On the eyes, the integumentary sense papillae, and the integument of the San Diego blind fish (Typhlogobius Californiensis, Steindachner) / by W. E. Ritter.
- William Emerson Ritter
- Date:
- 1893
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: On the eyes, the integumentary sense papillae, and the integument of the San Diego blind fish (Typhlogobius Californiensis, Steindachner) / by W. E. Ritter. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)
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![It was still quite active five hours after it was removed from among the dead fishes. How much longer it may have been able to survive I do not know, as T then killed it with alcohol. In a paper on the Point Loma Blind Fish and its Relatives, Prof. C. H. Eigeumann ('90, pp. 65-71) has given some very interesting facts on the habits of the species, and also the only account, so far as I am aware, of some of the profound structural changes that have been induced in it by its peculiar way of living. The fact that the fishes pass their lives under stones in crab holes, or buried in the sand, must of course have been known by every one who had collected them; but as Prof. Eigeumann has had much better op- portunity to study their habits than has any one else who has written on the subject, his account is quite full, and so interesting that I repro- duce a considerable portion of it. About San Diego the fish has been found at Point Loma only; it has been taken, however, at Encenada. Its habitat is consequently, so far as known, quite limited. The crustacean in the holes of which and with which it lives is a burrowing carideoid, which has the same pink color as the fish ; but while the crustacean is found throughout the en- tire bay region, the fish is its companion only at Point Loma. Another species of the Gobiidse, belonging to the genus Clevelandia, also fre- quents the holes of the same crustacean along with Typhlogobius.1 Sometimes the fishes [other than the blind fishes ?] live quite out of water on the damp gravel and sand under rocks. ... In the bay the gobies habitually live out of the holes, into which they descend only when they are frightened, while at Point Loma they never leave their subterranean abode, and to this fact we must attribute their present condition. It is not the eyes alone that have uudergone modification. The whole frontal region of the skull has been profoundly changed; the scales have entirely disappeared, the color has been reduced,&and the spinous dorsal has been greatly diminished in size. The skin, and especially that of the head, has become highly sensitized. i I find Clevelandia in San Francisco Bay at West Berkeley; and here it often enters holes m the mud with a species of Crangon. In this case the holes are not I th.nk, dug by the crustacean. The general appearance and actions of the two animals are so similar that at a little distance it is very easy to mistake the one for the other. The color of the two is absolutely indistinguishable as they rest at the bottom of the shallow tide-pools; and it is so like the dark brown mud of the bot- tom on which the animals are found that it is with great difficulty that they are seen when not in motion.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21642837_0007.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
