THE TIME MACHINE

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the bleached look common in most animals that live largely in the
dark--the white fish of the Kentucky caves, for instance. Then,
those large eyes, with that capacity for reflecting light, are
common features of nocturnal things--witness the owl and the cat.
And last of all, that evident confusion in the sunshine, that hasty
yet fumbling awkward flight towards dark shadow, and that peculiar
carriage of the head while in the light--all reinforced the theory
of an extreme sensitiveness of the retina.

'Beneath my feet, then, the earth must be tunnelled enormously, and
these tunnellings were the habitat of the new race. The presence of
ventilating shafts and wells along the hill slopes--everywhere, in
fact, except along the river valley--showed how universal were its
ramifications. What so natural, then, as to assume that it was in
this artificial Underworld that such work as was necessary to the
comfort of the daylight race was done? The notion was so plausible
that I at once accepted it, and went on to assume the _how_ of this