A THIRD EYE IN AUSTRALIAN LIZARDS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XII, Issue 1756, 3 August 1895, Page 2

A THIRD EYE IN AUSTRALIAN LIZARDS.

f During the spring of the year 1869, writes Mr James !Bray, ‘ the late Rev W. B. Clarke, the emminent Australian geologist, first called my attention to this very interesting subject—the third eye in reptiles—by asking me to collect for him some lizards. Since then, from time to time, I have given much study to the question, and meeting with a more than normal development in one of our most common lizards some two months ago, I made mention of it/ and showed the specimen to quite a number of persons. I was surprised at finding the subject almost unknown. It is, however, a fact that our Laeertidee have a third eye. Recently at the Daily Telegraph office I snowed a living lizard with the third ej' o situated in' the centre or top portion of its bead. From some correspondence passing between myself and the Australian Museum on this subject within the last few weeks, Mr Etheri.de, the curator, wrote me that the third eye, or ‘pineal eye,’ has been noticed by Mr Thomas Whitelegge, of the Museum, in no less than 45 species of Australian lizards, and that a .very interesting paper had been‘published on the matter by Dr. M’Kay in the ‘ Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales/ vol. HI. second series, p. 872.” . •