ORIGIN OF THE BLIND FISHES. 
47 
Journal,” and were it not that the article has been reprinted in the 
“Annals and Magazine of Natural History,” I should not criticise 
the statement made in an olf-hand letter for publication in a news- 
paper ; for with Prof. Cope’s knowledge of fishes it could simply be 
a hasty thought which he put on paper, when he suggests that it is 
because the Cyprinodontes have a mouth directed upwards and 
are surface feeders that they were better adapted to a subterranean 
life than other fishes, and hence maintained an existence, while 
other species, which he supposes were introduced into the subter- 
ranean streams at the same time, died out. 
If the fishes of tlie subterranean streams came from adjoining 
rivers, wdiy were not many of the Percoids, Cyprinoids and other 
forms, that are as essentially surface feeders as the Cyprinodon- 
tes (many of the latter are purely “mud feeders”), as capable of 
maintaining an existence in the subterranean waters as aii}^ species 
of the latter? Neither is it necessary for us to assume that the 
structure of the fish should be adapted to feeding on the surface, 
for not only have we in the blind cat fish, described by Prof. 
Cope himself, from the subterranean stream in Pennsylvania, 
an example of a fish belonging to an entirely different family of 
bottom feeders, thriving under subterranean conditions, but the 
blind fishes of the Cuban caves are of the great group of cod fishes 
which are, with hardly an exception, bottom feeders. The fact 
that the food of the blind fishes of the Mammoth Cave consists in 
great part of the Cray fish found in the waters of the cave, as 
shown b}^ the contents of several stomachs I have examined, and 
also that one blind fish at least made a good meal of another fish, 
as already mentioned, shows that they are not content with simply 
waiting for what is brought to them on the surface of the water, 
and that they are probably as much bottom as surface feeders. 
Again, in regard to the sense of sight, why is it necessary to 
assume that because fishes are living in streams where there is lit- 
tle or no light, that it is the cause of the non development of 
the eye and the development of other parts and organs? If this 
be the cause, how is it that the Chologaster from the well in Ten- 
nessee, or the “mud fish” of the Mammoth Cave are found with 
eyes ? Why should not the same cause make them blind if it made 
the Amblyopsis and Typhlichthys blind? Is not the fact, pointed 
out by Prof. Wyman, that the optic lobes are as well developed in 
Amblyopsis as in allied fishes with perfect eyes, and, I may add. 
