332 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



lace states his conviction that " long- and short-sightedness, and 

 the various diseases and imperfections to which the eye is liable, 

 may be looked upon as relics of the imperfect condition from 

 which the eye has been raised by variation and natural selec- 

 tion."* 



Do we not therefore go far beyond the scientific use of the 

 imagination, when, as in the practice now so much in vogue, we 

 not only conclude that every well-established colour and mark- 

 ing, if not advantageous, is certainly not disadvantageous in the 

 struggle for existence, but add the further postulate that they 

 are so by reason that animal vision appreciates them in the same 

 manner as understood by ourselves. 



Even among ourselves the power of sight is a variable 

 quantity. Hottentots have been described as possessing keen 

 powers of vision. By the quickness of their eyes they can dis- 

 cover buck and other kinds of game from a great distance ; " they 

 are equally expert in watching a Bee to its nest. They no 

 sooner hear the humming of the insect than they squat them- 

 selves on the ground, and, having caught it with the eye, follow 

 it to an incredible distance." f Lumholtz gives a similar testi- 

 mony. " The Australian Bee is not so large as our House-fly, 

 and deposits its honey in hollow trees, the hives sometimes being 

 high up. While passing through the woods, the Blacks, whose 

 eyes are very keen, can discover the little Bees in the clear air 

 as the latter are flying thirty yards high to and from the little 

 hole which leads into their store-house. When the natives 

 ramble about in the woods they continually pay attention to the 

 Bees, and when I met Blacks in the forests ihey were, as a rule, 

 gazing up in the trees. Although my eyesight, according to the 

 statement of an oculist, is twice as keen as that of a normal eye, 

 it was usually impossible for me to discover the Bees, even after 

 the Blacks had indicated to me where they were." | Darwin has 

 remarked", as a result of reviewing the evidence on the subject, 

 that savages are generally long-sighted, and quotes Rengger's 

 experience in Paraguay as to repeated observations that Europeans 

 who had been brought up and spent their whole lives with the 



■'• ' Darwinism,' p. 130. 



f Barrow, ' Trav. Interior of Southern Africa,' vol. i. p. 110. 



\ 'Among Cannibals,' pp. 142-3. 



