by month, were placed nearer and nearer to the tip of his nose, until one morning, when we found him with them on the very tip, barely able to maintain their place, the impulse to which we yielded was irresistible when we said to him, "You will either have to get new glasses or a longer nose." Fortunately, his sense of humor enabled him to take a kindly joke, and so his eyesight and appearance have been simultaneously benefited from a casual remark that brought about instant realization of a habit insensibly acquired and prejudicial to both.

Eye-washes are applications for use, as the case may be, on the eyes or on the eyelids, or on both. For congestion and irritation of both eyes and eyelids, the simplest wash is hot water applied frequently to the parts. Applying it, night and morning, it will often give the greatest relief and arrest many diseases of the eyes and eyelids :

TEA EYE-WASH.

Hot water poured on tea-leaves, and the mixture allowed to steep and cool, makes a soothing eye-wash.

To be used especially for eyes irritable from cold. frequently with the wash.

Bathe the eyes

To be used especially for eyes irritable from cold. Apply frequently.

Drop gently, night and morning, into the eye with the tip of a feather, a pipette, or some such thing, and this will sensibly relieve inflammation.

eyes.

Drop the solution gently into the eyes, night and morning. For inflamed

Pour the solution in the eyes several times a day. For inflamed eyes.

The following is a salve for inflamed eyelids :

Rub into the eyelids after bathing them gently, night and morning, with hot water.

The following is a useful recipe for a salve for inflamed or granulated eyelids :

Yellow oxide of mercury,.

Rose-salve or unsalted butter,

Apply to the eyelids night and morning.

1 grain.

1⁄2 ounce.

The following recipe for what is called alum-curd is for granulated eyelids :

Take a piece of alum about the size of a walnut, and rub it into the white of an egg until a curd is formed. Place the curd in a couple of thicknesses of fine gauze or bobbinet, and apply it thus to the eye. If bobbinet is used, first wash the stiffening out of it.

These recipes are given for the benefit of those who may need to know on the spur of the moment some efficacious treatment for an inflammation of the eye or eyelids, and upon the presumption that the ailment is not serious, or, if it be, that no good medical man is within reach. Whenever, on the contrary, there is opportunity, and, in the case of judging that the ailment is slight, there be any doubt remaining in the mind as to the fact, recourse should be had at the earliest possible time to the advice of a regular medical practitioner. A person might think that he has merely a blood-shot eye, when in reality he has an affection called pterygium, requiring astringent treatment, and perhaps other treatment that no one but an oculist can properly prescribe,—perhaps even an operation on the eye.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE CONSTRUCTION AND CARE OF THE EAR.

HE human ear is not to be regarded as of the best possible

THE

form, nor as always in the best position for the collection of sounds. One will observe in the lower animals, in many of which the hearing is far more acute than in man, that the ear is larger, of simpler form, and mobile. Among some of these the concavity of the ear can be directed toward the place whence the sound seems to proceed. Doubtless the human ear was originally of a very different shape from its present one, and the convolutions which it now possesses represent a general collapse of the organ, the absence of its motile power having coincidently come about in the course of ages, as being no longer needful in man's present higher stage of existence. Darwin even thought that the point on the inner side of the selvedge-edge of the ear, about a third of the way from the top, which is a very marked feature of the organ in some few individuals, is to be recognized as the rudiment. of a former peak of the ear. He also enlarges upon the fact, known to some persons, that in certain individuals the ear can be moved at will. Darwin's idea of the rudiment of which we speak being the representative of a former tip of the ear, now folded in, brings with it a vivid reminiscence of Hawthorne's Donatello, in the "Marble Faun," that strange creature who touched so nearly on primeval nature.

If any one should think it superfluous to mention that the ear is not, as compared with that of some of the lower animals, well adapted to collecting sounds, it will be sufficient to say to such a one, that the fact is not always apparent. Even so learned a man as Reis, a German professor, who, in 1860, undoubtedly invented the telephone, evidently had so much

confidence in the shape of the human ear as the fittest vehicle for at least the sound of speech, that he constructed his first telephone with a receiver (called in telephony "the transmitter ") shaped like the human ear. The ear receives any sounds fairly well, although how much better it would receive them if it presented a larger concave surface, capable of moving, is proved by the common practice of one hard of hearing, in adjusting the curved hand back of the ear with reference both to the intensity and direction of the sound sought to be heard.

The human ear in the present human life is not, be it understood, ill-adapted to the requirement of it. It is the requirement of it which has largely contributed to stamp it as what it is. We are but comparing it with ears of finer organization for hearing. Its existing convolutions are serviceable in directing sounds through the passage upon the drum of the ear, as has been tested by filling up the convolutions with some plastic material, like wax, whereupon the diminution in hearing became appreciable. But surely, as we have proved by citing a single experiment, which any one can try for himself, we should hear better if the ear were larger and differently shaped and capable of movement. This fact, however, does not involve the conclusion that we should be equal even then in acuteness of hearing to some of the lower animals, the interior apparatus of whose ears is evidently more highly organized than ours. As mankind have advanced in intellectual power, and have developed the inventive faculty, they have become less and less dependent upon the strength and the acuteness of their merely physical attributes. They must have been untold centuries without an acute sense of hearing, even as it is found where most highly developed in human beings, among savages. Yet it is only very recently that, in the German army, dogs have been trained in connection with outpost duty, a service in which their special keenness of hearing admirably supplements the intelligence

of videttes. It is truly remarkable that this use of the dog had never previously been made a part of regular military administration.

The outer ear collects waves of sound and transmits them through a short channel terminated by a tense membrane having the same function as that of the parchment head of a drum. This membrane is, for that reason, called the drum-membrane of the ear. The drum of the ear is constituted by that membrane and the chamber which it closes. Delicately attached to the back of this membrane is the end of a small bone, called the hammer. The hammer, at its other end, is jointed with another bone, called the anvil. The anvil, in turn, is jointed with a third small bone, called the stirrup. These three articulated bones together form what is known as a compound lever.

When a sound from the outer world strikes upon the drummembrane of the ear, it makes that membrane vibrate with the intensity and quality of the impulse which characterize the sound. This vibration is taken up by the end of the lever forming the hammer, conveyed thence to the anvil, and thence to the stirrup.

At the stirrup a new series of physical characters present themselves, completed by the phenomenon of hearing. The bottom of the stirrup is in contact with an oval opening into the solid temporal bone, which opening, likened to a window, is covered by a membrane. Beyond this oval, membrane-covered window, and carved out, as it were, in the dense bone, is what is called the labyrinth, a chamber consisting of beautifully curved passages, in which is a membranous sac containing and surrounded by fluid. The finer details of the structure of the labyrinth are too numerous and complicated to be here described, relating, as they do, to the minutest anatomical research assisted by the microscope. Suffice it to say that, immeshed in this membranous sac, filling the bony passages of the labyrinth, spread