The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Science
The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Questions and answers; Science -- Miscellanea; Technology -- Miscellanea
Of course, it is the eyes with which we see things. When we think of
the things with which we see, we think only of eyes, which give us our
sense of vision, but there are certain forms of animal life which have
no eyes but which have what are called eye spots or eye points, which
are sensitive to light and which are merely spots. These eye spots
may be located in any part of the body, and are often found in great
numbers on the same body. These rude eyes are, however, not real eyes.
They are, as has already been said, sensitive to light, but are found
only in some of the very low forms of animal life which live in the
water. A real eye is an organ in which the parts are so arranged that
optical images may be formed.
As animal life becomes developed to a higher scale, the parts which
contain the making of real eyes become more distinct although, of
course, the eyes themselves are not so highly developed as in man. One
of the first kinds of life which has eyes with a definite structural
character are the worms, snails, etc., though their sense of vision is
more or less dim.
When we come to the family of mollusks, however, low down in the scale
of life though they are, we find them to possess eyes which enable them
to see almost as well as animals which have a backbone, although this
kind of eyes is constructed in a very different manner than the eyes
of vertebrate animals referred to. As we ascend the scale of animal
life in the study of eyes, we come next to the crustaceous, which is an
important division of animal life that embraces the crabs and lobsters,
shrimps, crawfish, and insects such as sand-hoppers, beach-fleas,
wood-lice, fish-lice, barnacles. The eyes of such animals are quite
developed, but the number that each will have varies. Some have only a
single eye and others two, four, six or eight, but only certain kinds
of this class of life have more than two eyes. The spiders generally
have the most.
In vertebrates, which is the class of animal life to which we belong,
the number of eyes is almost always two and no more. The eyes are
formed in special sockets in the skull, which are called eye sockets
or orbits. This arrangement of placing them in a socket is of great
advantage because the eye is thus protected from chance of injury
except from one direction--the front. These animals have also eyelids,
eyebrows and eyelashes, which serve as a further protection to the eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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