EXPRESSION IN THE ANIMAL EYE 193 
beautiful with the beauty of cut gems, and as devoid 
as a brilliant of any power of expression of character 
or emotion. 
A very brief visit to the stalls and cages of the Zoo, 
shows that the importance of the eye in the physi- 
ognomy of the higher animals is even greater than 
in the human face ; for in the greater number of even 
the best animal types, the play of feature is so limited, 
that expression is conveyed mainly by the eye, to 
which the movable ear plays an important and 
connected but always subsidiary part. By what 
seems almost a paradox, many human eyes, which 
produced a first impression of beauty, but are soon 
discovered to be singularly lacking in expression, 
are afterwards felt to have a strong resemblance to 
the eyes of certain animals, — of deer, for instance, 
or of birds; yet in the very animal which suggests 
the resemblance, the eye often possesses great intrinsic 
beauty, which is increased and dignified by a peculiar 
fitness for the face in which it appears. It is in 
keeping with the limits of animal expression that 
the actual size of the eye should bear a greater 
proportion to the area of the face than it does in 
man; and it will be found that the general estimate 
of animal beauty varies in the main with the size of 
the eye ; the giraffe, whose immense orbs exceed 
those of any other animal in size, perfection of shape, 
convexity, lustre, depth of colour, and length of 
eyelash, being perhaps the most general favourite 
in the rivalry of beauty, and the almost eyeless moles 
o 
