Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 5 (1901).djvu/361

Rh wild Indians did not equal them in the sharpness of their senses. On the other hand, as the result of the 'Report of the Anthropometric Committee, British Association, 1881,' Mr. Roberts stated that the figures gave no support to the belief that savages possess better sight than civilized peoples, and spoke of "the common mistake of travellers in confounding acuteness of vision with the results of special training or education of the faculty of seeing, results which," as he remarked, "are quite as much dependent on mental training as in the use of the eyes." As pointed out by Haeckel, our own eyes are subject to the law of divergent adaptation. "If, for example, a naturalist accustoms himself always to use one eye for the microscope... then that eye will acquire a power different from that of the other.... The one eye will become short-sighted, and better suited for seeing things near at hand; the other eye becomes, on the contrary, more long-sighted, more acute for looking at an object in the distance. If, on the other hand, the naturalist alternately uses both eyes for the microscope, he will not acquire the shortsightedness of the one eye, and the compensating degree of long sight in the other, which is attained by a wise distribution of these different functions of sight between the two eyes." And so, even at the risk of being accused of rank Lamarckism, may