Show MORE ON THE EVE ETE OF ile U go to ancient greece on this thought excursion As ile e talk about this eye and stud moths and files flies to see their ees are made to compare nith this OUR OWN EYE SIMPLE THIS ONE IS COMPOUND ve A W s 00 V A V ta 7 ea t T 1 I ca K A close up of the lye times 5 an ee of 20 00 eai eais s ago last week we talked about the tri labite end how it got its name from the bombina tion of the old greek words pha kos a lentil 4 ops aps eye the tri lolite that has the large eye that looks like the seeds of the lentil double convex and this combination shortened hort ened to thus to all scholars la is the significance of crea ture told in its name this la Is written largely tor for the younger people with the hope of course added that it might be inter esting to their parents besides least wok we showed a photo of this trilobite partly curled up a thing it did to protect its soft part from enemies the bite has a thin case on its back call ed the test or carapace this car apace la is exactly as it you and I 1 car ried a wicker basket shield around with us stiffened with a homey horney aub sub stance much like the horn of a cow or eur our own finger nails called chi tin pronounced kye long I 1 sound tin the metal tin tin pan keetin the old roman soldiers in one class carried big oval shields rein forced with a hard substance which warded off stones arrows ind great ly protected the person behind or un der it so the dorsal shield of the trilobite from the average enemy he could flatten out on the bottom of the sea and present shell only to the attacker that it la Is thought was the more common way of action in early cambrian time but in late cambrian or ordovician he had be come more flexible and had learned to curl up his ills underneath part called the ventral side cor correspond ing to the abdominal front of walk ing creatures was soft easily alere ed hanging from the ceiling of my office is a basket made from an ar madello hide a creature from the south which could roll up just like the trilobite bite and nd present armor to the attacker so the spaniards who were themselves armed called them armadillos lived during devonian time when enemies were increasing and the bite no longer the mas ter of the sea was giving in bradu ally to his swifter toes foes the pods and the armored fishes hence to survive he must have protection and nature gave him that protection in an armored top surface an abil ity to flex that armor all around him and an eye to see the enemy coming so that he could scoot tor for parts un known it Is the eye we 11 talk about this week the kinds ot of eyes we are concerned with the simple and the compound we ourselves have the simple eye it Is one single eye with one lens only one piece of cornea over it unbroken but the compound eye is a great number of lenses or facets grouped together on the surface each a separate lens on tiles flies they are very minute it takes taken a high power ot of magnify magnification cation to re solve them As I 1 would sit nights in the office ln the summer time with the boror open studying with microscope tha insects would be attracted to the light and a convenient fly swatter netted me many a subject tor for study in this way I 1 studied the compound eyes of moths files flies hornets wasps and anything or everything I 1 could kill some are low slightly convex some others on the other hand are sharply convex rise very abruptly and are exceedingly pointed some are round some almost hexagonal in trying to find a trilobite in this region with eyes I 1 studied all kinds of eyes to become familiar with the tipPe appearance arance of the various kinds I 1 even went so tar far as to send to flor ida and get a horse shoe crab as walcott spoke of the resemblance of its eye ta the eye of a trilobite some of you have noted in my dis play case a crab and a few have ask ed what it was it is the horse shoe crab of which the scientific name always in latin or greek Is why 9 ahen homer ilia ills lyre the great homer in poverty and stricken blind that he might be tor for ced cod by the gods to see inwardly the beauties of rhythm and choice of apt words and striking metaphor sang what ages have fixed in form taking 9 away his sight and giving him poverty the gods brought him fame tin mortality tor for what homer wrote 2500 years ago men still read and study well homer wrote that hia his fond hero ulysses went to the isle where the one eyed giants lived men huge of bulk who milked goats and made cheese they had one eye in the middle of their forehead now urn lim ulus when born has one eye in the middle of its forehead called a me dian than eye it sees out of that eye or pair of median eyes but as it gets older two eyes show up on the sides and pretty soon the middle eye goes and it sees from the sides in other words the sight Is put out of the mid die dle eye wait waft wait what happen ed to ulysses 9 gets sight put out ulyssess took a picked number of comrades with him and went inland from where the ship was moored to a cave which they noted was innabi ted the master was away but they drank of his milk and ate of his curded cheese then the compan ions would have skipped and