'i^ROGLOGLANIS^ PATTERSONI A NEW BLIND FISH 

 FROM SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS.^ 



By carl H. EIGENMANN. 

 (Read October j, 1919.) 



Professor J. T. Patterson, of the University of Texas, has se- 

 cured a specimen of a small blind catfish from an artesian well in 

 San Antonio, Texas, belonging to Mr. George W. Brackenridge. 

 Pending the securing of other material the following facts may be of 

 interest. 



The specimen is without pigment. There is no external evidence 

 of any vestige of an eye. It has a total length of 85 mm. Other and 

 larger specimens were emitted but not preserved. 



The occurrence of blind fishes in Texas was predicable. There 

 are large springs, the outlets of underground rivers in the same 

 region and artesian wells tap the subterranean waters in various 

 places about San Marcos and San Antonio. The flow of the artesian 

 well of the Bureau of Fisheries at San Marcos shows that the under- 

 ground waters have an abundant cave fauna. From this well and 

 some neighboring caves I secured twenty (20) species of inverte- 

 brates and the blind salamander Typhlomolgc in less than a week's 

 stay. The surprise therefore is not that cave fishes have been secured 

 from the underground rivers, but that they have not been found 

 before. It is more of a surprise that the fish should be a catfish 

 rather than a member of the blind-fish family of Amblyopsidcr, found 

 in Tennessee, Arkansas and northward. 



However, the occurrence of blind catfishes somewhere in the 

 Mississippi basin was also predicable. Some of the catfishes are 

 nocturnal in habit and live in crevices, under rocks, stumps and such, 

 and detect their food by means of touch and taste organs scattered 



1 rpicyXr], 17 = cave ; y\ar]is, rj =r catfish, originally from Glanis, the name 

 of a river. 



2 Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory of Indiana University, 

 No. 167. 



397 



