connection with the Institution on the 6th of Feb. by Mr. Eastlake. The lecturer took his audience with him (mentally, of course) to the birth and parentage of this great man; his going with a company of volunteers to France, in aid of the Huguenots; his services in France and the Netherlands; his command of royal troops in Ireland; his favour and disfavour with the Queen; his knighthood and grant of 12,000 acres of forfeited estates; the part he played in scattering the forces of the Spanish Armada; his imprisonment in the Tower; his restoration to power; his rank of rear admiral in the taking of Cadiz; his trial for treason in connection with Lord Cobham; his being condemned, but reprieved and sent to Tower, where he remained 13 years; his conditional release and subsequent decapitation. A more lengthy resumé of the lecture, together with memoirs of Sir Frances Drake and other historical celebrities will be found in Brett’s “Hastings and the Armada”, intended to be reproduced from the St. Leonards Gazette.
“The Eye in its adaptation to Man and Animals” was the title of a lecture given to the members of the Institution by J. C. Savery, Esq. on the 13th of February, illustrated by digagrams(sic). In the course of his lecture Mr. Savery said that although our five senses had their special uses, one could not but perceive that that of sight was superior to them all. He then proceeded to describe the different parts of that organ and the particular uses of the eyelids, eye-lashes, the cornea, the sclerotic (white of the eye) the aqueous humour, the iris, &c. In treating of the eyes of the lower animals, the lecturer said he would begin with the Polygastria, in which they were mere spots, whilst in others only a red spot, and again in others a great number, as in the cockchafer and the fly as many as 7000. In the dragon-fly there were as many as 24,000. The water beetle had two sets of eyes, one to watch the larva on which it feeds, and the other to direct its flight in the air. Spiders eyes were so formed as to see all over the web at once. The eyes of crabs and lobsters were curiously formed, some of them containing as many as 500 facets, and as now, so in the days of old, for the same thing obtained in the eyes of the tribouti, an animal found at an immense depth in the earth. In molluscs the eyes were rudimentary, those of the scallop and cuttlefish being a fringe round the head. But it was in the vertebrate animals that the eyes were more fully developed, some of them having eyebrows and eyelids, and in fishes and birds some of them protected by bony plates. The fishes that swam in the open sea had large eyes, and those near the shore, small. In birds the eye had to be adapted to the different densities which they inhabited and the requisite rays of vision. The ostrich possesses eyelashes. Birds of prey and cats have the eye adapted to night vision. The timid animals had great range of vision, which enabled them to see behind -
