Prof. Pfluger attributes this large amount of bad sight to insufficient lighting of school rooms, badly printed books, etc. One must agree with a certain writer, who says: "Schools are absolute manufactories of the short sighted, a variety of the human race which has been created within historic time, and which has enormously increased in number during the present century." Granting that many predisposing causes of defective vision cannot be eliminated from the rules laid down by our city fathers in acquiring an education, it would be well if the architects of school buildings would bear in mind that light when admitted into class rooms should not fall directly into the faces of children, but desks should be so arranged that the light must be sufficiently strong and fall upon the desk from the left hand side. My attention has repeatedly been called to the cross lights in a school room. The light falling directly into the eyes contracts the pupil which is already contracted by the action of the muscle of accommodation in its effort to give a clearer picture to the brain. This has a tendency to elongate the eyeball, and as a permanent result we have near sightedness. Where the eyeball has an unnatural shortness this same action manifests itself by headaches, chorea, nausea, dyspepsia, and ultimately a prematurely breaking down of health. The first symptom of failing sight is a hyper-secretion of tears, burning of the eyelids, loss of eyelashes, and congestion either of the eyelids or the eyeball proper. The natural condition of aboriginal man is far sighted. His wild life, his nomadic nature, his seeking for game, his watching for enemies, his abstention from continued near work, have given him this protection. Humboldt speaks of the wonderful distant vision of the South American Indians; another traveler in Russia of the power of vision one of his guides possessed, who could see the rings of Saturn. My recent examinations among Indian children of both sexes also confirm this. While the comparison is not quite admissible, yet the recent investigations carried on by Lang and Barrett, who examined the eyes of certain mammalia, found that the larger number were hypermetropic or far sighted. With all the difficulties which naturally surround such an examination they found that in fifty-two eyes of rabbits, thirty-six were hypermetropic and astigmatic, eight were hypermetropic only, five were myopic and astigmatic, and others presented mixed astigmatism. In the eyes of the guinea pig about the same proportion of hypermetropia existed. The eyes of five rats examined gave the following result: Some were far sighted, others were hypermetropic and astigmatic, one was slightly myopic and one had mixed astigmatism. Of six cows, five were hypermetropic and astigmatic and one was slightly myopic.