SLUGS AND SNAILS. 49 



work seems a gratuitous blot upon the face 

 of beneficent nature. My only consolation 

 lies in the half-formed belief that feeling 

 among these lower creatures is indefinite, and 

 that pai-n appears to affect them far less 

 acutely than it affects warm-blooded animals. 

 Their nerves are so rudely distributed in 

 loose knots all over the body, instead of 

 being closely bound together into a single 

 central system as with ourselves, that they 

 can scarcely possess a consciousness of pain 

 at all analogous to our own. A wasp whose 

 head has been severed from its body and 

 stuck upon a pin, will still greedily suck up 

 honey with its throatless mouth ; while an 

 Italian mantis, similarly treated, will calmly 

 continue to hunt and dart at midges with its 

 decapitated trunk and limbs, quite forgetful 

 of the fact that it has got no mandibles left 

 to eat them with. These peculiarities lead 

 one to hope that insects may feel pain less 

 than we fear. Yet I dare scarcely utter the 

 hope, lest it should lead any thoughtless 



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