32 Mr. Ware's Observations on the near 



though the difference may be very shght, influenced perhaps 

 by fashion more than by necessity, they immediately have 

 recourse to a concave glass ; the natural consequence of which 

 is, that their eyes in a short time become so fixed in the state 

 requiring its assistance, that the recovery of distant vision is 

 rendered afterwards extremely difficult, if not quite impos- 

 sible. With regard to the proportion between the number of 

 near sighted persons in the different ranks of society, I have 

 taken pains to obtain satisfactory information, by making in- 

 quiry in those places where a large number in these several 

 classes are associated together. I have inquired, for instance, 

 of the surgeons of the three regiments of foot guards, which 

 consist of nearly ten thousand men ; and the result has been, 

 that near sightedness, among the privates, is almost utterly 

 unknown. Not half a dozen men have been discharged, nor 

 half a dozen recruits rejected, on account of this imperfection, 

 in the space of nearly twenty years : and yet many parts of 

 a soldier's duty require him to have a tolerably correct view 

 of distant objects ; as of the movements of the fugleman in 

 rxercise, and of the bull's eye when shooting at the target; 

 the want of which might furnish a plausible apology for a 

 skulker to skreen himself from duty, or to get his discharge 

 from the service. I pursued my inquiries at the military school 

 at Chelsea, where there are thirteen hundred children, and I 

 found that the complaint of near sightedness had never been 

 made among them until I mentioned it ; and there were then 

 only three who experienced the least inconvenience from it. 

 After this, I inquired at several of the colleges in Oxford and 

 Cambridge; and, though there is a great diversity in the 

 number of students who make use of glasses in the various 



