100 Royal Society :— 
difference between the eyes of certain species of Talpa. ‘‘The e 
are rudimentary,” he says, “in the Mole and Spalax viue which 
live underground; and above all in Talpa ceca and t ryso- 
chlores are die dee rudimentary. They are a little more | developed 
in the Shrews and the Common Mole. ates to Ollivier 
(Bulletin de la "Société Philomathique, vol. ii. No. 38, p. e all the 
ordinary elements of the eye are found in Spalax typhlu 
Leydig, in his * Handbuch der Histologie, has some siopa 
remarks on the eyes of blind animals, and has described, in Müller's 
* Archives,’ 1854, p. 346, the cellular structure of the lens of the 
Iole's eye, as presenting the character of embryonic structure, from 
which he concludes that the lens remains in its primitive embryonic 
condition. 
r. Solly's peque were directed to the state of the optic 
commissures at the base of t ain. ‘In the Mole," he says, ‘in 
which the optic nerves are so cedido minute that they have often 
escaped detection, and are by many authors described as entirely 
sure; while the small black speck, evidently the rudiment of the eye, 
is supplied by a minute branch from the fifth pair” (p. 289, op. cit.). 
In P i 
exemplify this condition, in which, as in Spalax typhlus, x skin 
. Mr. Herbert Mayo has given a similar — in his * Phy- 
is represented as sending a filament directly to the globe of the eye. 
rom the above enumeration of the views entertaine anato- 
mists regarding the eye and optic nerve of the Mole, it is apparent 
that attention has been directed by some to the eye in particular, 
and to the structures intimately connected with it, while others have 
arrived at their conclusions from examination of the interior of the 
skull and the optic region of the brain. 
It remained therefore to ascertain the condition of the optic nerve 
in the posterior part of the orbit, val ears that portion of the nerve 
which lies in the optic foramen, and t endeavour to connect the 
sape described in the eye with thes observed at the base of 
It is proposed to give an account of the dissection of the full- 
wn M 
—— = of difference shall be apparent without separate 
compari 
