12 OBSEEVATION OF ISTATURli. 



and, next to moral and religious doctrine, I know no more im- 

 portant practical lessons in this earthly life of om"S — which, to 

 the wise man, is a school from tlie cradle to the grave — than 

 those relating to the employment of the sense of vision in the 

 study of nature. 



The pursuit of physical geography, embracing actual observa- 

 tion of terrestrial surface, affords to the eye the best general 

 training that is accessible to all. The majority of even cultiva- 

 ted men have not the time and means of acquiring more than a 

 very superficial acquaintance with any branch of physical knowl- 

 edge. JSTatural science has become so vastly extended, its re- 

 hearing I can speak with more confidence. Every person who has had any 

 considerable experience in linguistic studies knows that many of the peculiar 

 articulate sounds of almost any human speech are not only not readily imita- 

 ble by those unacquainted with the language, but at first absolutely inaudible, 

 though with frequent repetition they can not only be heard but reproduced. 



The senses of children are exceedingly acute, but become less so in mature 

 life. I remember seeing, in a city on the shore of one of our American lakes, 

 a boy about twelve years old who recognized, by the sound of the 'puff of the 

 high-pressure engines then in use, every steamer which approached the har- 

 bor. In a case where a thief had fled from the scene of his plunder, leaving 

 his hat behind him, the police oflicer carried the hat to a neighboring school, 

 where it was at once recognized by the boys as belonging to a particular indi- 

 vidual, and upon that indication the thief was arrested. 



Skill in marksmanship, whether with firearms or with other projectile weap- 

 ons, depends more upon the training of the eye than is generally supposed, 

 and I have often found particularly good shots to possess an almost telescopic 

 vision. In the ordinary use of the rifle, the barrel is guided by the eye, bu* 

 there are sportsmen who fire with the butt of the gun at the hip. In this case, 

 as in the use of the sling, the lasso, and the bolas, in hurling the knife (see 

 Babinet, Lecturer, vii., p. 84), in throwing the boomerang, the javelin, or a 

 stone, and in the employment of the blowpipe and the bow, the movements of 

 the hand and arm are guided by that mysterious sympathy which exists be- 

 tween the eye and the unseeing organs of the body. 



" Some men wonder whye, in casting a man's eye at the marke, the hand 

 should go streighte. Surely if he considered the nature of a man's eye he 

 would not wonder at it : for this I am certaine of, that no servaunt to his 

 maister, no childe to his father, is so obedient, as every joynte and peece of 

 the bodye is to do whatsover the eye biddes." — Roger Ascham, ToxopMlus, 

 Book ii. 



In shooting the tortoises of the Amazon and its tributaries, the Indians use 

 an arrow with a long twine and a float attached to it. Ave-Lallemant {Di« 

 Benutzung der Palmen am Amazonenstrom, p. 32) thus describes their mode of 

 aiming : " As the arrow, if aimed directly at the floating tortoise, would strike 

 it at a small angle and glance from its flat and wet shell, the archers have s 



