Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/494

480 food. . . . This structure also probably explains the facts of its being the sole representative of the fishes in subterranean waters. No doubt many other forms were carried into the caverns since the waters first found their way there, but most of them were like those of our present rivers—deep-water or bottom feeders. Such



fishes would starve in a cave river, where much of the food is carried to them on the surface of the stream."

The observations of Cope are entirely erroneous, as we shall see, and the speculations based on them naturally fall to the ground.

Dr. Sloan recorded one Amblyopsis which he kept twenty months without food. "Some of them would strike eagerly at any small body thrown in the water near them, rarely missed it, and in a very short time ejected it from their mouths with considerable force. I tried to feed them often with bits of meat and fish-worms, but they retained nothing. On one occasion I missed a