FOSSIL EYES OF TRILOIUTES. .31)7 
example yet found in the fossil world, of the 
preservation of parts so delicate as the visual 
®*’gans of animals that ceased to live many 
thousands, and perhaps millions of years ago. 
must regard these organs with feelings of no 
ordinary kind, when we recollect that we have 
before us the identical instruments of vision, 
through which the light of heaven was admitted 
to the sensorium of some of the first created 
cohabitants of our planet. 
The discovery of such instruments in so per- 
h^et a state of preservation, after having been 
buried for incalculable ages in the early strata 
of the Transition formation, is one of the most 
'Uarvellous facts yet disclosed by geological re- 
^uarches ; and the structure of these eyes supplies 
On argument, of high importance in connecting 
together the extreme points of the animal crea- 
tion. An identity of mechanical arrangements, 
Udapted to the construction of an optical instru- 
uient, precisely similar to that which forms the 
c^yes of existing insects and Crustaceans, affords 
ecu example of agreement that seems utterly in- 
explicable without reference to the exercise of 
eue and the same Intelligent Creative power. 
Professor Muller and Mr. Straus* have ably 
^ud amply illustrated the arrangements, by which 
the eyes of Insects and Crustaceans are adapted 
* See Lib. Eiit. Knowledge, v. 12. ; and Dr. Roget's Bridge- 
"'ater Treatise, vol. ii. p. 486 et seq. and Fig. 422 — 428. 
