CHAP. II. SENSE OP PAIN IN INSECTS. 6l 



its long slender body to the mouth of one he had 

 captured, the insect actually began to prey upon itself ! 

 Another (the late Mr. Haworth) mentions a curious 

 circumstance of the sexes of a species of moth being 

 both stuck with pins in his store-box, when the 

 male made such vigorous efforts to gain possession of 

 his companion, that it actually got loose from its im- 

 palement. Every entomologist has experienced the 

 extreme difficulty with which most of the large full- 

 bodied moths are killed ; and that they will still con- 

 tinue to exhibit signs of life, after it might be almost 

 literally said that every bone of the body has been 

 broken and crushed. These facts, with numerous others 

 which will occur to every naturalist, place the fact 

 beyond doubt, that insects are not only endowed with 

 a far greater portion of vitality than are vertebrated 

 animals, but that they are almost devoid of the sense of 

 pain, or, at least, it would be felt in a very slight 

 degree, under inflictions which, to the warm-blooded 

 tribes, would prove the most excruciating tortures. In 

 all this we see not only a wise but a most merciful 

 provision of their Creator. Insects, above all other 

 animals, are exposed to the greatest casualties, not merely 

 from ordinary vicissitudes, but to others of a peculiar 

 nature. The felling of a tree is sufficient to destroy 

 whole communities, to whom it is a home, giving 

 shelter and food to thousands ; while the burning of a 

 forest or the herbage of a plain is the destruction of 

 millions on millions. It deserves to be remembered, also, 

 that one such accident is far more depopulating to the 

 insect world, than all the captures that an entomologist 

 would make for the purposes of science during a life- 

 time. It is further ordained that insects should be the 

 food of nearly three fourths of the whole feathered 

 creation ; and that numerous tribes of their own class 

 derive their entire sustenance from preying upon those 

 that are weaker or differently organised. Hence it is 

 that their Creator has mercifully withheld from them 

 that sense of pain and suffering which is so prevalent 



