4^^ Mr, Ware's Observations on the near 



possessed, of adjusting themselves to distant ones. In this^ 

 last respect, they differ from the eyes of those who have 

 naturally a distant sight, since, as such persons advance in life, 

 they usually retain the povirer of distinguishing distant objects,, 

 but lose that of seeing those that are near. It appears to mili- 

 tate also against the common observation, that as near sighted 

 persons grow older they become less near sighted ; since my 

 eyes, on the contrary, are more near sighted, at the age of 

 fifty-five, than they were at twenty-five, and I am now obliged 

 to employ deeper concave glasses than I then used to see 

 distant objects, though I am not able to see distinctly through, 

 them things that are near. 



The alteration which has taken place in my range of vision, 

 I have reason to believe, is not unusual. Dr. Wells, in 

 his paper on this subject, mentions the case of a gentleman, 

 who, like me, was near sighted, and whose sight, as he ad- 

 vanced in life, had undergone a similar change. — The fol- 

 lowing is also an instance of this kind, that is still more 

 remarkable. Mr. L. sixty-six years of age, who has spent a 

 great part of his life in the West Indies, and whose sight, 

 when he was young, enabled him to see both near and distant 

 objects with great precision, began, at the age of forty, to 

 experience a difficulty in reading and writing. He immedi- 

 ately procured convex spectacles of the first number sold by 

 opticians, which glasses are usually ground to a focus of 

 forty-six or forty^eight inches, and by the aid of these he- 

 continued to read and write with ease (distinguishing per- 

 fectly in the usual way all distant objects without them,) until 

 he was fifty. At this lime he first began to perceive an in- 

 distinctness in the appearance of things at a distance ; and, on 



