ORGANS OF SPECIAL SENSE. ng 



Some writers have described the eye of the 

 bee in a manner which seems to make all easy. 

 Their lenses appear to have been made in a lathe, 

 and run together by pigment which has been poured 

 in between them ; but this simplicity has the primal 

 defect of being inaccurate. The eye is gradually 

 evolved from elements incomparably more simple 

 than itself, and which existed in the blind larva. The 

 deep mystery of cell life has caused all to grow 

 into the form the mature eye possesses, but the 

 manner of its building is still dimly traceable — cells 

 still compose it, and the pigment is yet but a part 

 of the contents of some of these. Four cells, coming 

 together by the action of that life which is an ever- 

 present miracle, by mutual action framed themselves 

 into the crystalline cone ; but the cone still shows 

 its origin, and is not like the homogeneous lens of 

 the optician ; and so with every other part, for the 

 eye was and is vital. Everv element made out only 

 leads back to some new and more recondite problem 

 yet to be faced. Can we, then, leave these sense 

 organs without being moved by their wonder ? Our 

 conception is unequal to the task they give us, 

 although our knowledge of them is, at the best, 

 only superficial. I feel unable to close this chapter 

 as I would. Swammerdam shall do it for me, for 

 he says: "I cannot refrain from confessing, to the 

 glory of the immense, incomprehensible Architect, that 

 I have but imperfectly described and represented this 

 small organ ; for to represent it to the life in its 

 full perfection far exceeds the utmost efforts of 

 human knowledge." 



