And this is the case with some of the American
cave-animals, as I hear from Professor Dana; and some of the European
cave-insects are very closely allied to those of the surrounding country.
It would be difficult to give any rational explanation of the affinities of
the blind cave-animals to the other inhabitants of the two continents on
the ordinary view of their independent creation. That several of the
inhabitants of the caves of the Old and New Worlds should be closely
related, we might expect from the well-known relationship of most of their
other productions. As a blind species of Bathyscia is found in abundance
on shady rocks far from caves, the loss of vision in the cave species of
this one genus has probably had no relation to its dark habitation; for it
is natural that an insect already deprived of vision should readily become
adapted to dark caverns. Another blind genus (Anophthalmus) offers this
remarkable peculiarity, that the species, as Mr. Murray observes, have not
as yet been found anywhere except in caves; yet those which inhabit the
several caves of Europe and America are distinct; but it is possible that
the progenitors of these several species, while they were furnished with
eyes, may formerly have ranged over both continents, and then have become
extinct, excepting in their present secluded abodes. Far from feeling
surprise that some of the cave-animals should be very anomalous, as Agassiz
has remarked in regard to the blind fish, the Amblyopsis, and as is the
case with the blind Proteus, with reference to the reptiles of Europe, I am
only surprised that more wrecks of ancient life have not been preserved,
owing to the less severe competition to which the scanty inhabitants of
these dark abodes will have been exposed.
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