Of the eyes of insects there are two kinds, the simple and the compound. Of the former there are usually three, arranged in a triangle near the top of the head, between the compound eyes (Fig. 259, B). The compound or facetted eyes, which are usually round and prominent, differ much in size and in the number of facets.
The number of facets varies from 12 in Lepisma,—though in a Brazilian beetle (Lathridius) there are only seven unequal facets,—to 50 in the ant, and up to 4000 in the house-fly, 12,000 in Acherontia atropos, 17,000 in Papilio, 20,000 in the dragon-fly (Æschna), 25,000 in a beetle (Mordella), while in Sphinx convolvuli, the number reaches 27,000. The size of the facets seems to bear some relation to that of the insect, but even in the smallest species none have been observed less than 1
2000 of an inch in diameter. Day-flying Lepidoptera have smaller facets than moths (Lubbock).
Fig. 260.—Section through the ocellus of a young Dyticus larva: ct, cuticula; l, corneal lens; gh, cells of the vitreous body, being modified hypodermal cells (hy); st, rods; re, retinal cells; no, optic nerve.—After Grenacher, from Lang.
The simple, or single-lensed eye (ocellus).—Morphologically the simple eye is a modified portion of the ectoderm, the pigment enclosing the retinal cells arising from specialized hypodermal cells, and covered by a specialized transparent portion of the cuticula, forming the corneal lens. The apparatus is supplied with a nerve, the fibres of which end in a rod or solid nerve-ending, as in other sensory organs.
As seen in the ocellus of Dyticus (Fig. 260), under the corneal lens the hypodermis forms a sort of pit, and the cells are modified to form the vitreous body (vitrella) and retina. Each retinal cell (re) is connected with a fibre from the optic nerve, contains pigment, and ends in a rod directed outwards towards the lens. The cells at the end of the pit or depression are, next to the lens, without pigment, and, growing in between the retina and the lens, fill it up, and thus form a sort of vitreous body.
The ocellus appears to be a direct heirloom from the eyes of worms, while the many-facetted compound eye of the crustaceans and of insects is peculiar to these classes. The compound eye of the myriopod Scutigera differs structurally in many respects from the compound eye of insects, and that of Limulus still more so.
It should be observed that in the young nymph of Ephemera, as well as in the semipupa of Bombus, each of the three ocelli are situated on separate sclerites. In Bombus the anterior ocellus has a double shape, being broad, transversely ovate, and not round like the two others, as if resulting from the fusion of what were originally two distinct ocelli.
The ocelli are not infrequently wanting, as in adult Dermaptera, in the Locustidæ, and in certain Hemiptera (Hydrocora). In Lepidoptera there are but two ocelli; in geometrid moths they are often atrophied, and they are absent in butterflies (except Pamphila).
The compound or facetted eye (ommateum).—The facetted arthropod eye is wonderfully complex and most delicately organized, being far more so than that of vertebrates or molluscs. The simplest or most primitive facetted eye appears to be that of Lepisma. As stated by Watase, the compound eye of arthropods is morphologically “a collection of ectodermic pits whose outer open ends face towards the sources of light, and whose inner ends are connected with the central nervous system by the optic nerve fibres.”