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fins ; but two curious coral-recl crests, or naked gills, close to 
tlie fore-limbs, are combined with true lungs, giving the animal 
a double system for the aeration of the blood. Its jaws are 
well furnished with teeth, and its nostrils are large ; but its ears 
are covered by flesh and skin, and the eyes are not only exces- 
sively small and rudimentary, but are also covered by skin, 
although represented externally by small points. This very 
curious little animal is aquatic in its habits, but can live per- 
fectly well out of the water ; and the species mentioned has 
only been found in the deepest recesses of the gigantic caverns 
of Adelsberg, in Carniola, where there is a subterranean river 
and lake. A somewhat similar animal is found in the mammoth 
cavern of Kentucky. As these creatures are carnivorous, there 
must evidently be a supply of other animals equally well 
adapted to live in perpetual darkness ; but none have yet been 
described. It is curious to contemplate a whole creation 
probably deficient of an organ which seems essential to the 
happiness and health, if not the existence, of the rest of the 
organic world. 
The animal life found in those caverns which are gloomy 
only, and not absolutely dark, and which are subject to the 
alternate flux and reflux of a large tide in a narrow sea, is 
beyond all comparison interesting, beautiful, and varied. The 
appearance of living and flourishing groups of sponge and 
coral, the numerous star-fislies and other radiated animals, — 
many of them very rare, the inconceivable multitude and 
variety of form and colour of the well-known sea-anemones, 
and the curious variety of marine worms, — all these, if seen 
for the first time under favourable circumstances of scenery 
and weather, produce combinations that no one can fail being 
interested in. 
“ In such spots,” says M. Quatrefages, in his ‘ Rambles of a. Naturalist,’ 
“ where every stone is a world within itself, I was able to contemplate, in its 
incredible variety, the domain of the lower marine animals : here I could 
admire, in all their glory, those unknown wonders of the deep of which even 
our best museums afford not the least idea ; for these animal forms droop 
and, as it were, fade from view when they are removed from their native 
element. The Turbo (or top shell), the Buccinum (or Whelk) with its brown 
and white markings, and the Balcmus (Acorn-shell) with its pyramidal plates, 
covered every stone and rock. In sheltered nooks I found the pretty little 
rose-coloured Cowrie and large Chitons, animals in which the back is covered 
by a solid cuirass composed of movable pieces like the greaves of old. Then 
there, was the Thetys, a kind of sea-slug of a fine orange-colour, which bears 
its tuft of external lungs on the hindermost part of the back ; and the 
Ilaliotis (ear-shell), with its nacreous shell surrounded by a triple row of 
fringes. 
* This annual is common in the Channel Islands and on the French coast, 
but does not extend to the coast of Britain. 
