58 
bearing shrew mouse, the least of quadrupeds. The 
proverbially large and bright eye of the golden 
eagle forms a striking contrast with the small sunken 
eye of the duck. The eyes, indeed, of all the ra- 
paces, or raptatores, (as they are called by Illiger,) 
when compared with those of divers and grazers, 
are large, and forward in the head. As the eyes of 
the cat kind are generally larger in proportion than 
those of the dog, so are those of the owls than those 
of the falcons. Those of the twilight-loving capri- 
mulgus, goat-sucker, are large; those of the volatico- 
pascentes, the birds which feed on the wing by day, 
are proportionally small. The burrowing puffin, and 
the crevice-lurking apus, swift, or deviling, are the 
moles of the bird kind. Amongst amphibia, some 
have large and bright eyes; some, as in the former 
tribes, are remarkable by their minuteness. The 
crocodile has large eyes, so has the chameleon: in 
the small, burrowing, timid lizards of the perforated 
wall and sand banks, they are proportionally small: 
in serpents they are generally small, but smaller in 
the venomous than in the unvenomed. Of fish, the 
different orders exhibit similar diversities. The scaly 
and bony fish have generally large eyes, and appear 
to delight in sunshine, although they do not appear 
near the surface in water where the sun’s rays aug- 
ment its temperature. The noon is unpropitious to 
the fly-fisher: the scaly tribes then sink lower in 
the stream. Some seem to bask in light devoid of 
heat. Seme, however, seek the shade of overhanging 
banks or willow roots, some the thick shelter of sub- 
