Part 11

Bright-colored eyes in many species are probably due, like ornaments and gaudy plumage, to sexual selection. The quality of shining in the dark, however, possessed by many nocturnal and semi-nocturnal species, has always, I believe, a hostile purpose. When found in inoffensive species, as, for instance, in the lemurs, it can only be attributed to mimicry, and this would be a parallel case with butterflies mimicking the brilliant “warning colors” of other species on which birds do not prey. Cats amongst mammals, and owls amongst birds, have been most highly favored; but to the owls the palm must be given. The feline eyes, as of a puma or wild cat, blazing with wrath, are wonderful to see; sometimes the sight of them affects one like an electric shock; but for intense brilliance and quick changes, the dark orbs kindling with the startling suddenness of a cloud illuminated by flashes of lightning, the yellow globes of the owl are unparalleled. Some readers might think my language exaggerated. Descriptions of bright sunsets and of storms with thunder and lightning would, no doubt, sound extravagant to one who had never witnessed these phenomena. Those only who spend years “conversing with wild animals in desert places,” to quote Azara’s words, know that, as with the atmosphere, so with animal life, there are special moments; and that a creature presenting a very sorry appearance dead in a museum, or living in captivity, may, when hard pressed and fighting for life in its own fastness, be sublimed by its fury into a weird and terrible object.

Nature has many surprises for those who wait on her: one of the greatest she ever favored me with was the sight of a wounded Magellanic eagle-owl I shot on the Rio Negro in Patagonia. The haunt of this bird was an island in the river, overgrown with giant grasses and tall willows, leafless now, for it was in the middle of winter. Here I sought for and found him waiting on his perch for the sun to set. He eyed me so calmly when I aimed my gun, I scarcely had the heart to pull the trigger. He had reigned there so long, the feudal tyrant of that remote wilderness? Many a water-rat, stealing like a shadow along the margin between the deep stream and the giant rushes, he had snatched away to death; many a spotted wild pigeon had woke on its perch at night with his cruel crooked talons piercing its flesh; and beyond the valley on the bushy uplands many a crested tinamou had been slain on her nest and her beautiful glossy dark green eggs left to grow pale in the sun and wind, the little lives that were in them dead because of their mother’s death. But I wanted that bird badly, and hardened my heart: the “demoniacal laughter” with which he had so often answered the rushing sound of the swift black river at eventide would be heard no more. I fired: he swerved on his perch, remained suspended for a few moments, then slowly fluttered down. Behind the spot where he had fallen was a great mass of tangled dark-green grass, out of which rose the tall, slender boles of the trees; overhead through the fretwork of leafless twigs the sky was flushed with tender roseate tints, for the sun had now gone down and the surface of the earth was in shadow. There, in such a scene, and with the wintry quiet of the desert over it all, I found my victim stung by his wounds to fury and prepared for the last supreme effort. Even in repose he is a big eagle-like bird: now his appearance was quite altered, and in the dim, uncertain light he looked gigantic in size—a monster of strange form and terrible aspect. Each particular feather stood out on end, the tawny barred tail spread out like a fan, the immense tiger-colored wings wide open and rigid, so that as the bird, that had clutched the grass with his great feathered claws, swayed his body slowly from side to side—just as a snake about to strike sways its head, or as an angry watchful cat moves its tail—first the tip of one, then of the other wing touched the ground. The black horns stood erect, while in the centre of the wheel-shaped head the beak snapped incessantly, producing a sound resembling the clicking of a sewing-machine. This was a suitable setting for the pair of magnificent furious eyes, on which I gazed with a kind of fascination, not unmixed with fear when I remembered the agony of pain suffered on former occasions from sharp, crooked talons driven into me to the bone. The irides were of a bright orange color, but every time I attempted to approach the bird they kindled into great globes of quivering yellow flame, the black pupils being surrounded by a scintillating crimson light which threw out minute yellow sparks into the air. When I retired from the bird this preternatural fiery aspect would instantly vanish.

The dragon eyes of that Magellanic owl haunt me till now, and when I remember them, the bird’s death still weighs on my conscience, albeit by killing it I bestowed on it that dusty immortality which is the portion of stuffed specimens in a museum.

