CONCERNING EYES 183 



eyes, whose children all inherited the peculiarity ; 

 also another with reddish hazel irides thickly 

 marked with fine characters resembling Greek let- 

 ters. This person was an Argentine of Spanish 

 blood, and was called by his neighbors ojos escri- 

 tos, or written eyes. It struck me as a very curi- 

 ous circumstance that these eyes, both in their 

 ground color and the form and disposition of the 

 markings traced on them, were precisely like the 

 eyes of a species of grebe, common in La Plata. 

 Browning had perhaps observed eyes of this kind 

 in some person he had met, when he makes his 

 magician say to Pietro de Abano, 



Mark within my eyes its iris mystic lettered 

 That's my name! 



But we look in vain amongst men for the splen- 

 did crimson, flaming yellow, or startling white 

 orbs which would have made the dark-skinned 

 brave, inspired by violent emotions, a being ter- 

 rible to see. Nature has neglected man in this 

 respect, and it is to remedy the omission that he 

 stains his face with bright pigments and crowns 

 his head with eagles ' barred plumes. 



The quality of shining in the dark, seen in the 

 eyes of many nocturnal and semi-nocturnal spe- 

 cies, has always, I believe, a hostile purpose. 

 When found in inoffensive species, as, for in- 

 stance, in the lemurs, it can only be attributed to 

 mimicry, and this would be a parallel case with 



