MARVELS BEYOND UNDERSTANDING

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 22949, 29 January 1938, Page 9 (Supplement)

MARVELS BEYOND UNDERSTANDING

TTNWRITTEN history. seems to have repeated itself in part of South America. How came fish and seals and sponges into that inland .Siberian sea, Lake Baikal? And how came the life that has now been newly found in the fresh-water mountain lake, Titicaca, 120 miles long and 40 miles wide and 12,500 feet up in the heights bordering Bolivia and Peru? A brilliantly successful expedition carried out by scientists from Cambridge University, backed by the British Museum, has discovered that up in this isolated lake are wonders of fish and shellfish life, their presence in such astonishing surroundings being beyond comprehension. The only explanation appears to be that the lake was raised, with the life in it, when the mountains were raised up in geological times. Lake Baikal may at some distant day in the geological past have been connected with the Arctic Ocean,, but it is now more remote from the sea than Titicaca from the plains. It receives 300 streams and rivers, and one river, the Lower Angara, flows from it; and j

Baikal, 386 miles long and from 20 to 50 wide, covering an area practically equal to Holland, is one of the marvels of Asia.

It is a freshwater lake, yet it resembles a sea. Seals should emigate to the sea, but the seals of Lake Baikal, never leave its waters. It has sturgeon, a unique trout, and another member of the salmon family, the omul; it has one fish peculiar to itself, the golomynka, from which oil is extracted. It has sponges and shellfish, and creatures which imitate the habits of fish haunting the deep abysses of the ocean, not a difficult matter seeing that this lake has a depth in places of over 5000 feet, though it lies some 1500 feet above sea-level. Titicaca and Baikal seem twin marvels with their . living families. Lake Baikal might be explained on the assumption that it once linked up completely with the ocean, but the secret of Lake Titicaca is at present beyond understanding.