World of the Dark 
Vancouver and southward through the mountains of the 
Appalachian System and along the higher plateaus and mountain 
ranges of the West as far as Central Mexico. I have specimens 
taken in the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua. The identification 
of the species may easily be made by means of the figure 
on our plate. 
THE WORLD OF THE DARK 
“.Sorrowing we beheld 
The night come on; but soon did night display 
More wonders than it veil’d; innumerous tribes 
From the wood-cover swarm’d, and darkness made 
Their beauties visible.” 
Southey. 
There are two worlds; the world of sunshine, and the world 
of the dark. Most of us are more or less familiarly acquainted 
with the first; very few of us are well acquainted with the latter. 
Our eyes are well adapted to serve us in the daylight, but they 
do not serve us as well in the dark, and we therefore fail to 
know, unless we patiently study them, what wonders this 
world of the dark holds within itself. There are whole armies 
of living things, which, when we go to sleep, begin to awaken; 
and when we awaken, go to sleep. The eyes of the creatures 
of the dark are adapted to seeing with less light than our eyes 
require. The broad daylight dazzles and confounds them. 
Sunshine has much the same effect upon them that darkness has 
upon us. Our twilight is their morning; our midnight is their 
noonday. 
This is true even of many of the higher vertebrates. The 
lemurs, which are a low family of simians, are nocturnal in their 
habits. So also is the Aye-Aye of Madagascar, and that curious 
little member of the monkey tribe known as the Specter 
(Tarsius spectrum). No one can see the great eyes of these 
creatures without realizing at a glance that they love what we 
call darkness better than what we call light, though they are 
far from being evil-doers. The great family of the cats are 
principally nocturnal in their habits. Their eyes are capable of 
being used in daylight, for the beautifully contracting and ex¬ 
panding iris modifies the amount of light admitted to the retina 
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