on Paresnath were ever isolated by a ring of ice or driven to the summit by glaciers sufficiently extensive to submerge the base of the hill; but it must be remembered that the secular movements of glaciers are accompanied by profound modifications not only in temperature but also in humidity, and humidity is perhaps an even more important factor in the distribution of reptiles and insects than actual temperature. We must suppose that Lygosoma sikkimese once lived in the plains as well as or instead of in the hills, but that a fall in the atmospheric humidity of the former, perhaps due in part to movements of glaciers in the Himalayas, drove it up into the E. Himalayas on the one hand and the summit of Paresnath on the other, or confined it to comparatively high altitudes.
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Sundar Lal HORA-Šatpura Tlypothesis of the distribution of the Malayan fauna and flora to Peninsular India. (Pro. of the National Institute of Sciences of India No. 8. Vol., XV, Delhi, 1949).
P. 309. On Pārsvanāth, 4,500 feet high. in Behar, and on Mount Abū in the Arāvali range, Rājputana, serveral Himalayan plant exist.- MEDLICOTT, H. B. and BLANFORD, W. T. (1879) in A. Manual of Geology of India, 2 vols, Lxx, 374-375 (Calcutta).
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