Abstract
ALTHOUGH in my previous letter I did not give evidence directly supporting the proposition that blind cave-animals are born or hatched with relatively well-developed eyes, that thesis is a good deal more than a mere supposition, as Prof. Lankester calls it. Nor did I, as Prof. Lankester asserts, proceed to state that no such fact is known or recorded. The condition of the eyes in the newly-born young of the viviparous Amblyopsis, or other cave-fishes, does not appear to have been investigated, although living young were born under observation as long ago as 1844, and exhibited as spirit specimens to the Belfast Society of Natural History. Nor have the early stages of the European Proteus been obtained. But, on the other hand, with respect to cave crustacea, Tellkampf, the original describer of the blind Cambarus pellucidus of the mammoth cave, stated that the eyes were larger in the young than in the adult (A. S. Packard, Amer. Nat. 1871), and Garman (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool xvii. 1888-89) states that in very young specimens of C. setosus, the blind crayfish of the Missouri caves, “the eyes are more prominent, and appear to lack but the pigment.” In another blind subterranean species, Troglocaris Schmidtii, occurring in Central Europe, Dr. Gustav Joseph found and demonstrated that the embryo in the egg was provided with eyes. (See Packard, “Cave Fauna of N. America,” Nat. Acad. Sci. vol. iv. Mem. 1.)
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CUNNINGHAM, J. Blind Animals in Caves. Nature 47, 537 (1893). https://doi.org/10.1038/047537a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/047537a0
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