Paper, 'Insect sight and the defining power of composite eyes' by A [Arnulph] Mallock

Description

Mallock writes: 'The optical arrangement of the simple eyes of Vertebrates is well understood, but as regards the action of the composite eyes of Insects and Crustacea less certainty has hitherto prevailed. In the former class of eye a single lens, or its equivalent, forms an image on a concave retina, built up, as a sort of tesselated pavement, of the sensitive terminations of the fibres of the optic nerve, and, if the lens is perfect and the pupil large enough, the definition is limited by the distance apart of the nerve-terminations, for, in order that two objects may appear as two to the eye, they must subtend at least such an angle that their images as formed by the lens shall not fall on the same nerve-termination.'

Annotations in pencil and ink.

Subject: Entomology

Received 28 November 1893 / 23 January 1894. Read 1 February 1894. Communicated by Lord Rayleigh [John William Strutt].

A version of this paper was published in volume 55 of the Proceedings of the Royal Society as 'Insect sight and the defining power of composite eyes'.

Reference number

PP/23/7

Earliest possible date

1893

Physical description

Ink and graphite pencil on paper

Page extent

9 pages

Format

Typescript