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their provident care of their young, all suppose not con- 

 fused ideas, but deep laid thought and design so that it 

 follows, that insects must either have a mind to think, 

 as well as to feel with, or, as we have concluded, no mind 

 at all. 



But it may be said that wasps and bees often seem to 

 sting vindictively, and that this implies not only that they 

 have passions, but design and will. I answer, that wasps 

 and bees do indeed occasionally sting, but so do mus- 

 quitoes and gnats, and sand-flies, and ants, and fleas, and 

 many other insects. If the bee really intends to sting, it 

 must either follow, that all insects which sting, intend to 

 do so, or we must conclude that the bee and the wasp are 

 alone malignant, in their natures, and bear us more ill will 

 than others, while the ant, and the many troublesome flies 

 of declining summer, who dispute with us our peaches 

 and our plums, sting without malice and unintentionally. 

 Here, as in all the other difficulties which this subject pre- 

 sents, that some purpose is in tended by an insect's sting, we 

 profess not to doubt. But that stings were given to protect 

 the insect we rather disbelieve ; for 1st, all insects have not 

 stings, (it is generally the females alone) nor any other 

 compensating apparatus; 2dly, such insects as have 

 stings seldom use them, at least offensively; 3dly, such 

 conspicuous and formidable instruments should be judged 

 of by their habitual use, which we know not, rather than 

 by their occasional employment ;~4thly, instruments really 

 impotent [or defence, would not have been given, if defence 

 were the main object, and stings are in this predicament 

 of inutility ; 5thly, still less probably for the mere pur- 

 pose of infliciing pain, unless some moral lesson were 

 to be taught by the pain inflicted; Gthly, insects leave 

 their slings in the wound, and so die ; the completest of 

 proofs that stings were not given them as a means to 

 their own safelv : 7thly, weather, which makes us waspish 



