Consolations in Travel; or, the Last Days of a Philosopher

by Sir Humphry Davy

The Unknown.—They were first discovered here by the late Baron Zöis; but they have since been found, though rarely, at Sittich, about thirty miles distant, thrown up by water from a subterraneous cavity; and I have lately heard it reported that some individuals of the same species have been recognised in the calcareous strata in Sicily.

Eub.—This lake in which we have seen these animals is a very small one. Do you suppose they are bred here?

The Unknown.—Certainly not. In dry seasons they are seldom found here, but after great rains they are often abundant. I think it cannot be doubted that their natural residence is in an extensile deep subterranean lake, from which in great floods they sometimes are forced through the crevices of the rocks into this place where they are found; and it does not

appear to me impossible, when the peculiar nature of the country in which we are is considered, that the same great cavity may furnish the individuals which have been found at Adelsberg and at Sittich.

Eub.—This is a very extraordinary view of the subject. Is it not possible that it may be the larva of some large unknown animal inhabiting these limestone cavities? Its feet are not in harmony with the rest of its organisation; and were they removed, it would have all the characters of a fish.

The Unknown.—I cannot suppose that they are larvæ. There is, I believe, in Nature no instance of a transition by this species of metamorphosis from a more perfect to a less perfect animal. The tadpole has a resemblance to a fish before it becomes a frog; the caterpillar and the maggot gain not only more perfect powers of motion on the earth in their new state, but acquire organs by which they inhabit a new element. This animal, I dare say, is much larger than we now see it when mature in its native place; but its comparative anatomy is exceedingly hostile to the idea that it is an animal in a state of transition. It has been found of various sizes, from that of the thickness of a quill to that of the thumb, but its form of organs has been always the same. It is surely a perfect animal of a peculiar species. And it adds one instance more to the number already known of the wonderful manner in which life is produced and perpetuated in every part of our globe, even in places which seem the least suited to organised existences. And the same infinite power and wisdom which has fitted the camel and the ostrich for the deserts of Africa, the swallow that secretes its own nest for the caves of Java, the

whale for the Polar seas, and the morse and white bear for the Arctic ice, has given the proteus to the deep and dark subterraneous lakes of Illyria—an animal to whom the presence of light is not essential, and who can live indifferently in air and in water, on the surface of the rock, or in the depths of the mud.

Phil.—It is now ten years since I first visited this spot. I was exceedingly anxious to see the proteus, and came here with the guide in the evening of the day I arrived at Adelsberg; but though we examined the bottom of the cave with the greatest care, we could find no specimens. We returned the next morning and were more fortunate, for we discovered five close to the bank on the mud covering the bottom of the lake; the mud was smooth and perfectly undisturbed, and the water quite clear. This fact of their appearance during the night seemed to me so extraordinary, that I could hardly avoid the fancy that they were new creations. I saw no cavities through which they could have entered, and the undisturbed state of the lake seemed to give weight to my notion. My reveries became discursive; I was carried in imagination back to the primitive state of the globe, when the great animals of the sauri kind were created under the pressure of a heavy atmosphere; and my notion on this subject was not destroyed when I heard from a celebrated anatomist, to whom I sent the specimens I had collected, that the organisation of the spine of the proteus was analogous to that of one of the sauri, the remains of which are found in the older secondary strata. It was said at this time that no organs of reproduction had been discovered in any of the specimens examined by physiologists, and this lent a weight to

my opinion of the possibility of their being actually new creations, which I suppose you will condemn as wholly visionary and unphilosophical.

Eub.—From the tone in which you make your statements, I think you yourself consider them as unworthy of discussion. On such ground eels might be considered new creations, for their mature ovaria have not yet been discovered, and they come from the sea into rivers under circumstances when it is difficult to trace their course.