The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1875-04-03
Remarkable Discoveries Recently Made in
the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.

w. T. Putnam, Jr., of Salem, Mass, Director
of the Peabody Academy and a Vice-President of
Essex Institute, has been making a scientific e-
ploration 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 q few fish hitherto unknown to exist
there. These latter have eyes, and are of a black
ish color-the 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 flaments, 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
c~overies, considers this fact a staggerer to the
theory of MIR. Darwin. eff he says, s'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 posi-
BILE, in a darker place than their eyeless brethren,
should be quite as blind, and even more color
less" Mr.. Putnam found a strange variety of
fora, which was pretty much all root. But the
most remarkable discovery of all was that of hui
man 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 stones which had in the centre q
round hole, and seemed to be blaekened by a
CnarreQ SUBSTANCE. furI0er IN they came upon
bundles of faggots 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 bad been cast off by their probably
prehistoric owners; and in one place a pair, tied
up together by the same Irvine of woven grass.
1t 10 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 they reach far back TO
the antiquity of the Roman e~ave-dwellers. I'm
plements and utensils are also found in abundance,
such as have been discovered in European caves
as well"
Sufficient data has been obtained to warrant the
statement that the sugar yield in Louisiana the past
season was 40, 600 hOgsheads, and 100000 barrels of
molasses. worth S24 a barrel, making a total of S2S-,
500 900. In tie Parish of Ascension, upon sixteen
acres of ground. worked by two negroes, -, 900 lbs
Of whites sugar and 100 barrels of molasses, bringing
SS,400, were produced. AScotch planter, Mr.. Burn
sides, working in the same parish lands formerly be-
longing TO Gen. Wade Hampton and Senator Preston,
made 5000 h~ogsheads of sugar and 5000 barrels of
yielding in all S692, 900 on an investment
Of $4,000.