56 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



Polypus, SO far from being- injured by the application 

 of the knife, thereby acquires an extension of exist- 

 ence. Insensibility almost equally great may be found 

 in the insect world. This, indeed, might be inferred 

 a priori, since Providence seems to have been more 

 prodigal of insect life than of that of any other order of 

 creatures, animalcula perhaps alone excepted. No 

 part of the creation is exposed to the attack of so many 

 enemies, or subject to so many disasters ; so that the 

 few individuals of each kind which enrich the valued 

 museum of the entomologist, many of which are dearer 

 to him than gold or gems, are snatched from the ra- 

 venous maw of some bird or fish or rapacious insect ; 

 would have been driven by the winds into the waters 

 and drowned ; or trodden underfoot by man or beasts, 

 — for it is not easy, in some parts of the year, to set 

 foot to the ground Avithout crushing these minute ani- 

 mals : and thus also, instead of being buried in obli- 

 vion, they Itave a kind of immortality conferred upon 

 them. Can it be believed that the beneficent Creator, 

 whose tender mercies are over all his works, would ex- 

 pose these helpless beings to such innumerable enemies 

 and injuries, were they endued with the same sense of 

 pain and irritability of nerve with the higher orders of 

 animals ? 



But this inference is reduced to certainty, when we 

 attend to the facts nvhich insects every day present to 

 us, proving that the very converse of our great poet's 

 conclusion, 



" fhc poor becdc that we treml upon, 



In corporal sufferance finds a pang as grcJit 

 As when a giant dies," 



