The Senses 



209 



thousands of birds are annually hurled against these 

 objects to their destruction." 



A bird's eye is very large in proportion to the size of 

 its head, and is correspondingly perfect and delicate in its 

 workings. It rests in a deep cavity hollowed out of the 

 skull, and is protected by soft cushions of fat and controlled 

 b}' bands and pulleys of muscle which control its motions. 



Looking closely at the eye of a live bird, we at once 

 remark its brightness — that alertness of expression wliich 

 so truly reflects the virile life of these creatures. The 

 eye, more than any other part of a living organism, is 

 an index to the relative power of its intelligence — more 

 surely than all the other facial features taken together. 

 The eyes of a sloth are expressionless black spots, and 

 even those of an orang-utan are bleary and watery. 

 But a crow or magpie, or any other bird you may choose, 

 though with horny, shapeless lips, nose, and mouth, looks 

 at us through eyes so expressive, so human, that no won- 

 der man's love has gone out to feathered creatures through- 

 out all his life on the earth. A dog is a four-legged, hairy 

 animal with the eyes of a bird. 



The eye of a bird appears perfecth' round, and is 

 composed of a central area of black, encircled b}' a ring, 

 sometimes hardly distinguishable from the inner divi- 

 sion, or again it may be highh* coloured. The circular 

 centre or pupil is always of a uniform black, and no won- 

 der, for ''it is not a thing — it is the hole in a thing." As 

 w^hen we look through the lens of a camera, only the 

 blackened inside of the bellows is reflected to us, so in 

 the eve of a bird, the delicate living lens, itself invisil)le. 