beat it to the boat but not ulysses he would stay and see what manner of man the host was you all know the story poly came home drove his herd in rolled a huge stone against the cave s mouth which scarce twelve men in these degenerate days could move trapped ulysses within the cave and bialt a fire and supped the flickering tire fire revealed the hud died scared group the monster grabbed a man dashed his brains out against the cave side and ate him raw for dessert as we would mince a shrimp quaffing huge dra aughta of milk to wash the savory tidbit down douall know the rest mus snatched a man morn and night until he had killed six telling ulys ses he would deserve him until the last ulysses put a pole in the tire fire unbeknown to the giant got it burn ed to a nice sharp point and hid it that night he got out a skin full of choice wine and got a skin full so I 1 guess the slang he got a skin full came down the ages from that souze when uleyses got him good and drunk dead drunk no more kick in him than in a log he got out the hid den pole heated the end hot in the dying tire fire and while snored the jag off burned his one and only eye out how it did sizzle and bubble and spit and hIss Trust homer tor for that for he was the first and best starlin gly realistic writer of all times copied tor for more than 2500 years the model of good writers to thia this day thus homer made a median mellen eye CYS famous gave the owner of that eye deathless tame fame in immortal verse the one eyed lives to i K S M men s delectation forever and aye and the horse shoe crab the animal which begins with one median eye and losea loses the sight bight of that la Is named after the giant poly phebus who ate a man raw as you would relish a shrimp and walcott says there Is much in common in the eye form of and of a tri labite study the picture ot of the eye study this eye of for a moment see the sweeping rows in al order it is just like looking at a part of a nut meg grat er A lot of little humps raised up well each of those humps supported a lens to see through dozens of them I 1 counter twelve row rows and about twelve to a row these tho are large the largest eye facets yet known some are so very tiny that 14 of them are on a side it you were in a city and walking acores one of those basement grat ing that let light in to the basement shop a framework of iron sup porting a great lot of round raised double convex alases that would just about as well describe the ap bearance pe arance of this eye when the animal was alive under it as any other way of using words the framework of support was not transparent the openings were and each opening was capped with a lens As you go past an all orchard the trees come into regular rows from one one side and again into the same or der from the other side just before you pass the orchard so with this eye look one way of the paper and you get the rows turn the paper nearly halt half around and you get the same appearance from another angle so from the specimen of trilobite sent me by the smithsonian Smiths onlan tion tor for the study of the eye form de do go galloping into ancient greece of twenty five hundred years ago we re glad we studied homer we re glad we find use for his vividly run ning narrative and we re lust just plumb tickled pink me I 1 mean we glow with roseate hue that men of science name things after our youth ful hero for I 1 fully believe that any boy who cant can t get a wallop out of the buckets of blood homer spills on every page the deatha deaths he depicts and each one different from any other is not a normal boy I 1 used it for my nick carter thrill better than a western movie in the gabby flickers the result of the study and what does the eye of tell me in my study that not in this area will I 1 find the eye of a tri labite it if they existed in preserve pre serva ble form at that time the middle fam cambrian brian it if they existed and that may not be too sure of this species the conditions tor for preservation were not adventitious and either the mud was too sandy lacked the slick ness at of an oily shale which keeps the most minute detail accurately for all time was stripped oft off in the matrix was lost be decomposition before tos fos sil izing or destroyed in any of the many conjectural ways possible I 1 find I 1 lobes which Is the scientific word tor for eye brow jl ii find ridges r find the test to bulge up into convex form to collect light onto a sensitive spot be neath let us say but no eye tac fac ets so the hunt tor for eyes in this area I 1 have given up something else must take its place that something how ever I 1 know will be interesting be cause the subject ie is so fascinating and leads one on and on so that it can t be dropped just now every energy Is being applied to get the very very young of two species and fair success Is 1 re ginning slowly to come como out of the research I 1 wish to thank the institution tor for the loan of a specimen of and also tor for the loan similarly ot of some forms of protas pis which the very very young are called so that I 1 could see what oth ers find fix the form in mind and then cute the study to better advantage frank beckwith sr |