MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 93 
animal would continue to live in water as well as in air, particularly in 
flowing water at a low temperature. 
Berg (’68) investigated the same subject, and, while confirming the 
results of his predecessors so far as the fact of cutaneous respiration is 
concerned, concluded that the quantity of carbonic acid gas exhaled is 
less than that found by Regnault and Reiset. Less attention appears to 
have been given to the subject of cutaneous respiration in fishes than to 
the same process in amphibians and mammals ; though Spallanzani, and 
later Humboldt and Provencal (711, p. 86), found it to occur in these 
animals to a slight extent. 
Quincaud (’73, p. 1143) found that an eel of 530 grams’ weight ab- 
sorbs 0.58 c.c. of oxygen in an hour through the skin. 
With this attempted explanation of the color of Typhlogobius the 
question at once arises, Is this color peculiar to this fish, or is it com- 
mon to all others that live habitually excluded from the light as this one 
does? If all the other blind fishes have the same color, and from the 
same cause, viz. from the vascularity of the integument, then we should 
have to suppose the same explanation to apply to all; and this would 
diminish its probability, though of course it would not necessarily 
wholly invalidate it. In speaking of the color of blind fishes, Professor 
Putnam (’72, p. 8) gives a list of seven partially or wholly sightless gen- 
era of the family Siluride, found in various parts of South America, 
Africa, and Asia. Of their color he says: “ All the other members of 
this family [Siluridz] having rudimentary or covered eyes are also dark 
colored ; while the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave and of the caves 
of Cuba are nearly colorless.” Concerning the color of Gronias nigri- 
labris, already mentioned in other connections, Cope (’64, p. 232) says: 
“The color of the upper surfaces, tail, fins, barbels, and under jaw is 
black ; sides varied with dirty yellow, abdomen and thorax yellowish 
white.” And this author remarks in the same connection that the 
“dark pigment of the skin of this animal comes off upon the hands in 
handling it.” 
Concerning the color of the several species of the three blind, or nearly 
blind, groups of the Gobiide other than Typhlogobius, I gather the fol- 
lowing from Giinther (’61, pp. 133-138). 
In the characterization of the group Amblyopina the eyes are spoken 
of as “very small, and more or less hidden.” No mention is made in 
this connection of the color, though the name Amblyopus roseus (Cuyv. 
and Val., XII. 164), as applied to the whole genus Amblyopus, is given 
ina foot-note. Of the eight species enumerated one is said to have “ eyes 
