BOTANIC A, 

 GARDEN. 



ON THE HISTOLOGY OF THE EYE OF TYPHLO- 

 TRITON SPELAEUS, FEOM MARBLE 

 CAVE, MO.* 



Adolf Alt. 



When through the kindness of Mr. J. Hurter of this 

 city an opportunity was offered to me to make the his- 

 tological examination of the eyes of a number of speci- 

 mens of Typhlotriton spelaeus of Marble Cave, Mo., I 

 was at first not in possession of any previous literature 

 on the subject, nor did it seem possible to get hold of 

 it, since a personal letter to Dr. Carl H. Eigenmann 

 remained unanswered. Through the kindness of Pro- 

 fessor A. C. Eycleshymer of the St. Louis University 

 I have of late received a number of reprints on this 

 subject. Aside from one paper written together with 

 another author, as far as I can find, it is Carl H. Eigen- 

 mann 's own work which alone treats on the structure of 

 the eyes of this so-called blind salamander. 



What appears to have been the first description by 

 this author is a paper published in the twenty-first volume 

 of the Transactions of the American Microscopical 

 Society, 1900, under the title "The eyes of the blind 

 vertebrates of North America, II. The eyes of Typhlo- 

 molge Rathhuni, Stejneger." In this paper he says, 

 after a short description of the eyes of Typhlomolge, 

 "The eye of Typhlotriton is, in many respects, much 

 more degenerate than that of its European caverniculous 

 relative, Proteus.' When reading this it seemed some- 

 what strange to me that the larger part of a paper on 

 the eyes of Typhlomolge Rathhuni should be taken up by 

 a description of the eyes of Typhlotriton, but there it was 

 in print and could not be doubted. 



* Read and illustrated with numerous lantern slides before The Academy 

 of Science of St. Louis, March 21, 1910. 



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