The question as to the cause of this fiery scintillating appearance is, doubtless, one very hard to answer, but it will force itself on the mind. When experimenting on the bird, I particularly noticed that every time I retired the nictitating membrane would immediately cover the eyes and obscure them for some time, as they will when an owl is confronted with strong sunlight; and this gave me the impression that the fiery, flashing appearance was accompanied with, or followed by, a burning or smarting sensation. I will here quote a very suggestive passage from a letter on this subject written to me by a gentleman of great attainments in science: “Eyes certainly do shine in the dark—some eyes, _e.g._ those of cats and owls; and the scintillation you speak of is probably another form of the phenomenon. It probably depends upon some extra-sensibility of the retina analogous to what exists in the molecular constitution of sulphide of calcium and other phosphorescent substances. The difficulty is in the _scintillation_. We know that light of this character has its source in the heat vibrations of molecules at the temperature of incandescence, and the electric light is no exception to the rule. A possible explanation is that supra-sensitive retinæ in times of excitement become increasedly phosphorescent, and the same excitement causes a change in the curvature of the lens, so that the light is focussed, and _pro tanto_ brightened into sparks. Seeing how little we know of natural forces, it may be that what we call light in such a case is eye speaking to eye—an emanation from the window of one brain into the window of another.”

The theory here suggested that the fiery appearance is only another form of the phosphorescent light found in some eyes, if correct, would go far towards disposing of all those cases one hears and reads about—some historical ones—of human eyes flashing fire and blazing with wrath. Probably all such descriptions are merely poetic exaggerations. One would not look for these fiery eyes amongst the peaceful children of civilization, who, when they make war, do so without anger, and kill their enemies by machinery, without even seeing them; but amongst savage or semi-savage men, carnivorous in their diet, fierce in disposition, and extremely violent in their passions. It is precisely amongst people of this description that I have lived a great deal. I have often seen them frenzied with excitement, their faces white as ashes, hair erect, and eyes dropping great tears of rage, but I have never seen anything in them even approaching to that fiery appearance described in the owl.

Nature has done comparatively little for the human eye, not only in denying it the terrifying splendors found in some other species, but also in the minor merit of beauty; yet here, when we consider how much sexual selection concerns itself with the eye, a great deal might have been expected. When going about the world one cannot help thinking that the various races and tribes of men, differing in the color of their skins and in the climates and conditions they live in, ought to have differently colored eyes. In Brazil, I was greatly struck with the magnificent appearance of many of the negro women I saw there: well-formed, tall, majestic creatures, often appropriately clothed in loose white gowns and white turban-like headdresses; while on their round polished blue-black arms they wore silver armlets. It seemed to me that the pale golden irides, as in the intensely black tyrant-bird Lichenops, would have given a finishing glory to these sable beauties, completing their strange unique loveliness. Again, in that exquisite type of female beauty which we see in the white girl with a slight infusion of negro blood, giving the graceful frizzle to the hair, the purple-red hue to the lips, and the dusky terra-cotta tinge to the skin, an eye more suitable than the dark dull brown would have been the intense orange brown seen in the lemur’s eye. For many very dark-skinned tribes nothing more beautiful than the ruby-red iris could be imagined; while sea-green eyes would have best suited dusky-pale Polynesians and languid peaceful tribes like that one described in Tennyson’s poem:—

And round about the keel with faces pale, Dark faces pale against that rosy flame, The mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters came.

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 for the anthropologists, it doesn’t. It only gives in some cases the greenish variable tinge I have mentioned, but nothing approaching to the decided greens of Broca’s tables. Given an eye with the right degree of translucency in the membrane and a very thin deposit of yellow pigment spread equally over the surface; the result would be a perfectly green iris. Nature, however, does not proceed quite in this way. The yellow pigment varies greatly in hue; it is muddy yellow, brown, or earthy color, and it never spreads itself uniformly over the surface, but occurs in patches grouped about the pupil and spreads in dull rays or lines and spots, so that the eye which science says “ought to be called green” is usually a very dull blue-grey or brownish-blue, or clay color, and in some rare instances shows a changeable greenish hue.

