should have written to you long ago, as I often intended to tell you in how
high a degree your essay published in Beale's Archives interested me.
(470/1. Beale's "Archives of Medicine," Volume V., 1870.) I have heard
others express their admiration at the complete manner in which you have
treated the subject. Your confirmation of Sir C. Bell's rather loose
statement has been of paramount importance for my work. (470/2. On the
contraction of the muscles surrounding the eye. See "Expression of the
Emotions," page 158. See Letters 464, 465.) You told me that I might make
further enquiries from you.

When a person is lost in meditation his eyes often appear as if fixed on a
distant object (470/3. The appearance is due to divergence of the lines of
vision produced by muscular relaxation. See "Expression of the Emotions,"
Edition II., page 239.), and the lower eyelids may be seen to contract and
become wrinkled. I suppose the idea is quite fanciful, but as you say that
the eyeball advances in adaptation for vision for close objects, would the
eyeball have to be pushed backwards in adaptation for distant objects?
(470/4. Darwin seems to have misunderstood a remark of Donders.) If so,
can the wrinkling of the lower eyelids, which has often perplexed me, act
in pushing back the eyeball?

But, as I have said, I daresay this is quite fanciful. Gratiolet says that
the pupil contracts in rage, and dilates enormously in terror. (470/5.
See "Expression of the Emotions," Edition II., page 321.) I have not found
this great anatomist quite trustworthy on such points, and am making
enquiries on this subject. But I am inclined to believe him, as the old
Scotch anatomist Munro says, that the iris of parrots contracts and dilates
under passions, independently of the amount of light. Can you give any
explanation of this statement? When the heart beats hard and quick, and
the head becomes somewhat congested with blood in any illness, does the