THE SENSES OF INSECTS 115 



a nerve. As might be expected, they are most numerous 

 upon the antennae and palpi, but they are also found over 

 the whole surface of the body. Yet while insects are 

 keenly alive to the contact of foreign bodies, they seem 

 for some inscrutable reason to be completely immune 

 from the sensation of pain. It is possible to pass a pin 

 through the body of a sleeping moth without awakening 

 it ; while a wasp which had lost the whole of its abdomen 

 was observed to partake of syrup with evident gusto — the 

 syrup forming a steadily growing drop at the point where 

 the food- canal had been severed. Still more remarkable 

 is the case of a dragon-fly s mentioned by the Rev. Theo- 

 dore Wood, which by an unlucky chance had been 

 deprived of its abdomen. This insect not only devoured, 

 in quick succession, some thirty blue-bottle flies, but 

 finally disposed in the same way of its own severed body. 

 Hundreds of similar instances might be cited to prove the 

 complete sangfroid evinced by mutilated insects. Possibly 

 the loss of certain organs or appendages may give rise to a 

 sensation of discomfort or inconvenience ; but there is no 

 clear evidence to support even this contention. Some 

 wasps, whose wings had been struck off by a butcher's 

 knife, seemed quite unaware of their loss. They whittled 

 away at the fragments of meat with which they wished 

 to fly off, evidently bent upon reducing the weight, but 

 apparently quite unaware that their inability to rise in 

 the air was the real cause of their trouble. 



While the evidence of common observation, backed 

 by the testimony of science, suggests that many insects 

 possess at least " five senses," we have no means of 

 judging to what extent these may correspond with our 

 own. That they differ remarkably in range can scarcely 

 be doubted ; while there is reason for believing that 

 insects are endowed with special senses at the nature of 



