The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting Species — John Shaqi
The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting SpeciesFiguier, Louis
Science
The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting Species
Figuier, Louis
Insects
Looked at in front, a compound eye may be considered an agglomeration
of simple eyes; but internally this is hardly correct.
On the under side of each facette we find a body of a gelatinous
appearance, transparent, and usually conical; the base of this
occupies the centre of the facette in such a manner as to leave around
it a ring to receive some colouring matter. This body diminishes in
thickness towards its other extremity, and terminates in a point where
it joins a nervous filament proceeding from the optic nerve. These
cones, agreeing in number with the facettes, play the part of the
crystalline lens in the eyes of animals. They are straight and
parallel with each other. A pigment fills all the spaces between the
cones, and between the nervous filaments, and covers the under side of
each cornea, except at the centre. This pigment varies much in colour.
There are almost always two layers, of which the exterior one is the
more brilliant. In fact, these eyes often sparkle with fire, like
precious stones.
M. Lacordaire, in his "Introduction à l'Entomologie," from which we
borrow the greater part of this information, has summed up as follows,
the manner in which, according to M. Müller, the visual organs of
insects operate:--
"Each facette, with its lens and nervous filament, separated from
those surrounding them by the pigment in which they are enclosed, form
an isolated apparatus, impenetrable to all rays of light, except those
which fall perpendicularly on the centre of the facette, which alone
is devoid of pigment. All rays falling obliquely are absorbed by that
pigment which surrounds the gelatinous cone. It results partly from
this, and partly from the immobility of the eye, that the field of
vision of each facette is very limited, and that there are as many
objects reflected on the optic filaments as there are corneæ. The
extent, then, of the field of vision will be determined, not by the
diameter of these last, but by the diameter of the entire eye, and
will be in proportion to its size and convexity. But whatever may be
the size of the eyes, like their fields of vision, they are
independent of each other; there is always a space, greater or less,
between them; and the insect cannot see objects in front of this space
without turning its head. What a peculiar sensation must result from
the multiplicity of images on the optic filaments! This is not more
easily explained than that which happens with animals which, having
two eyes, see only one image; and probably the same is the case
with insects. But these eyes usually look in opposite directions,
and should see two images, as in the chameleon, whose eyes move
independently of each other. The clearness and length of vision will
depend, continues M. Müller, on the diameter of the sphere of which
the entire eye forms a segment, on the number and size of the
facettes, and the length of the cones or lenses. The larger each
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