Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 16, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1895 — Both Eyes on tho Same Side. [ARTICLE]

Both Eyes on tho Same Side.

Some of the flat fish, including the sole, plaice, flounder, etc., arc tie only vertebrate animals with both their eyes on the same side of the head. When very young their eyes stand opposite to each other, and the whole body is then symmetrical, i'he fish swimming vertically in the water; but they cannot long retain this position owing to tho extreme depth of their bodies, the small size of their lateral fins, and to their being destitute of a swim bladder. As they grow older they come to rest in moaj; cases on the left side and soon the eye proper to the lower side begins to slide slowly round the head until both eyes are on tho upper side, where they remain, a process of bone growing across so as to make a bony socket for the left eye which has moved. At one time it was thought that the lower eye passed through the head and came out at the upper side, but it is now known that it passes round, and the movement seems to bo caused by the constant effort the fish makes to look up with the lower eye when on its side on the ground.