The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)Pliny, the Elder
History
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)
Pliny, the Elder
Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
The eyes of animals that see at night in the dark, cats, for instance,
are shining and radiant, so much so, that it is impossible to look upon
them; those of the she-goat, too, and the wolf are resplendent, and
emit a light like fire. The eyes of the sea-calf and the hyæna change
successively to a thousand colours; and the eyes, when dried, of most
of the fishes will give out light in the dark, just in the same way as
the trunk of the oak when it has become rotten with extreme old age.
We have already mentioned[205] the fact, that animals which turn, not
the eyes but the head, for the purpose of looking round, are never
known to wink. It is said,[206] too, that the chameleon is able to
roll the eye-balls completely round. Crabs look sideways, and have the
eyes enclosed beneath a thin crust. Those of craw-fish and shrimps are
very hard and prominent, and lie in a great measure beneath a defence
of a similar nature. Those animals, however, the eyes of which are
hard, have worse sight than those of which the eyes are formed of a
humid substance. It is said that if the eyes are taken away from the
young of serpents and of the swallow,[207] they will grow again. In
all insects and in animals covered with a shell, the eyes move just
in the same way as the ears of quadrupeds do; those among them which
have a brittle[208] covering have the eyes hard. All animals of this
nature, as well as fishes and insects, are destitute of eye-lids, and
their eyes have no covering; but in all there is a membrane that is
transparent like glass, spread over them.
CHAP. 56.—THE HAIR OF THE EYE-LIDS; WHAT ANIMALS ARE WITHOUT THEM.
ANIMALS WHICH CAN SEE ON ONE SIDE ONLY.
Man has lashes on the eye-lids on either side; and women even make
it their daily care to stain them;[209] so ardent are they in the
pursuit of beauty, that they must even colour their very eyes. It was
with another view, however, that Nature had provided the hair of the
eyelids—they were to have acted, so to say, as a kind of rampart for
the protection of the sight, and as an advanced bulwark against the
approach of insects or other objects which might accidentally come
in their way. It is not without some reason that it is said that the
eyelashes[210] fall off with those persons who are too much given to
venereal pleasures. Of the other animals, the only ones that have
eyelashes are those that have hair on the rest of the body as well;
but the quadrupeds have them on the upper eyelid only, and the birds
on the lower one: the same is the case also with those which have a
soft skin, such as the serpent, and those among the quadrupeds that are
oviparous, the lizard, for instance. The ostrich is the only one among
the birds that, like man, has eyelashes on either side.
CHAP. 57.—ANIMALS WHICH HAVE NO EYELIDS.
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