In the remarks accompanying the report of the Anthropomentric Committee of the British Association for 1881 and 1883, it is said that green eyes are more common than the tables indicate, and that eyes that should properly be called green, owing to the popular prejudice against that term, have been recorded as grey or some other color.

Does any such prejudice exist? or is it necessary to go about with the open manual in our hands to know a green eye when we see one? No doubt the “popular prejudice” is supposed to have its origin in Shakespeare’s description of jealousy as a green-eyed monster; but if Shakespeare has any great weight with the popular mind the prejudice ought to be the other way, since he is one of those who sing the splendors of the green eye.

Thus, in Romeo and Juliet:—

The eagle, madam, Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye As Paris hath.

The lines are, however, nonsense, as green-eyed eagles have no existence; and perhaps the question of the popular prejudice is not worth arguing about.

If we could leave out the mixed or neutral eyes, which are in a transitional state—blue eyes with some dark pigment obscuring their blueness, and making them quite unclassifiable, as no two pairs of eyes are found alike—then all eyes might be divided into two great natural orders, those with and those without pigment on the outer surface of the membrane. They could not be called light and dark eyes, since many hazel eyes are really lighter than purple and dark grey eyes. They might, however, be simply called brown and blue eyes, for in all eyes with the outer pigment there is brown, or something scarcely distinguishable from brown; and all eyes without pigment, even the purest greys, have some blueness.

Brown eyes express animal passions rather than intellect, and the higher moral feelings. They are frequently equalled in their own peculiar kind of eloquence by the brown or dark eyes in civilised dogs. In animals there is, in fact, often an exaggerated eloquence of expression. To judge from their eyes, caged cats and eagles in the Zoological Gardens are all furred and feathered Bonnivards. Even in the most intellectual of men the brown eye speaks more of the heart than of the head. In the inferior creatures the black eye is always keen and cunning or else soft and mild, as in fawns, doves, aquatic birds, etc.; and it is remarkable that in man also the black eye—dark brown iris with large pupil—generally has one or the other of these predominant expressions. Of course, in highly-civilised communities, individual exceptions are extremely numerous. Spanish and negro women have wonderfully soft and loving eyes, while the cunning weasel-like eye is common everywhere, especially amongst Asiatics. In high-caste Orientals the keen, cunning look has been refined and exalted to an expression of marvellous subtlety—the finest expression of which the black eye is capable.

The blue eye—all blues and greys being here included—is, _par excellence_, the eye of intellectual man; that outer warm-colored pigment hanging like a cloud, as it were, over the brain absorbs its most spiritual emanations, so that only when it is quite blown away are we able to look into the soul, forgetting man’s kinship with the brutes. When one is unaccustomed to it from always living with dark-eyed races, the blue eye seems like an anomaly in nature, if not a positive blunder; for its power of expressing the lower and commonest instincts and passions of our race is comparatively limited; and in cases where the higher faculties are undeveloped it seems vacant and meaningless. Add to this that the ethereal blue color is associated in the mind with atmospheric phenomena rather than with solid matter, inorganic or animal. It is the hue of the void, expressionless sky; of shadows on far-off hill and cloud; of water under certain conditions of the atmosphere, and of the unsubstantial summer haze,

Whose margin fades Forever and forever as I move.

In organic nature we only find the hue sparsely used in the quickly-perishing flowers of some frail plants; while a few living things of free and buoyant motions, like birds and butterflies, have been touched on the wings with the celestial tint only to make them more aërial in appearance. Only in man, removed from the gross materialism of nature, and in whom has been developed the highest faculties of the mind, do we see the full beauty and significance of the blue eye—the eye, that is, without the interposing cloud of dark pigment covering it. In the recently-published biography of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author says of him: “His eyes were large, dark blue, brilliant, and full of varied expression. Bayard Taylor used to say that they were the only eyes he ever knew to flash fire.... While he was yet at college, an old gypsy woman, meeting him suddenly in a woodland path, gazed at him and asked, ‘Are you a man or an angel?’” Mrs. Hawthorne says in one of her letters quoted in the book: “The flame of his eyes consumed compliment, cant, sham, and falsehood; while the most wretched sinners—so many of whom came to confess to him—met in his glance such a pity and sympathy that they ceased to be afraid of God and began to return to him.... _I never dared gaze at him, even I, unless his lids were down_.”

