ENTOMOLOGY. 167 



cessary that many individuals of the same family should 

 be destroyed in order to become acquainted with their 

 histories, then might this be offered as an objection. But 

 although all the senses are possessed, they do not exist 

 with the same power as in other classes. It is not an un- 

 common circumstance for an insect to leave a leg in the 

 hands of the entomologist, and not only fly off apparently 

 as joyous as ever, but in a moment to alight and partake 

 of its accustomed food. Kirby remarks, ' I have seen 

 the common cockchaffer walk about with apparent in- 

 difference after some bird had nearly emptied its body of 

 its viscera. An humble-bee will eat honey with greediness, 

 thougli deprived of its abdomen. And I myself lately 

 saw an ant, which had been brought out of the nest 

 by its comrades, walk when deprived of its ,head. The 

 head of a wasp will attempt to bite after it is separated 

 from the rest of the body ; and the abdomen under simi- 

 lar circumstances, if the finger be moved to it, will 

 attempt to sting.' M. Riboud speaks of a beetle which 

 survived fourteen days with a pin passed through it, 

 as thick as its thigh. Dalyell relates that a butterfly 

 lived a month after being stuck through with a pin, and 

 after he thought it had been destroyed by sulphur. And 

 our own Say tells us, that he observed a butterfly feeding 

 with eagerness after it had escaped from him, impaled with 

 a pin. Leuwerihoek had a mite which lived eleven weeks, 

 stuck on the point of a needle, under his microscope. 

 Vaillant, the African traveller, endeavoring to preserve a 

 locust, took out the intestines, and filled the abdomen 

 with cotton, and then fixed it down by a pin through the 

 thorax : yet after five months the animal still moved its 

 feet and antennae. But if these remarks do not prove this 

 objection to be ill-founded, I will change the argument. 

 If suffering should be borne, if a confined insect should 

 be made to endure agonizing struggles, if by its capti- 

 vity any useful purpose can be gained, the entomologist 

 cannot be called cruel. Cruelty implies the ' unnecessary 

 infliction of suffering,' to gratify depraved feelings; the 

 disposition to inflict pain, when no possible benefit can be 

 derived from such an act. But it is not shown by pur- 

 suing any department of natural history, when the feel- 



