Concerning Eyes. 189 
Argentine of Spanish blood, and was called by his 
neighbours ojos escritos, or written eyes. It struck 
me as a very curious circumstance that these eyes, 
both in their ground colour and the form and dis- 
position of the markings traced on them, were 
precisely like the eyes of aspecies 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 splendid 
crimson, flaming yellow, or startling white orbs 
which would have made the dark-skinned brave, 
inspired by violent emotions, a being terrible 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 
species, has always, I believe, a hostile pur- 
pose. When found in inoffensive species, as, for 
instance, in the lemurs, it can only be attributed to 
mimicry, and this would be a parallel case with 
butterflies mimicking the brilliant ‘ warning 
colours’? of other species on which birds do not 
prey. Cats amongst mammals, and owls amongst 
birds, have been most highly favoured ; but to the 
owls the palm must be given. The feline eyes, as 
