Note 30 — COMMERCIAL POLICY—RUSSIA.
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Footnote 30
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This reasoning of Dr Brown's is founded upon an assumed analogy between the structure of the optic nerve, and the structure of the olfactory nerves and other sensitive nerves, and is completely disproved by the physiological observations of Treviranus, who has shown that no such analogy exists: that the ends of the nervous fibres in the retina being elevated into distinct separate papillæ, enable us to perceive the extension, and discriminate the position of visible bodies, while the nerves of the other senses being less delicately defined, are not fitted to furnish us with any such perception, or to aid us in making any such discrimination. See Müller's Physiology, translated by W. Baly, M.D., vol. ii. pp. 1073, 1074. Although the application of Treviranus's discovery to the refutation of Dr Brown's reasoning is our own, we may remark, in justice to an eminent philosopher, that it was Sir William Hamilton who first directed our attention to the fact as established by the great physiologist.