Annulate Animals to their Economy. 123 



matter, and of pain from the quality or motion of matter. 

 One impression is not the excess of the other ; the scald of 

 hot water, or the entrance of a bullet, conveys no impression 

 of form. We find that, the more concentrated the brain, as 

 in vertebrates, the more perfect are the organs of the senses. 

 Let us select, for example, a mouse: mark the bright eyes, the 

 attentive ears, the inquisitive nose, all taking instant cogni- 

 zance of danger, or enquiring for means of support. Ex- 

 quisitely slender, infinitely ramified, and tremblingly alive to 

 pain, are the nerves which serve for the sense of touch. Of 

 vertebrated animals, moreover, it is a distinguishing character 

 that the separation of the brain from its branches, the nerves, 

 causes death. 



In annulates, the nerves are nowhere concentrated into a 

 mass analogous to the brain of man, but are gathered up into 

 knotted strings, two principal series of which pass longitu- 

 dinally throughout the body, extending their branches into 

 all the limbs. The head, in such a formation, is therefore no 

 longer the seat of life, or essential to life, but every segment 

 and every limb is possessed of, and retains, vitality in equal 

 proportion. This diffused brain, like the concentrated human 

 brain, appears to be the organ governing sensation, and, like 

 that, also, seems, in its principal masses, without sensation in 

 its own self; and its radiations do not, except as organs of 

 the senses, generally, as in vertebrates, find their way to the 

 surface. From these circumstances it may be conjectured, 

 that, had we the means of ascertaining, we should find that 

 annulates are altogether without that acute sense of pain 

 which we possess. The organs of the senses, also, are less 

 perfectly developed. If we select the lobster as an example 

 of a large and tolerably perfect annulate, and examine its 

 dull eyes, its simple vestibules of ears, we shall instantly be 

 struck with its inferiority in these respects. Another Jesuit 

 of this difference in organisation is, that creatures having the 

 concentrated brain enjoy, in a greater or less degree, that 

 wonderful reflecting meditating power possessed in so glorious 

 a degree by man ; whilst the whole of the annulates are di- 

 rected in all their actions by a blind unreasoning instinct. 

 The annulates, then, may be said to be unprotected by reflec- 

 tion, and for the most part unguarded by the senses. The 

 lobster is driven by the waves and dashed among the roughest 

 rocks ; the heedless beetle flies in our very faces ; myriads of 

 insects are forcibly impelled by the winds against the hardest 

 substances ; myriads are beaten to the earth by rain ; myriads 

 are cast, unresisting, into rivers and lakes. Yet they escape 



