Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Amblyopsis is flesh-colored, ranging to purple in the gill region,
where the blood of the gills shows through the overlying structures,
and over the liver, which can be seen through the translucent sides
and ventral wall. About the head and bases of the fins the color
is yellowish, resembling diluted blood. The surface of the body is
slightly iridescent, and the surface of the head has a velvety,
peach-bloom appearance.
The general pink color of Amblyopsis is due to the blood. It is not
due to any abnormal development of blood-vessels in the dermis. In the
fins, where the blood-vessels are near the surface, the general effect
is a yellowish color. The surface vessels of the dermis also appear
yellowish. It is only on account of the translucent condition of all
the tissues, permitting the deeper vessels to show through a certain
thickness, that the pink effect is produced. Amblyopsis has always been
spoken of as white. The term “white aquatic ghosts” of Cope is very
apt, for they do appear white in the caves, and their gliding motion
has an uncanny effect. All alcoholic specimens are white.
The pigment cells can not be made to show themselves, even by a
prolonged stay in the light. The old, if kept in the light, will not
become darker, and a young one reared in the light until ten months old
not only showed no increase in the pigmentation but lost the pigment it
had at birth, taking on the exact pigmentless coloration of the adult.
Pigment cells are late in appearing in Amblyopsis. When the young
are two months old pigment is abundant. This pigmented condition is
evidently a hereditarily transmitted condition. It disappears with age.
Primarily this disappearance was probably individual. But, as in the
flounder, the depigmentation has also become hereditarily transmitted,
for even those individuals reared in the light lose the color. Numerous
facts and experiments show that while pigment may be, and is, developed
in total darkness, the amount of color in an individual animal depends,
other things equal, directly on the amount of light to which it is
habitually exposed.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--_Chologaster Agassizii_ from Cedar Sinks Cave,
Kentucky.]
The lower and upper surfaces of the flounder, the one protected and
the other exposed to the light, give the most striking example, and
the argument is clinched here by the fact, noted by Cunningham, that
a flounder whose lower side is for long periods exposed to the light
takes on color. Loeb has shown that in the yolk sacs of Fundulus
embryos more pigment cells are developed if the embryos are kept in the
light than when they are kept in the dark. However, in the body, and
especially in the eye, the pigmentation was not affected by the absence
of light.
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