TEN INDIANA CAVES. 



113 



A Cave 

 Crustacean. 



washed into this and other caves in which it was.found 

 by the heavy rains of the season. The other and 

 smaller species, Ccecidotcea stygia Packard, is a true 

 subterranean form and was the most common crusta- 

 cean noted in Indiana caves. It was usually found 

 singly, swimming or crawling slowly through the 

 water of small cave streams, and was 

 easily picked up with a pair of forceps. 

 Its body is flattish like that of a sow- 

 bug, but is oblong and more slender, 

 reaching a length of one-third of an 

 inch. These crustaceans probably fur- 

 nish much of the food for the blind fish 

 and crayfish which often inhabit the 

 same streams with them. 



Three hundred feet from the cave en- 

 trance the lower passage ends abruptly 

 in a room fifty feet high arid ten feet 

 wide, the sides converging in an angle to 

 form the roof. On the left, about twelve Fig. 27 deddo- 

 feet from the floor, is an arched opening, <<2w i - 

 and through it comes a roaring sound of falling 

 water. With difficulty one climbs a slippery bank 

 and, passing through this opening, finds a most mag- 

 nificent scene for so small a cave a great cylindrical 

 pit or shaft, twenty feet in diameter and sixty feet 

 high, down which, on the farther side, falls a stream of 

 water. A large bowl-shaped cavity, twelve feet deep, 

 has been worn by the falling water in the limestone 

 below the level at which the pit is entered. Descend- 

 ing into this, it was found that the stream flows out 

 through a passage to the left too low for exploration. 



