EYE LANGUAGE. 369 



Right Eye of the Commander, tells how a whole settlement was well- 

 nigh ruined through its benevolent chief purchasing a staring glass 

 eye from an astute Yankee trader. According to the narrative, this 

 so altered the expression of the commander that even his intimates 

 began to fear him, and it soon became rumored among the Indians 

 that he was possessed with a devil. Possibly the uncanny effect pro- 

 duced by an ill-fitting glass eye is enhanced by its stony stare, re- 

 sembling that of the abhorred serpent. 



Emotion is largely shown in the eye — as elsewhere — through the 

 medium of the sympathetic nerves. These are almost always out- 

 side the direct control of the will. One of their chief functions is to 

 regulate the caliber of the blood vessels. Many people are painfully 

 conscious that they are quite unable to keep themselves from blush- 

 ing. "When we blush, the sympathetic ganglia in the neck which 

 control the facial circulation allow the small arteries to dilate, and 

 hence the surface of the skin becomes suffused with red. ISTow the 

 front surface of the eyes, although apparently non-vascular, is really 

 filled with a network of microscopic canals containing a clear 

 fluid. These are so minute that even the tiny red corpuscles of the 

 blood can not enter them except under exceptional circumstances. 

 !N'evertheless, they, like the other channels of the circulation, are 

 controlled by the sympathetic nerves, and when these give the com- 

 mand they become distended with lymph so as to lend to the cornea 

 and conjunctiva a tense glistening aspect. We all know that the 

 eyes become bright under the influence of fever, and this is obvi- 

 ously because the tiny lymph channels, like the larger vessels which 

 convey the blood to the skin, are dilated and full of fluid. This, I 

 think, is a satisfactory proof that the glistening of the eye does not 

 wdiolly depend upon the muscular pressure from without. N^ot only 

 do the sympathetic nerves regulate the brightness of the eyes in 

 the manner above mentioned, but they are also the agents in bring- 

 ing about changes of expression due to the enlargement or contrac- 

 tion of the pupil. Perhaps it may be as well to remind those of my 

 readers who have not studied the anatomy of the eye that the pupil 

 is a little window admitting the light to the ocular chamber, and that 

 its diameter is regulated by the involuntary muscular fibers of the 

 iris. Until comparatively lately there seems to have been a good 

 deal of difference of opinion as to the action of the pupil under the 

 influence of emotion. About five years ago I had some correspond- 

 ence with Sir S. Wilkes, the distinguished president of the Royal 

 College of Physicians, upon this very subject, and he informed me 

 that after long inquiry he had been unable to get any trustworthy 

 information as to how the pupil behaved in the lower animals when 

 they were under the influence of emotion. The correspondence had 



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