as a probable cause for his headaches.  This boy is studying music; one year ago he practiced two hours daily on the piano and studied from three to five hours besides.  This year his work has been increased; he is now troubled with severe headaches, and after continued near work for some time letters become blurred and run together.  This boy is far sighted and astigmatic; glasses will correct his defect, and it will be interesting to note whether his eyes will eventually grow into near sighted ones.  I have several cases where the defective vision has been due entirely to other causes, such as inflammation of the cornea, weakening this part of the eye, and the effect in trying to see producing an elongation of the anterior portion of the eyeball, and this in turn producing myopia.  The eye of the Indian does not differ materially from that of any deeply pigmented race.  The eyeball is smaller than in the Caucasian, but when we examine the interior we find the same distribution of the blood vessels and same shape of the optic nerves.  The pigment deposit in the choroid is excessive and gives, as a background to the retina, a beautiful silvery sheen when examined with the ophthalmoscope.  One thing which I noticed particularly was the absence of this excessive deposit of pigment and absence of this watered silk appearance in the half breeds, they taking after the white race.

Many of the intraocular diseases common among the white children were also absent, especially those diseases which are the result of near work.

It is a well known fact among breeders of animals that where animals are too highly or finely bred, the eye is the organ first to show a retrogression from the normal.  In an examination by myself some years ago among deaf mutes, I found the offspring of consanguineous marriages much affected, and while not only were many afflicted with inflammatory conditions of the choroid and retina, their average vision was much below the normal.

My quoting Messrs. Lang and Barrett’s figures was to bring more prominently to the notice of my hearers the fact that the eyes of primitive man resembled the eyes of the lower mammalia and that the natural eye as an organ of vision was hypermetropic, or far sighted, and that civilization was the cause of the myopic or near sighted eye.  Nature always compensates in some way.  I grant that the present demands of civilization could not be filled by the far sighted eye, but the evil which is the outgrowth of present demands does not stop when we have reached the normal eye, but the cause once excited, the coats of this eye continue to give way, and myopia or a near sighted condition is the result.

Among three hundred Indians examined, I found when I got to the Creeks, a tribe which has been semi-civilized for many years, myopia to be the prevailing visual defect.

Without going into statistics, I am convinced from my experience that the State must look into this subject and give our public school system of education more attention, or we, as a people, will be known as a “spectacled race.”