DEFECTIVE VISION OF CITY CHILDREN. 13 



cultivated by their environment. They see the other side of 

 the street, and the carts and omnibuses of the thoroughfares, 

 but they scarcely ever have the visual attention drawn to 

 any object difficult to see. A country child has an expanse 

 of landscape before him, presenting numerous objects rendered 

 small by distance, many of them disguised by resemblance 

 in colour to their surroundings, and requiring close scrutiny 

 in order that they may be distinguished, and so the country 

 child is not affected in the same degree by this subnormal 

 power of sight." * 



Now contrast these observations with what we have 

 to say upon the marvellously acute vision of some of 

 the wild tribes among the Arabs and the Prairie In- 

 dians; and see how the narrow, squalid influences of 

 a city life cramps and mars the natural gifts conferred 

 by a beneficent Nature upon her children. 



This digression into questions of historical and political 

 polemics not unnaturally arises when we consider the 

 extraordinary rapidity with which what was so recently 

 "The Wild West" is being settled, and filled up, by 

 swarms of emigrants from all quarters, and what an 

 important influence such a result is sure to exercise 

 upon the future of the human race. 



The whole of the great prairie region of North Am- 

 erica is in fact now parcelled out into states and terri- 

 tories, all of which possess a rapidly growing popula- 

 tion; where 30 years ago, there was no one, and where 

 in place of human populations, immense herds of buf- 

 falo ranged over tracts of wild country of then unknown 

 and boundless extent ; a great deal of which had rarely 

 or never been traversed by the foot of the White man. 



* Precis of Extract from Article in the Times of July 17, 1896, p. 8, 

 on "Defective Vision in the Public Schools." (Mr. Carter even goes 

 so far as to advise " Seeing Competitions " as a corrective for these 

 grave defects of vision.) 



