| → it should be understood, 1866 1869 1872 |
| of course 1861 |
|
| → far from 1866 1869 1872 |
| out of the 1861 |
|
| → of this one genus has 1866 1869 1872 |
| has 1861 |
|
|
These remarks of
→it should be understood,
apply not to the same, but to distinct species. By the time that an animal had reached, after numberless generations, the deepest recesses, disuse will on this view have more or less perfectly obliterated its eyes, and natural selection will often have effected other changes, such as an increase in the length of the antennæ or palpi, as a compensation for blindness. Notwithstanding such modifications, we might expect still to see in the cave-animals of America, affinities to the other inhabitants of that continent, and in those of
to the inhabitants of the European continent. 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;
it is
natural that an insect already deprived of vision should readily become adapted to dark caverns. Another blind genus (Anophthalmus) offers
|
