Porting from 12682 in Trac.
Current docs state "Unlike the .eq(index) method, the :eq(index) selector does not accept a negative value for index. For example, while $('li').eq(-1) selects the last li element, $('li:eq(-1)') selects nothing." However according to @dmethvin's comment, this is fixed in 1.8 and :eq and .eq() work the same with negative indices, docs need to be updated to reflect this.