EYELESS FISH THAT LIVE IN HOT WATER.

Evening Star, Issue 4141, 5 June 1876, Page 3

EYELESS FISH THAT LIVE IN HOT WATER.

A moat singular discovery was recently made in the Savage Mine, Nevada. This was the finding of living fish in the water now flooding both the Savage and Hale and Norcross Mines. The fish found were five in number, and were hoisted up the incline in the large iron hoisting tank and dumped into the pump tank at the bottom of the vertical shaft. The fishes are eyeless, and are only about three or four inches in length. They are blood-red. in color. • The temperature of the water in which they are found is 128 degrees Fahrenheit—almost scalding hot. When the fish were taken out of the hot water in which they were found, and placed in a bucket of cold water, for the purpose of being brought to the surface, they died almost instantly. The cold water at once chilled their life blood.

In appearance these subterranean members of the nnny tribe somewhat resemble goldfish. • They seem li vely and sportive enough while in their native hot water, notwithstanding the fact that they have no eyes, nor even the rudiments of eyes. The water by which the mines are flooded broke in at a depth of 2,200 ft. in a drift that was being push to the northward in the S ivage. It rose in the mine—also in the Hale and Norcross, the two mines being connected-to the height of 400 ft; that is, up to the 1,800-foot level. This would seem to prove that a great subterranean reservoir or lake has been tapped, and from this lake doubtless came the fish hoisted from the mine as stated.

Eyeless fishes are frequently found in the lakes of large caves, but we have never before heard of their existence in either surface or subterranean water the temperature of which was so high as is the water in these mines. The lower workings of the Savage Mine are far below the bed of the Carson River, below the bottom of the Washoe Lake—below any water running or standing anywhere within a distance of ten miles of the mine.§