BY THE PRESIDENT. 43 



" brain." You kno-w that if either are affected feeling ceases, but 

 insects are, practically, devoid of brain. If, therefore, they possess 

 feelinp:. it must liave been given to thorn in a totally different mode, 

 and apparently 'svithout adequate motive. 



Are not insects, therefore, capable of feeling pleasure ? No 

 doubt, to a limited extent, they are. I can hardly conceive a 

 created being that is not. 



We have lately read and heard many wonderful things in con- 

 nexion with worms, some of which I am bound to say I can only 

 accept ^^ cum grano^' — with a good many grains of doubt in fact. 

 Worms, we are told, eat the stalks of, and line their holes with, 

 dead leaves. It may be so, but I have never found their holes 

 coated with anything but slime, which seems to me to be more 

 suitable to theii* comfort, and though I cannot contradict the fact 

 of their eating stalks and leaves, I have been unable to verify it by 

 observation. I have always considered that the drawing of these 

 substances to the mouths of their holes was a provision of nature 

 for the fertilization of the earth, and that their food was the earth 

 itself, pure and simple. The worm, in fact, eats its way into the 

 soil, as the law-student eats his to or towards the Woolsack. 

 Credit also is given to worms for levelling the land, yet the flattest 

 lands are those which are constantly flooded, and consequently 

 devoid of worms. As to their raising the level of the soil, I fail to 

 see how that can be. The result of their food, the " worm-casts," 

 represents only the earth they have eaten, from which the nutri- 

 ment has been extracted by digestion. The result cannot be 

 greater in bulk than that of the earth originally swallowed. The 

 species which live in the moist sea-sand make castings precisely 

 similar to those of the earth-worm — they are pure sand, and nothing 

 else — no extraneous matter is dragged by them into the holes. 

 There may be, and no doubt is, earth without worms, but assuredly 

 there are no earth-worms without earth. 



Did you ever see a mole eat a worm ? Having first squeezed out 

 the lately-digested earth, he just skins him alive, and then devours 

 the writhing carcase, bit by bit. You may say that this "writhing" 

 is an indication of pain. JSTo doubt, pain, in the higher orders of 

 animals, induces similar contortions, but we must not judge from 

 appearances. The sensitive plant shrinks from the slightest touch, 

 and curls up its leaves as though in acute pain ; but no one supposes 

 that it feels any. Cut an india-rubber ring or a piece of catgut 

 into small pieces, and put them on a hot plate. They will turn, 

 and twist, and wriggle, as though they were in mortal agony, but 

 they feel nothing. 



