ZOOLOGIZING IN THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 677 



moist, and there are ledges upon which the droppings of bats are collected I 

 found at last, on one such moist shelf, a little pile of fresh bats' dung, and, on dis- 

 turbing it, three or four specimens of Adelops hirtus ran swiftly away and hid in 

 the cracks, or in the shadows of small projections of the wall, as though they per- 

 ceived and shunned the light of my lamp. Their manner was exactly that of a 

 Catops when similarly disturbed. 



The next morning my 'friend N. and I returned to the Rotunda, and found 

 a fresh supply of Adelops, where I had taken them the night before. Other and 

 better ledges also turned up, and we secured in all about thirty specimens of bee- 

 tles. While examining the side walls, a small patch of clay, adhering to the rock, 

 attracted my attention by its lumpy appearance, and, picking at it, I opened a 

 small pupa, evidently of Adelops. This was a grand discovery, and, while N. 

 made a search for other lumpy patches, I carefully uncovered four cells, all that 

 were found together in this piece. Each cell contained a pupa and I collected 

 them, with the skins of the larvae. Near by I found another and a third cluster, 

 and N. found one or two more, all within a foot or two of the floor. The num- 

 ber of cells in each cluster varied from four to twelve. One cell inclosed a larva, 

 and two or three others contained recently transformed imagos of Adelops hirtus. 



Nearly every part of the Rotunda is dry and devoid of life. The corner in 

 which the Adelops occurred had, however, a slight cave dampness, and so well 

 repaid our search that we devoted the greater part of the morning to examining 

 this recess alone. The carcass of an ox lay here close to the wall and partly bur- 

 ied beneath a heap of stones and earth, though long past the stage of putre- 

 faction — if, indeed, the ordinary process of putrefaction ever takes place in the pure 

 air of the cave — and entirely odorless, the flesh still adhering to the bones in a 

 wet and moldy condition, communicating its moisture to surrounding objects. 

 Upon pieces of wood and boards that lay upon this heap, and were thus kept per- 

 petually moist, we captured seven specimens of Gampodea and four of Machilis, 

 both of which, though blind, had the habits of their relatives, the Bristletails and 

 Poduras, also, five specimens of the blind* Pseudo-scorpion (Chthonius Packardi 

 Hagen, described and figured in the second part), and two specimens of a trans- 

 parent and delicate Psocus, with small eyes and . rudimentary or undeveloped 

 wings. The last is, perhaps, a wanderer from without, but the three former are 

 blind and colorless, true cave forms. The larger cave fly (Anthomyia) was com- 

 mon about the ledges, and a single specimen of Anophthalmns Menetriessii, which 

 presents an extreme amount of variation, was discovered, after much searching, 

 deeply hidden in a crevice four feet above the floor. 



At noon my friend left me and returned to the hotel. I was too much ex- 

 cited to interrupt this, my first acquaintance with a true cave fauna, and momenta- 

 rily expected to find a new beetle or to make some other grand discovery. I left 



