The Sea and the Cave 8 3 



remarks about some perfectly good friends of mine who 

 perpetrated such a name as Fhotichthys nonsuchae. Pretty- 

 terrible, for "nonsuch" can be translated into decent Latin. 

 But my friends were not classicists; otherwise, naming a fish 

 seen and not caught — in itself a mortal sin — Bathyspbera 

 intacta would not have been used and naively interpreted 

 as "the untouchable bathysphere fish." 



But to get back to our caves. Cuba, like many other lime- 

 stone countries, abounds in caves and grottoes of all sorts, 

 and I have explored any number of them. Three, however, 

 stand out particularly. 



There is a Httle range of limestone hills a couple of miles 

 east of the Harvard Botanical Garden at Soledad in a pas- 

 ture called El Portero de los Vilches. Here there is a shal- 

 low cave in the face of a chff which was used years ago 

 as a bivouac or lookout by both the Spaniards and the 

 Cuban rebels — whichever happened to be in control of 

 the area. This cave is known as La Cueva de la Macha. It is 

 open to the light, a great domed chamber, the front of 

 which fell off and crashed down the hill years ago. Wind- 

 blown dust has been carried in in the course of the ages 

 and the floor of the cave has been covered with a foot or 

 two of dust. 



We visited the cave often, as it was within walking 

 distance of the Soledad plantation. Scattered over the sur- 

 face of the dust in the cave were the remains of desiccated 

 owl castings. These contained the undigested bones of in- 

 troduced European mice and rats. It occurred to us that if 

 we got down deeper in the dust we might find the remains 

 of animals which existed before the coming of the Span- 



