200 LIFE OF SIR JOHN LUBBOCK c„. 



Kingsgate, and he had actually been bathing in 

 the sea, and was none the worse for it. On the 

 11th he had to go up for the second reading of 

 the Bill in the House of Lords, and on the follow- 

 ing day it passed its third reading. The entry 

 in the diary for that day is curious : " Mr. 

 Pelham and Mr. Ponsonby came ; also a large 

 falcon, which sat some time on the terrace. The 

 Early Closing Bill passed." 



The singular point raised in the following 

 letter from Sir E. Ray Lankester, almost deserves 

 to rank among the curiosities, in a small way, 

 of science. 



British Museum (Natural History), 



Cromwell Road, London, S.W., 



Sept. 2ith. 



Dear Lord Avebury — At p. 351 of the 1900 edition 

 of your Beauties of Nature you say that Wyville Thomson 

 mentions a kind of Crab (Ethusa granulata) : 



(a) Which living near the surface has well-developed 

 eyes; 



(b) When in deeper water eyestalks are present, but 

 the animal is apparently blind, the eyes themselves 

 being absent — whilst 



(c) In specimens from 700 fathoms, the eyestalks 

 have become fixed and their terminations combined 

 into a strong pointed beak. 



I am about to figure and describe the original speci- 

 mens, and what I venture to ask you is whether you 

 have any notes or reference beyond the quotation from 

 Norman given by Wyville Thomson at p. 176 of the 

 Depths of the Sea. 



The curious thing is this that you mention three 

 stages of the eyes whereas Norman only mentions two, 

 and his specimens only show two. But most curiously 

 an intermediate stage has turned up from the coast 

 of Africa, within the last six months ! ! ! I want to 

 know if perhaps you had some note on the subject 

 other than what occurs in Depths of the Sea. Of course, 

 as no figure and only short descriptions were published 



