Since we cannot have the eyes we should like best to have, let us consider those that nature has given us. The incomparable beauty of the “emerald eye” has been greatly praised by the poets, particularly by those of Spain. Emerald eyes, if they only existed, would certainly be beautiful beyond all others, especially if set off with dark or black hair and that dim pensive creamy pallor of the skin frequently seen in warm climates, and which is more beautiful than the rosy complexion prevalent in northern regions, though not so lasting. But either they do not exist or else I have been very unfortunate, for after long seeking I am compelled to confess that never yet have I been gratified by the sight of emerald eyes. I have seen eyes _called_ green, that is, eyes with a greenish tinge or light in them, but they were not the eyes I sought. One can easily forgive the poets their misleading descriptions, since they are not trustworthy guides, and very often, like Humpty Dumpty in “Through the Looking Glass,” make words do “extra work.” For sober fact one is accustomed to look to men of science; yet, strange to say, while these complain that we—the unscientific ones—are without any settled and correct ideas about the color of our own eyes, they have endorsed the poet’s fable, and have even taken considerable pains to persuade the world of its truth. Dr. Paul Broca is their greatest authority. In his “Manual for Anthropologists” he divides human eyes into four distinct types—orange, green, blue, grey; and these four again into five varieties each. The symmetry of such a classification suggests at once that it is an arbitrary one. Why orange, for instance? Light hazel, clay color, red, dull brown, cannot properly be called orange; but the division requires the five supposed varieties of the dark pigmented eye to be grouped under one name, and because there is yellow pigment in some dark eyes they are all called orange. Again, to make the five grey varieties the lightest grey is made so light that only when placed on a sheet of white paper does it show grey at all: but there is always some color in the human skin, so that Broca’s eye would appear absolutely white by contrast—a thing unheard of in nature. Then we have green, beginning with the palest sage green, and up through grass green and emerald green, to the deepest sea green and the green of the holly leaf. Do such eyes exist in nature? In theory they do. The blue eye is blue, and the grey grey, because in such eyes there is no yellow or brown pigment on the outer surface of the iris to prevent the dark purple pigment—the _uvea_—on the inner surface from being seen through the membrane, which has different degrees of opacity, making the eye appear grey, light or dark blue, or purple, as the case may be. When yellow pigment is deposited in small quantity on the outer membrane, then it should, according to the theory, blend with the inner blue and make green. Unfortunately