Evening star., 1938-05-26

Under the Blue Ridge Mountains there
is a ghostly world. In Its eternal dark
ness dwell phantomish creatures whose
ancestors left the world Of shadow and
sunshine millions Of years ago to become
the fauna of lost rivers and fantaStically
carved limestone caverns, preying upon
each other for sustenance in the barren
night.
Over the week end group Of WASH
ington and Richmond scientists made q
biological reconnaissance Of a group OF
hitherto unexplored caverns. whose drip
ping corridors may reach for miles unoer
the mountains near Front Royal. Inc
party consisted Of Austin H. Clark
Charles w. Gilmore, Leonard P. Schultz
and James Benn Of the National
Museum; Herbert s. Barber and Ashley
B. Gurney of the Department OF Agrl-
culture, and Prof. John w. Bailey ana
a group Of students from the University
of Richmond. =.
They lit up with their torches weird
habitat of animals who had learned
through the ages to live in these chill
chambers under the earth. Most OF
them are blind, since eyes are OF no use
when there is no light with which to see.
"At first thought" said DR.. Clark, who
led the party, "it seems impossible that
living things should exist in total dark
ness, yet there are actually many
different types Of life. Some creatures
enter the caverns to escape the heat OF
summer, the cold Of winter, or even the
light of the day. Others live all their
lives in caverns and never are found
outside. Besides these living things you
sometimes find the bones OF animals
that have strayed inside and died, or
that have fallen through holes IN the
cavern roof. Sometimes these are the
bones of strange animals of long past
ages that lived in the region long before
the Indians came to North America"
At one place the explorers found the
den of a wildcat, whose eyes are ad-
justed to the dark and which apparently
had picked upon the cave as place
where it could devour its prey at leisure
without any chance of being robbed by
it's enemies. Nearby was the deserted
nest of a trader-rat, an animal which
Mr.. Clark describes as having "some-
thing like conscience" It steals every
thing it can carry away but always, as
If by some unconquerable instinct. leaves
something in place of what it has carried
away. In the nest of this trader rat
was a tooth which gave the explorers
q real thrill, for it seemed to be that OF
a peccary, the wild pig of the New World,
which lived in Virginia during inter-
sticeS in the ice ages.
Near the mouth of the cave occasional
bats were seen hanging from the ceiling
The explorers were surprised to see
red admiral butterfly fly into the cavern
and deep underground their flashlights
disturbed q blackberry butterfly which
had taken refuge in the cool darkness.
The party found several Of the strange
cave crickets, sometimes called camel
crickets" because of their bumped backs.
There were also blind cave beetles. In
one underground stream they found
ghostly, light-colored crayfish and some
blind and colorless cave isopods. TWO
kinds of salamanders, known as cave
lizards, crawled across the paths OF their
lights.
"One thing that surprised u.s." said
DR.. Clark, was to see how far under
ground many things will live that ordl-
narily are found at the sunlit surface.
Thus, far inside the cave, we found .
whirliGg beetle, . young stone fly ana
. SOW bug. A interesting a. anything