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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
ZOOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE ANATOMY. 
The Blind-fish, fyc., of Kentucky probably of Marine Origin. — An important 
paper has been published on this subject by Mr. F. W. Putnam in the 
u Bulletin ” of the Essex Institute, U.S.A., and it is abstracted in a recent 
number of “Silliman’s American Journal.” The writer observes that many, 
or, with two or three exceptions, nearly all, of the thirty or forty species of 
vertebrates, articulates, molluscs and still lower forms, including a few 
plants, now discovered in the caves of Kentucky, are of comparatively late 
introduction, is probable from the fact that they are so closely allied to forms 
living in the vicinity of the caves. But that the blind-fishes, the Cholo- 
gaster and a few of the lower forms of articulates, as the Lernsean, parasitic 
on the blind-fish, may have been inhabitants of the subterranean streams 
for a much longer period, is worthy of consideration on the following 
grounds : — First, the blind-fish family has no immediate allies existing in 
the interior water,* the only species of the family, in addition to the three 
found in the Mammoth Cave, being known at present only from the rice 
ditches of the low coast of South Carolina. Second, the Lernsean parasite 
is much more common on marine fishes than on strictly fluviatile species, 
and is more decidedly a marine than a fresh-water form. These facts may 
therefore be taken as at least indicating the probability of the early origin 
■of some part of the great Cave system of the region of the Ohio Valley ; 
and while there may be nothing in the present structure of the caves to 
indicate their having been formed in part while in contact with salt water, 
the supposed erosion of the limestone and the modification of the early 
formed chambers by later action should be carefully considered before it can 
be denied that the caves were not, in some slight part, for a time, supplied 
with marine life. Until a specimen of Chologaster, or some other member 
of the family, has been obtained in the external waters of the Ohio Valley, 
it is hardly logical to regard the family to which the blind-fishes belong as 
one originally distributed in the rivers of the Ohio Valley, and afterwards 
becoming exterminated in the rivers, and only existing in two such widely 
different localities as the coast of South Carolina and the subterranean 
streams of the south-western States. 
The Library of the Zoological Station at Naples. — Dr. Anton Dohrn has 
issued a Catalogue of the Library of the Zoological station at Naples. 
Nearly one-half of the volumes belong to Dr. Dohrn, and formed his private 
library at the time he established the zoological station ; the other half con- 
sists of works presented either by the publishers or by the authors to the 
station. As a library of embryological and anatomical works on marine 
animals, it forms an admirable nucleus for the building up a great zoological 
library. It only needs the continued interest which has been shown by all 
working naturalists to supply the station with everything published needed 
to carry on investigations in every department of zoology. Dr. Dohrn is 
* In common with others I have considered the Heteropygii as belonging 
to the same order with the Cyprinodontes j but I now have, from further in- 
formation of their structure, doubts as to their close association with that 
.group. This subject will be presented on another occasion. 
