IMMOVABILITY OF INSECT EYES. 197 



air, the other for looking down into the water. Those of the 

 Harvest Spider are seated at the top of the head, of all posi- 

 tions the most convenient for a creature living chiefly among 

 grass or stubble. In a common Spider, the eyes, which are 

 all of the simple kind, are no less excellently calculated by their 

 varied positions, front, top, and side-ways, for commanding 

 that range of sight so useful, especially in the hunting tribes, 

 for perception and seizure of their prey. 



While on the subject of Insect eyes, we must notice one 

 more peculiarity which distinguishes them in appearance from 

 all others, and this is their immovability, with, in most cases, 

 seeming opacity. The want of movement is, as we have just 

 seen, sufficiently made up to their possessors by means of 

 number and position ; but this characteristic of death-like still- 

 ness and deadness, in that organ which in nearly all other 

 animals is most expressive of life and intelligence, contributes, 

 we fancy, almost as much as their diminutive size, to make us 

 under-rate the intellectual powers of Insects, and leads us to 

 refer the whole, instead of a part only, of their ways of wisdom 

 to the compulsory power of instinct. This is but natural. 

 Look at an Insect as we may, it never appears to look at us ; 

 the little glazed windows whence mind peeps out and commu- 

 nicates with other minds, seem in it, as it were, darkened. 

 Yet this, after all, is only an appearance and should not, there- 

 fore, be allowed to influence our judgment as to the position 

 assignable to Insects in the intellectual scale of being. To 



