Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 December 1874 — Remarkable Discoveries. [ARTICLE]

Remarkable Discoveries.

W. F. Putnam, Jr., of Salem, Mass., director of the Peabody Academy and a Vice-President of Essex Institute, has been making a scientific exploration of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. He took home with him several specimens Of the eyeless fish which abound in the rivers of the cave, and a few fish hitherto unknown to exist there. These latter have eyes and are of a blackish colorthe blind fish being nearly white. Microscopic examination of the blind fish showed, where the eyes should be, a number of delicate threads which would seem to float above their heads. These are nervous filaments by which the sense of touch is made to replace that of sight. The fish that have eyes swim close to the bottom of the water instead of near the surface, as the blind fish do. A correspondent of the New York Mail , who gives that paper an account of . the dis—coveries, considers this fact a staggerer to the theory of Mr. Darwin. “If,” he says, “ as the Darwinians claim, the blind fish had lost the sense of sight from lack of need of it, and had been bleached out by the darkness in which they lived, these other fishes living still below, and. if possible, in a darker place than their eyeless brethren, should be quite asLlind and even more colorless.” Mr. Putnam found a strange variety of flora, which was pretty much all root. But the most remarkable discovery of all was that of human remains. Says the Mail correspondent : “ Mr. Putnam has brought home several skeletons found imbedded in the soil miles within these other caves. Some few miles in, also, they noticed curious piles of stone, which had in the center a round hole, and seemed to be blackened by a charred substance. Further in they came upon Bundles oT fagots tied with ropes of grass, which were evidently the tapers set to burn in these cairn candlesticks. They also found moccasins of . woven grass, here one and there another, in the soil, as though they had been cast off by their probably prehistoric owners; and in one place a pair tied up together by the same twine of woven grass. It is impossible at first sight to say whether these remains are hundreds or thousands of years old; but they are at any rate prehistoric, and there are indications to show that theyreach far back to the antiquity of tlrk Hbman cave-dwellers. Implements and,.utensils are also found in abundance, such as have’been discovered in European caves as well.” —According to the new military survey of the Russian Empire, the monarchy extends over 400,000 geographical square milesir ",