47 



Mr. S. Stevens exhibited some fine specimens of Dynastes Jupiter or Neptunus, 

 from Columbia ; also a foreign Bombyx, with the case of the larva of a Tinea? at- 

 tached to its head. 



Mr. Douglas observed, in reference to the note of Mr. Jordan, read at the last 

 meeting, that on looking at some dry flowers of Origanum, which he had gathered in 

 October, near Dartford Heath, he found that two of the withered calyces, or rather 

 combination of calyces, for two or three were joined together, were removed by their 

 insect tenants from the bulk of tbe plant, and attached to the cage in which they were 

 placed. Since then, Mr. Stainton and he had gathered some withered flowers of Ori- 

 ganum with living larvae in them, one of which Mr. Stainton exhibited to the 

 meeting. 



Dr. Wallich read a translation which he had made from the Danish at the request 

 of William Spence, Esq., V.P., of the elaborate memoir of J. C. Schiodte, entitled 

 ' Specimen Faunas Subterranean,' of which the following is an epitome. 



In 1768, was discovered that singular blind reptile Proteus anguinus in the caves 

 of Krain, and occasionally found since in the Magdalene cave, near Adelsberg, in 

 Illyria. In 1840, Koch published a figure of a Crustacean, of the family of Oniscus, 

 Pherusa alba, discovered in the cave of Adelsberg ; and four years later was fouud in 

 the Lueger cave, an insect of the Coleopterous family Carabidae, Anophthalmus 

 Schmidtii. It was not only their locality which attracted attention to these animals, 

 though it was striking enough that animals should be found existing under conditions 

 so unfavourable to animal life ; but the fact that they had no eyes, organs so well de- 

 veloped in all other members of the respective groups to which they belong. In the 

 Proteus, indeed, the eyes if not altogether wanting, are yet so little developed, that 

 beyond the mere perception of light, they must be incapable of receiving impressions 

 of images. It is very easy to perceive the connexion that exists between the want of 

 light in the caves and the want of visual organs in their inhabitants. So long as only 

 one form of animal was known to exist there, inhabiting, moreover, a running stream 

 and not, therefore, exclusively doomed to darkness, this blindness was viewed as an 

 exceptional phenomenon for which there were analogous instances. But on becoming 

 acquainted with other occupants of these caves, not only blind, but in their structure 

 belonging to peculiar forms, the idea arose that these animals stood related to each 

 other, as links of one chain of a subterranean Fauna, whose common characteristic 

 was blindness. On the other hand, F. Schmidt found in these caves some few ani- 

 mals not materially different from the usual forms. Erichson, in his ' Monography of 

 the Staphylinidas,' describes a new species of Homalota, under the name of spelaca, 

 and quoted as an inhabitant of the cave at Adelsberg a species of Carabidae, Pristony- 

 chus Schreibersii. Both these insects differ from allied species by their strikingly 

 minute eyes. 



In 1841, were found in the Mammoth cave at Kentucky, about a mile from the 

 entrance, a fish and a Crustacean, both with eyes concealed under the skin, as in 

 Proteus, concerning which, various communications have been made public. Tel- 

 kampf noticed these, and described some new Articulata and a fish in 1844. 



In 1845, Schiodte examined three caves near Adelsberg and one near Trieste, in 

 all of which he found the animals already known and several new ones. Of the 

 latter were Coleoptera Silphidae, viz. — 



Bathyscia (n. g. allied to Choleva, but differing chiefly in its want of eyes), two 



