ZOOLOGIZING IN THE MAMMOTH'CAVE. 679 



missed it with the net, and it vanished in a twinkling, not to appear again. A 

 single Anophthalmias, found running on the sand, was the only insect, except 

 crickets, seen here. 



When, therefore, the party we had left at the hotel in the morning, and who 

 had started later in the day by the long route to the end of the cave, arrived, we 

 decided to accompany them farther. We embarked with them in one of the boats, 

 and, leaving the gallery on our left, pushed under a low, wide arch, and floated 

 for half a mile in an aqueduct, like a mammoth sewer, over water thirty or forty 

 feet deep. The guides, standing up in the bows, propelled the boats by pushing 

 with their paddles against the low roof. At its end, the river sinks beneath the 

 wall of rock, but another great gallery opens here at the side, and another system 

 of halls and avenues begins, the farthest point of which, and the end of the " long 

 route," is still a walk of six miles from the river. 



We landed and hurried on before three miles farther, to Washington's Hall, 

 a chamber of the largest size, and for many years the luncheon place for tourists. 

 The floor of the hall is of white gypsum sand, strewn with fragments of the same 

 material. The larger masses of gypsum afford convenient seats and tables for 

 picnickers, and are strewn about with chicken bones and bits of food. The ac- 

 cumulation of such rejectamenta is very great; to be reckoned, perhaps, by the cart- 

 load ; yet, notwithstanding the presence of so much offal, kept perpetually moist 

 by contact with the gypsum sand, not the slightest taint is perceptible in the air 

 of the chamber; only at close quarters the recently deposited morsels give off a 

 peculiarly rancid odor. As before in the Rotunda, I was struck with the con- 

 viction that decay in the cave is an exceedingly slow process, accomplished main- 

 ly through the agency of a few fungi.* Prof. Tyndall has shown that in the pure 

 atmospthere of the Alps, perishable infusions of meat and vegetables remain un- 

 changed for an indefinite period of time.f May it not be that the equally pure 

 and bracing air of these caverns is likewise comparatively free from the germs of 

 Bacteria, Vibrios and other agents of putrefaction ? It has been asserted, by the 

 guides, that meat hung up "at the mouth of the cave" will keep fresh a long 

 time. % 



But, if Bacteria are absent, other scavengers in abundance attack this food 

 material. I found it swarming with larvas of Adelops and the maggots of a small 

 fly (Phora). The imagos of the beetle and the puparia of the fly were also pres- 

 ent in countless numbers. The adult beetles were very agile, and, on being dis- 



*The fungi of our caves have not, as far as I know, been studied. Two species have been identified by Dr. 

 Farlow from the Mammoth Cave, Ozoniutn auricomum Link, the mycelium of an unknown fungus, and 

 Stemonilis ferruginea, also immature. A list by Pokorny, of fungi from the Adelsberg and Lueg caverns, 

 Germany, extracted from Dr. Ad. Schmidt's " Die Grotten und Hoehlen von Adelsberg," Wien, 1854, and 

 kindly sent me by Dr. Hagen, enumerates nineteen species, all found above ground, and originating, as Pokorny 

 thinks, from spores introduced from without on wood. 



t For an account of these experiments, see Popular Science Monthly for February, 1878. 



J During the summer months, when the temperature outside is higher than that of the cave (59° F.), a 

 strong current of air flows out of its mouth. The incoming supply is said to be by filtration through the rocks, 

 in which case it would be, very probablv, freed of floating germs. 



