Eub.—­Is this the only place in Carniola where these animals are found?

The Unknown.—­They were first discovered here by the late Baron Zois; 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 larvae.  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.