134 Schiodte's Specimen 



XVII. Specimen Faunas Subterranean ; being a Contribution 

 towards tbe Subterranean Fauna, by J. C. Schiodte. 

 Reprinted from the Transactions of the Royal Danish 

 Society of Sciences, Fifth Series, Division of Natural His- 

 tory and Mathematics, 2nd Vol. Copenhagen, 1849. 4to. 

 (Translated from the Danish, at the request of W. Spence, 

 Esq., F.R.S., Vice-President of the Entomological Society 

 of London, by N. Wallich, M. & Ph. D., F.R.S., 

 V.P.L.S.) 



[Kead January 6th, 1851.] 



After an interval of more than three-quarters of a century, during 

 which our knowledge of existing inhabitants of the Stalactitic 

 caves in Carniola was limited to one single animal, attention has 

 again been directed towards this remarkable zoological subject, by 

 a few solitary communications recently made. To the curious 

 reptile, known since 1768, chiefly under the name of Proteus, and 

 since then occasionally found in the subterranean river which 

 traverses the Magdalena cave near Adelsberg, were added, since 

 1840, two other animals belonging to the Articulata, the entire 

 structure of which indicated that they were created exclusively 

 to undergo a subterranean existence. In the course of that year 

 Koch published in his work on the Crustacea, Myriapoda and Arach- 

 nida, a figure of Pherusa alba, a crustacean of the family of Oniscus, 

 discovered in the cave of Adelsberg. Four years later we were 

 surprised by another singular discovery in the Luege cave, of 

 Anophthalmus Schmidtii, an insect belonging to the Carabidce, 

 allied to the genus Trechus, excellently described by the well 

 known German naturalist Sturm.* 



It was not only their locality which attracted attention to these 

 animals, though it cannot be denied that the fact was striking 

 enough, that animals should be found to exist under conditions so 

 very unfavourable for the support of animal life ; but it was 

 especially the circumstance of their being found to have no eyes, 

 organs so well developed in all the other species of the respective 

 groups to which they belong, which was so remarkable. In the 



* Anophthalmus. Neue Gattung ausder Familie der Caraben. Mit einer color. 

 Tafel. Niirnburg, 1844, 8vo. Also as an Appendix to the Deutschlands Fauna 

 by the same author, V. Abth. 15 Bd. 



