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Marc-René Marquis de Montalembert |
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| b. Angoulême, France, 16
July 1714; d. Paris, France, 29 March 1800 He was an aristocrat, military man, and engineer known for his design of fortifications. He reported a blind, subterranean fish in a spring at Gabard, Angoumois, near one of his estates in southwestern France. He noted: ‘it is common to fish either blind or one-eyed pike; one-eyed ones always miss the right eye and among the blind ones, the right eye seems further reduced than the left eyes’ (Montalembert 1748: 28). He left no drawings, much less preserved specimens. He said that what he saw was a pike. That, by itself, is not surprising. The pike, Esox lucius, is by far the most common freshwater fish of the Northern Hemisphere. The fact that this fish can be identified as a pike despite being blind is also not surprising. Many hypogean fishes are almost identical to their surface, epigean forms except for the reduction of eyes and pigmentation. But Montalembert never mentioned depigmentation in his description. Furthermore, he says that some of the fish lacked one eye and, when that was the case, it was always the right eye. Troglomorphic fish generally show the same degree of reduction in both eyes. Finally, the location mentioned by Montalembert cannot be found today (Romero 1999a) nor has any true blind cave fish ever been described from Europe. |
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