OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 55 



substantiates the charge of cruelty against us I alto- 

 gether deny. Cruelty is an unnecessary infliction of 

 suffering, when a person is fond of torturing or de- 

 stroying God's creatures from mere wantonness, with 

 no useful end in view ; or when, if tlieir death be use- 

 ful and lawful, he has recourse to circuitous modes of 

 killing them, where direct ones would answer equally 

 well. This is cruelty, and this with you I abominate ; 

 but not the infliction of death when a just occasion calls 

 for it. 



They who see no cruelty in tlie sports of the field, 

 as they are called, can never, of course, consistently 

 allege such a charge against the entomologist ; the 

 tortures of wounded birds, offish that swallow the 

 hook and break the line, or of the hunted hare, being, 

 beyond comparison, greater than those of insects de- 

 stroyed in the usual mode. With respect to utility, 

 the sportsman, who, though he adds indeed to the ge- 

 neral stock of food, makes amusement his primary ob- 

 ject, must surely yield the palm to the entomologist, 

 who adds to the general stock of mental food, often 

 supplies hints for useful improvements in the arts and 

 sciences, and the objects of whose pursuit, unlike those 

 of the former, are preserved and maybe applied to use 

 for many years. 



But in the view even of those few who think inhu- 

 manity chargeable upon the sportsman, it will be easy 

 to place considerations which may rescue the entomo- 

 logist from such reproof. It is well known that, in 

 proportion as we descend in the scale of being, the 

 sensibility of the objects that constitute it diminishes. 

 The tortoise walks about after losing its head; and the 



