232 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



tion, and the extent of its wanderings, all within the limits of one small 

 district, resembling in this respect some of those plants and animals 

 found on St. Helena and other islands, and nowhere in the world beside. 

 The caves of Carniola were visited in 1851 by Schiodte, and he has 

 subsequently published a very interesting account of his researches, and 

 of the animals which he found in them, in the " Transactions of the 

 Royal Danish Society of Science."* Other caves have also helped to 

 swell the already large list of blind animals. 



Mr. Murray, in a paper read before the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, 

 in April of this year,f quite commiserates with these poor creatures, 

 and, writing of one of them, says: — " To our finite perception this 

 insect's existence in its sphere of life would almost seem to be a 

 mistake. It is one of the predaceous carnivorous Coleoptera, and unless 

 we assume that it is provided with some special sense which compen- 

 sates for the want of light and want of sight, it does not need much 

 consideration to satisfy us that its hunt after its prey will be the pursuit 

 of food under difficulties ; and that it does not live on very full com- 

 mons may be inferred from the state in which we find it, — the whole 

 of the inside in any I have seen being shrivelled up into almost nothing. 

 Still they live, therefore must be fed, and must, I think, be possessed of 

 some special instinct or increased power in the other senses to enable 

 them to procure the wherewithal." This subject is an interesting one, 

 but one that, I fear, must always be involved in obscurity. 



Mr. Murray, being anxious to find out whether any of these animals 

 inhabited England, visited the extensive caves of Derbyshire, but, after 

 a very painstaking exploration, informs us he found nothing blind but 

 the Alleys. 



Hoping better things of our Irish caves, Mr. Haliday and myself 

 arrived at the entrance of the Mitchelstown Caverns on the 4th of August; 

 they are distant from Cahir about an hour and an half's drive. The 

 townland, Coolnagarranroe, lies in the valley which separates the Galtee 

 and Enockmildown chains of mountains, the former constituting its 

 northern, the latter its southern boundary. The prevailing rock at this 

 extremity of the Galtees is conglomerate, which occasionally passes into 

 sandstone, while that which composes the opposite chain of hills pos- 

 sesses a structure intermediate between that of sandstone and schist. 

 The material of the interposed valley is compact gray limestone, and 

 this rock in the townland just mentioned forms two small rounded 

 hills, within both of which cavities of considerable magnitude exist ; 

 one has been known from the remotest antiquity, the other, which we 

 were to explore, was discovered about four-and-twenty years ago by a 

 man while engaged in quarrying for stones. A very interesting ac- 



* " Transactions of the Royal Danish Society of Science," class of Natural and Ma- 

 thematical Science. Fifth Series. Vol. ii. Copenhagen: 1851. 



t See "Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal" for July, 1857. Edinburgh: A. and 

 C. Black. 



