• THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 95 



Having now given Prof. Agassiz's general 

 views upon the natural history of the eyeless 

 animals of the Cave, we will proceed to the 

 anatomical construction of the organs of sight 

 and hearing of the blind fishes, in the words of 

 Professor Jeffries Wyman, which we take from 

 Silliman's "American Journal of Science and 

 Arts" for March, 1854, page 228. He says: 



which are almost white at the time of their birth, were reared in 

 total darkness, they would in like manner be white. 



" I have seen living sirens from the caves of Africa, without a 

 particle of coloring matter in their skins, and so transparent that 

 the form and pulsations of the heart and the circulation of the 

 blood could be discerned through the walls of the abdomen and 

 chest ; and Dr. Blackie has informed me that he has seen similar 

 colorless salamanders in the dark caves of Northern Georgia. 



" I have in my possession specimens of the blind fish [Amhly- 

 opsts spelceus), the blind cray-fish {Astacus pellucidus), and of the 

 crickets with eyes, of the dark caverns of the caves of Kentucky, 

 which are entirely wanting in coloring, resembling albinos. The 

 absence of the ball from the socket of the eye in the blind fish, 

 and the absence of the eye from the peduncles of the blind cray- 

 fish, may be most philosophically attributed to the absence of that 

 agent upon which the production of color depends. And it is 

 now well established that we may arrest and alter the develop- 

 ment of the tadpole, and other animals, by raising the amount 

 of physical forces, heat and light." — Observations and Researches 

 on Albinism in the Negro Race. By Joseph Jones. M.D., Pro- 

 fessor of Physiology and Pathology in the Medical Department 

 of the University of Nashville, Tennessee. Published in the 

 Transactions of the American Medical Association, vol. xx., 

 1869, pp. 703, 704. 



