those caves. In the autumn Mr. Putnam made a thorough explo- 

 ration of Mammoth Cave. These papers are accordingly based on 

 material collected by him, Prof. Shaler, Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Cooke, 

 Dr. Sloan and myself. 



Mr. Emerton kindly identified and described the spiders of the 

 caves, and his paper and drawings accompany this article. The 

 Coleoptera have been identified by Dr. LeConte, the Diptera by 

 Baron Osten Sacken, and the only Neuropterous insect found, an 

 immature Psocus, has bee.n figured and identified, so far as it 

 could be, by Dr. Hagen. 



Without at this time speaking of the physical aspects of the 

 caves. I may say that the life of the caverns is much more abund- 

 ant than I had supposed from the accounts given by others. The 

 spiders were found not infrequently in all the caverns mentioned 

 in the notes appended to Mr. Emerton's descriptions. I should 

 say that the spiders were equally abundant in Mammoth and Wy- 

 andotte caves, but they were most abundant in Weyer's. where 



caves. P These are small caverns, none more than a mile in ex- 

 tent b t it i tertst n ? to observe that in Mammoth and Wy- 

 andotte caves respectively, both between five and seven or eight 

 miles in extent, so far as rude measurements show, there was but 

 a single species. The following table shows the distribution of 



It will be seen that the two largest and consequently most an- 

 firnt caverns. Mammoth and Wj-andotte, and in which the phys- 



moth, and the small caverns, i. e., Diamond and Proctor's, situated 

 about five miles from it. No other species occurred in these 

 smaller caves. The only spider found in Wyandotte Cave was the 

 LinypMa subterranea, which also occurred in the Carter caves, 



