272 SCIENCE LETTER FROM PARIS. 



John Lubbock and other scholars as an additional argument for the common ori- 

 gin of all nations. It was entertained not only by the Greeks and Romans, but 

 also by the Chinese. Their theory was that a huge winged dragon caused the 

 darkness by attacking and attempting to devour the sun, and whole villages turned 

 out to beat the gongs and make a horrible din with the clang of their voices and 

 the clash of all the instruments they could procure, and thus drive the dragon off. 

 When the fairest regions of the earth became Christendom, all these foolish fan- 

 cies of the old world faded away. Something akin to them lingered long in the 

 remoter villages of Europe, and even now the unwonted veil cast over the face of 

 the sun in the height of its splendor, often floods the mind of the imaginative with 

 a not unworthy reverential awe. But now we are all more or less conversant 

 with the real character and causes of an eclipse, and to wait with eager attention 

 for the enlargement of the realms of knowledge by the very change in the heavens 

 that struck terror into the souls of the intellectual Greeks, is not the least among 

 the numerous proofs of the great and manifold gains which time has harvested in 

 its progress from the old, pre-Christian days to this newer and enlightened epoch. 

 — Globe Democrat. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



SCIENCE LETTER FROM PARIS. 



Paris, June 20, 1878. 

 Has nature always appeared to man under the colors that we know her ? 

 Has man always seen the heavens, the trees, the sea, colored with the same tints 

 as we perceive them ? In the great theatre of the world, where the decoration 

 and lighting change almost at each hour, has man ever been sensible to the same 

 purple rays of dawn and sun-set, or the tender green of young vegetation? Certainly 

 he has not. The infant is a parallel in point; with it the retina is developed very 

 slowly, and from the centre to the circumference; it is caught by striking colors, 

 but remains perfectly indifferent to vague and undecided shades. Prof. Magnus 

 of Breslau, has just published a work, where he demonstrates that the idea of 

 blue and green has not always been the same during the diverse periods of hu- 

 manity ; that the sense of colors has undergone a transformation, and consequently, 

 the anatomical structure of the eye has changed. Indeed the Professor admits, 

 that at a certain epoch, man felt light, without being able to distinguish the colors; 

 the whole of the retina was then, what its circumference is now, insensible to 

 color, or, where all colors lose their distinction and become confused in a grey, 

 more or less clear. The eye is a chef-d'ceuvre of nature, the most curious marvel 

 to be perhaps encountered on earth, and hence its capital importance in all mat- 

 ters affecting organic evolution. Light is the excitation produced on organized 

 matter by the mechanical vibrations of ether. The eye has been sensible to the 



