1874.] 223 [Putnam. 



Mr. Putnam alluded briefly to the other forms of animal and 

 vegetable life in the caves of Kentucky, and specially mentioned a 

 cave on the opposite side of the Green River, several miles below 

 the Mammoth Cave, where blind fishes and blind cray fishes were 

 obtained very near the entrance by himself, and previously by others, 

 so near the entrance that artificial light was not required in order to 

 see the specimens. 



He then went on to review the facts he had presented, and to con- 

 sider their bearing on the question of the origin of life in the subter- 

 ranean streams, confining himself particularly to the fishes. The two 

 blind fishes are found throughout the whole of the subterranean 

 streams of the great region of the southwest occupied by the sub- 

 carboniferous limestone, and are not known from any other place. 

 The Chologaster Agassizii belongs to the same family with the blind 

 fishes ; and the only other known specimen, in addition to those he 

 obtained in the Mammoth Cave, was the type of the species which he 

 had described in 1872, 1 from a young individual obtained with a 

 specimen of Typhlichthys from a well in Lebanon, Tenn. ; while the 

 only other representative of the genus, so far as known, was the spe- 

 cies mentioned by Agassiz from the rice ditches near the coast of 

 South Carolina, under the name of C. cornutus. These four species 

 are all that are known of the family, and the affinities of the group 

 he considered were not yet satisfactorily determined, though in com- 

 mon with other ichthyologists he had formerly considered the family 

 as allied to the Cyprinodontes. Thus, it would be seen, in the case 

 of the blind fishes and the Chologaster, we had a family which had 

 blind and colorless representatives living in utter darkness, and also, 

 in another instance, if not in daylight, at least with the unobstructed 

 opportunity to go into it if they wished; in the total darkness of the 

 Mammoth Cave were found, with the colorless blind fishes, others of 

 the same family which were provided with eyes, and were of a dark 

 color. The same was also true with the two species of cray fish 

 found in the cave. 



The peculiar geographical distribution of the family must also be 

 considered, one species being found in South Carolina, under very 

 different conditions from the three others in the subterranean streams 

 of the southwest; and this fact also must be taken into consideration, 

 if the endeavor is made to account for the origin of the cave species. 



1 See Putnam, Amer. Nat., vr, p. 22, pi. i, Jan., 1872, and Rep. Peabody Acad. 

 Sci., 1871. Both articles are reproduced in " Life in the Mammoth Cave," 1872. 



