THE EYE-LIKE SPOTS IK EISHES. 
By Professor F. JEFFREY BELL, M.A. 
[Plate YL] 
W E are so naturally inclined to take ourselves as the norm 
or standard in animal organization, that we are almost 
too easily astounded by any difference in the arrangement of 
parts or organs which are found in ourselves. With none, 
perhaps, is this more the case than with the eye ; we are so 
accustomed to associate a pair of eyes with every living creature, 
that blindness on the one hand, or a number of eyes on the 
other, excites more astonishment than the reduction or multi- 
plication of any other part. A child in spectacles is the object 
of a not always respectful pity ; and the poet to heighten the 
horror of his Cyclops makes him one-eyed. 
1 Ingens, quod torva solum sub fronte latebat ; ’* 
And Milton has put much the same feeling into words when 
he makes Samson say, — 
1 Why was this sight 
To such a tender ball as the eye confined. 
So obvious and so easy to be quenched ; 
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused, 
That she might look at will through every pore P ’ 
A survey, however, of the more important divisions of the 
animal kingdom, need not be very elaborate to convince us that 
the arrangement of parts which obtains in the case of our own 
eyes, and, in broad outline, in that of all the other vertebrated 
animals, is by no means similar to what we find in the Octopus, 
the Crayfish, or the marine Worm ; yet all these three represen- 
* 1 With sharpened point that eyeball pierce, 
Which heath his brow glared lone and fierce.’ 
Coxningtox. 
