10 
point of resemblance in the structure of their 
eyes. This point deserves peculiar consi¬ 
deration, as it affords the most ancient, and 
almost the only example yet found in the 
fossil world, of the preservation of parts so 
delicate as the visual organs of animals that 
ceased to live many thousands, and perhaps 
millions of years ago. We 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 in¬ 
habitants of our planet. 
“ The discovery of such instruments in so 
perfect a state of preservation, after having 
been buried for incalculable ages in the early 
strata of the transition formation, is one of 
the most marvellous facts yet disclosed by 
geological researches; and the structure of 
these eyes supplies an argument of high im¬ 
portance in connecting together the extreme 
points of the animal creation. An identity 
of mechanical arrangements, adapted to the 
