Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. 231 



thinly furred, while the common or Norway rat is gray or brown, 

 and covered with rough hair. The cave rat is possessed of dark 

 black eyes, of the size of a rabbit's eye, and entirely without iris ; 

 the feelers also are uncommonly long. We have satisfied ourselves 

 that he is entirely blind when first caught, although his eyes are 

 so large and lustrous. By keeping them, however, in captivity and 

 diffuse light, they gradually appeared to attain some power of vision. 

 They feed on apples and bread, but will not at present touch animal 

 food. There is no evidence that the cave rats ever visit the upper 

 air, and there was no one who could tell me whether they were or 

 were not found there by the persons who first entered this place in 

 1802. 



Bats are numerous in the avenues within a mile or two of the 

 mouth of the cave, and M. Mantell thinks he has secured at least two 

 species. Several specimens are preserved in alcohol. It was not 

 quite late enough in the season when we were at the cave, October 

 16th-22d, for all the bats to be in winter quarters, as the season 

 was very open and warm. Still, in the galleries where they most 

 abound, we found countless groups of them on the ceilings chipper- 

 ing and scolding for a foothold among each other. On one little 

 patch of not over four or five inches, we counted forty bats, and were 

 satisfied that one hundred and twenty at least were able to stand on 

 a surface a foot square ; for miles they are found in patches of 

 various sizes, and a cursory glance satisfied us that it is quite safe 

 to estimate them by millions. In these gloomy and silent regions, 

 where there is neither change of temperature nor difference of light 

 to warn them of the revolving seasons, how do they know when to 

 seek again the outer air, when the winter is over and their long 

 sleep ended ? Surely He who made them has not left them without 

 a law for the government of their lives. 



You may inquire, What has formed the excavations of Mammoth 

 Cave ? I answer clearly and decidedly, water and no other cause. 

 Nowhere else can we find such beautiful sculptured rocks as in Mam- 

 moth Cave ; such perfect unequivocal and abundant proofs of the action 

 of running water in corroding a soluble rock. The rough hewn block in 

 the quarry does not bear more distinct proof of the hammer and the 

 chisel of the workman than do the galleries of Mammoth Cave of 

 the denuding and dissolving power of running water. At Niagara 

 we see a vast chasm evidently cut by water for seven miles, and still 

 in progress, but we cannot see beneath the cataract the water-worn 

 surfaces, nor the rounded angles of the precipice — while the frosts 

 and rains of countless winters have i-educed the walls of the chasm 

 itself to a talus of crumbling and moss-grown rocks. But in the Mam- 

 moth Cave we see a freshness and perfection of surface, such as 

 can be found only where the destructive agencies of meteoric causes 

 I are wholly absent, aided and quickened as those are on the upper 

 surface by the processes of vegetable life, wholly unknown in the cave 



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