

SCIENTIFIC TRACTS. 



NUMBER V. 



ANIMAL MECHANISM. 

 THE EYE. 



BY JEROME V. C. SMITH, M. D. 



A VARIETY of professional works are already before the 

 public on the anatomy of the eye, but it is questionable 

 whether any of them are sufficiently divested of technical 

 language, to be of utility to that class of readers who are 

 only interested in the beauties of science. 



Without making pretensions to originality, the writer 

 of the following pages will endeavor to simplify a subject, 

 too generally considered abstruse, that it may be under- 

 stood by those who have neither patience, time, nor in- 

 clination to pursue it under the guidance of a public 

 instructer. 



Well acquainted, as anatomists are, with the minute 

 organization of the eye, no one has been able to explain 

 how or why we see. Although the visual organs are 

 constructed with such exact reference'to the laws of light, 

 that telescopes and microscopes, made upon truly philo- 

 sophical principles, are but imitations or modifications of 

 the apparatus of the human eye, there is still a differ- 

 ence between the animate and inanimate, the most 

 wonderful and astonishing. The first is a. perceiving in- 

 strument ; the second, a receiving. 



The eye can only perform its destined functions, in 

 connexion with a living system, regulated bj an existing 

 harmony of all its complex machinety, consisting of 

 nerves, blood vessels and brain, However perfect in its 

 several tunics the eye may be, or* transparent in its fluids, 



VOL. i. NO. v. 9 



