OF WASHINGTON. 395 



100 acres entirely cavernous caves all connected by a network 

 of small galleries and rat holes, with occasional air holes to surface 

 and some fair-sized chambers filled with bat guano. Had to 

 crawl about on hands and knees over mud composed of red ochre, 

 and got well plastered and painted red like Indians. We three 

 were four hours in one cave and lost our way, so had to look 

 around for another opening. Fortunately we found one just as 

 our candles were giving out and came up to daylight through a 

 very small chimney about 500 yards from where we went in. 

 Found almost nothing but bats in this cave no insects except a 

 Podura and a small dark cricket. 



Next day we went across the country, 8 or 9 miles in wagon, 

 to Double Hammock country, in Citrus County, and found a very 

 much larger cavern, 75 to 100 feet deep, in hillside in open pine 

 woods. Chambers in this cave were very large, 150 feet long by 

 40 feet wide, and 20 or 25 feet high. Chambers were all very 

 much deeper, but lower portion of all of them was filled with 

 clear, cold water. Had much trouble to get around in the cave 

 because of the water. There was much loose and fallen rock, so 

 that we managed to get over the deep places by climbing from 

 rock to rock or by clinging to the side walls. In the water were 

 white crawfish very much like those in the Mammoth Cave, but 

 we saw no fish. Got a good lot of the crawfish, mostly small 

 specimens, but one or two big ones as large as Cambarus bartoni. 

 The creature has eyes, but they are without pigment and entirely 

 sightless. 



In this cave there was no mud, only white phospatic rocks 

 full of fossil echinoderms and Crustacea. In some of the larger 

 chambers, however, there were tons of bat guano. The bats 

 were also present in tons' weight clinging to the roof and flying 

 about, to our great annoyance and danger, since they constantly 

 put out our lights with their wings. These bats proved to be 

 very interesting, however, as they were infested with parasites in 

 millions of specimens. Beside the ordinary small mites on the 

 wing membranes, they were attacked by a winged Hippoboscid fly 

 ( Trichobius major} which hovered about the clustered bats and 

 ran over the walls of the cave, and a wingless Nycteribid fly 

 which rarely left the bats. In the neighborhood of the bat rookeries 

 the walls were black with the puparia deposited by the Tricho 

 bius females, and once or twice we captured a pair of these 

 winged flies clinging together in copulation. I took some 

 puparia that had not disclosed, in a dry vial, and one of them has 

 produced the imago. 



The freshly fallen dung of the bats was covered with such 

 multitudes of Acari that its color was changed from jet black to 

 chestnut brown. The living mites formed a layer of an inch 

 thick;, a moving, struggling mass through which we had to 



