Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 10.djvu/195

Rh few examples being known in which the creatures have lost their gills and assumed the mature characters of Amblystoma, but with Siredon a change takes place with a proper change of surroundings.

To American students we are indebted for most valuable contributions regarding the effect of cave influences on animals living within their boundaries. Looking at the cave fauna with its peculiar assemblage of animals, it would seem that here, at least, the question as to the effects of certain external influences, or the absence of others in modifying structure, might be found.

Many years ago the editors of Silliman's Journal addressed a letter to Prof. Agassiz respecting the blind fishes of the Mammoth Cave, and asked his opinion as to whether their peculiar structure was due to their cave life, or whether they had been specially created. Agassiz's reply is consistent with his belief. He says, "If physical circumstances ever modified organized beings, it should be easily ascertained here." He then expresses his conviction that "they were created under the circumstances in which they now live, within the limits over which they range, and with the structural peculiarities which characterize them at the present day," adding frankly, however, that these opinions are mere inferences.

With the contributions on cave insects by the eminent zoölogist Schiödte, and our own naturalists as well, we have now overwhelming proof that the blind fishes and numerous other cave animals are marked with peculiarities impressed upon them by the unusual environments to which they have been subjected.

In a work on the animals of the Mammoth Cave, by Dr. A. S. Packard and Prof. Putnam, the first-named writer quotes the results of Schiödte, wherein he shows the existence of twilight animals in which but slight modification occurs, while in darker places the changes become more profound.

Dr. Packard sums up the results of his work as follows: "We then see that these cave animals are modified in various ways, some being blind, others very hairy, others with long appendages; all are not modified in the same way in homologous organs, another argument in proof of their descent from ancestors whose habits varied as their out-of-door allies do at present."

Prof. E. D. Cope, in an article on the fauna of Wyandotte Cave, in commenting on the loss of eyes in cave animals from absence of light, and consequent disuse, says that, to prove it, we need only to establish two or three propositions: 1. That there are eyed genera corresponding closely in other general characters with the blind ones. 2. The condition of the visual organs is in some cave type variable. 3. If the abortion of the visual organs can be shown to take place coincidently with general growth to maturity, an important