I think we have, most of us, seen eyes like these—eyes which one rather avoids meeting, because when met one is startled by the sight of a naked human soul brought so near. One person, at least, I have known to whom the above description would apply in every particular; a man whose intellectual and moral nature was of the highest order, and who perished at the age of thirty, a martyr, like the late Dr. Rabbeth, in the cause of science and humanity.

How very strange, then, that savage man should have been endowed with this eye unsuited to express the instincts and passions of savages, but able to express that intelligent and high moral feeling which a humane civilisation was, long ages after, to develop in his torpid brain! A fact like this seems to fit in with that flattering, fascinating, ingenious hypothesis invented by Mr. Wallace to account for facts which, according to the theory of natural selection, ought not to exist. But, alas! that beautiful hypothesis fails to convince. Even the most degraded races existing on the earth possess a language and the social state, religion, a moral code, laws, and a species of civilisation; so that there is a great gulf between them and the highest ape that lives in the woods. And as far back as we can go this has been the condition of the human race, the real primitive man having left no writing on the rocks. In the far dim past he still appears, naked, standing erect, and with a brain “larger than it need be,” according to the theory; so that of the oldest pre-historic skull yet discovered Professor Huxley is able to say that it is a skull which might have contained the brains of a philosopher or of a savage. We can only conclude that we are divided by a very thin partition from those we call savages in our pride; and that if man has continued on the earth, changing but little, for so vast a period of time, the reason is, that while the goddess Elaboration has held him by one hand, endeavoring ever to lead him onwards, the other hand has been clasped by Degeneration, which may be personified as a beauteous and guileful nymph whose fascinations have had as much weight with him as the wisdom of the goddess.—_Gentleman’s Magazine._

BIG ANIMALS.

“The Atlantosaurus,” said I, pointing affectionately with a wave of my left hand to all that was immortal of that extinct reptile, “is estimated to have had a total length of one hundred feet, and was probably the very biggest lizard that ever lived, even in Western America, where his earthly remains were first disinhumed by an enthusiastic explorer,”

“Yes, yes,” my friend answered abstractedly. “Of course, of course; things were all so very big in those days, you know, my dear fellow.”

“Excuse me,” I replied with polite incredulity; “I really don’t know to what particular period of time the phrase ‘in those days’ may be supposed precisely to refer.”

My friend shuffled inside his coat a little uneasily. (I will admit that I was taking a mean advantage of him. The professorial lecture in private life, especially when followed by a strict examination, is quite undeniably a most intolerable nuisance.) “Well,” he said, in a crusty voice, after a moment’s hesitation, “I mean, you know, in geological times ... well, there, my dear fellow, things used all to be so _very_ big in those days, usedn’t they?”

I took compassion upon him and let him off easily. “You’ve had enough of the museum,” I said with magnanimous self-denial. “The Atlantosaurus has broken the camel’s back. Let’s go and have a quiet cigarette in the park outside.”

But if you suppose, reader, that I am going to carry my forbearance so far as to let you, too, off the remainder of that geological disquisition, you are certainly very much mistaken. A discourse which would be quite unpardonable in social intercourse may be freely admitted in the privacy of print; because, you see, while you can’t easily tell a man that his conversation bores you (though some people just avoid doing so by an infinitesimal fraction), you can shut up a book whenever you like, without the very faintest or remotest risk of hurting the authors delicate susceptibilities.

The subject of my discourse naturally divides itself, like the conventional sermon, into two heads—the precise date of “geological times,” and the exact bigness of the animals that lived in them. And I may as well begin by announcing my general conclusion at the very outset; first, that “those days” never existed at all; and secondly, that the animals which now inhabit this particular planet are, on the whole, about as big, taken in the lump, as any previous contemporary fauna that ever lived at any one time together upon its changeful surface. I know that to announce this sad conclusion is to break down one more universal and cherished belief: everybody considers that “geological animals” were ever so much bigger than their modern representatives; but the interests of truth should always be paramount, and if the trade of an iconoclast is a somewhat cruel one, it is at least a necessary function in a world so ludicrously overstocked with popular delusions as this erring planet.