4 21 



you make the possession of one improbable, you throw 

 suspicion on the whole. If an insect can feel without a 

 brain that is, if it can have the general sensibility which 

 is administered by the same organ which imparts the 

 sense of touch, without a brain, he may also see without 

 a brain; but if he cannot feel, because he wants both the 

 external apparatus, and that intelligence which supposes 

 and employs the internal organ, then it will not be possi- 

 ble, from the same defects, for him to see, or hear, or 

 taste, or smell. On this subject it would be easy to en- 

 large, but I must now hasten to whatever specific objec- 

 tions appear to present themselves. 



1st. SIGHT of insects ? Of all the supposed senses in 

 insects, sight is the only one, the existence of which is 

 supported, by our being able to detect its organ that of 

 any of the others being only matter of deduction. The 

 possession, you will say, of the organ must surely prove 

 the possession of the same identical sense which it admi- 

 nisters in man ; and there is doubtless a much stronger 

 case made out for the full admission of this sense, which 

 appears from analogy so necessary, and of which, in most 

 insects, the organ is manifest, than for those other senses 

 which, however advantageous they might seem, would 

 probably be less so than vision, and which present no 

 organ to our observation, smell for instance, or hearing. 

 The eye then, in most insects is a thing to be seen; but 

 the question remains, does it confer vision in the accurate 

 and full meaning of the word? -for it may let in light 

 and not do this, and that light may even be the appointed 

 stimulus of an insect's eye, as of ours, and yet sight, 

 as we exercise and enjoy it, (and \\Q can comprehend 

 and speak of it in no other sense,; not be the result nay, 

 the well known experiment of Reamur, which occurs to 

 me here, and of the accuracy of which I have con- 

 vinced myself, is inconclusive. He smeared the eyes of 

 flies and bees with an opaque paste. The insect set at 



