[ A newt. ]

The fish’s ear you cannot find. That is inside; and the fish hears through the bones of his head, just as we do when we hold a stick in our teeth and tap the end, while we keep our ears stopped with our fingers. But the long dark stripe which you see on many sorts of fish, running from the place where the neck would be if fishes had one, the whole length of the body to the tail, and also forward across the head and around the eye, only you can’t make it out so well there, this also is a sort of ear. In fact, the ear itself is really a part of this “lateral line” very much improved—so much improved that we human beings and the four-footed beasts and the birds haven’t found it worth while to keep the lateral line at all. But the newts and salamanders still have it.

As for eyes, of these also there are all sorts. The star-fish has five, one at the end of each of its five arms, a tiny black dot. The jelly-fishes, some of the commoner sorts at least, have their eyes, such as they are, where the long tentacles join the center of the bell underneath. Some of the worms have several hundred eyes; some have a pair of eyes on each of the dozen or twenty joints of the body. The leeches, the common blood-suckers which get on our legs when we go swimming, have ten pairs of eyes, all on the front end.

Oysters, clams, and other “bivalves” have their eyes along the edge of the shell. Many of the snails have them on stalks, which they can pull back into the head or push out. The snail in Mother Goose, that

“.,,put out her horns
Like a little Kylo cow”

and frightened the four-and-twenty tailors, was really only putting out her eyes to see these valiant heroes. Some of the shell-less snails, or slugs, besides the eyes on the ends of their horns, have a lot more, occasionally nearly a hundred, sprinkled over the back.

Such eyes, however, are really not good for much. They serve to tell light from darkness. They let the creature know when a shadow falls on him—which is usually the shadow of something on the point of eating him up, so he gets warning and bolts. We ourselves can do as much with our eyes shut tight; and that’s about all most eyes will do wide open. There are not many really good eyes, till you get the single pair of the animals with back bones.

[ The Star-fish Has Eyes on His Arms; The Slug Also Has Eyes on His Horns; The Snail Has Eyes on His Two Longer Horns ]