THE 
FACULTY S’Or BIRDS. 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
VISION OF BIRDS. 
Tue animals most celebrated for piercing sight 
are the eagle and the lynx; but if the acute vision 
of the eagle rested on no better authority than that 
of the lynx, we should not be disposed to rely on 
its accuracy, though old Aldrovand says that “‘ no- 
body of sound mind will deny the lynx to be the 
clearest sighted of all quadrupeds, since all natural- 
ists are agreed upon the point.” There can be lit- 
tle doubt, however, that the agreement thus quoted 
as an authority sprung from reading and copying 
rather than from observation; or, perhaps, as Ges- 
ner seems to think, from the similarity of the name 
to Lynceus, whom the poets fable to have been 
able to look through trees, walls, and rocks, and 
even, if we credit Apollonius, to seé into the very 
bowels of the earth. Observation proves that the 
sight of the lynx (Felis cervaria, Temmincx, and F. 
Lynx, Lixn.) is similar, and little, if at all, superior 
to that of the cat or the tiger; and, as it pursues 
its prey in the night, its eyes, though in appearance 
“brilliant,” as Buffon correctly says, are ill fitted 
for vision except during twilight. 
The proverbial piercing sight of the eagle rests 
upon very different evidence from that of these fa- 
a 
