28 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



line, or of the hunted hare, being, beyond comparison, greater than those 

 of insects destroyed in the usual mode. With respect to utility, the sports- 

 man who, though he adds indeed to the general stock of food, makes 

 amusement his primary object, must surely yield the palm to the entomo- 

 logist, who adds to the general stock of mental food, often supplies hints 

 for useful improvements in the arts and sciences, and the objects of whose 

 pursuit, unlike those of the former, are preserved, and may be applied to 

 use for many years. 



But in the view even of those few who think inhumanity chargeable 

 upon the sportsman, it will be easy to place considerations which may 

 rescue the entomologist from such reproof. It is well known that, in pro- 

 portion as we descend in the scale of being, the sensibility of the objects 

 that constitute it diminishes. The tortoise walks about after losing its 

 head ; and the polypus, so far from being injured by the application of the 

 knife, thereby acquires an extension of existence. Insensibility almost 

 equally great may be found in the insect world. This, indeed, might be 

 inferred a priori; since Providence seems to have been more prodigal of 

 insect life than of that of any other order of creatures, animalcula perhaps 

 alone excepted. No part of the creation is exposed to the attack of so 

 many enemies, or subject to so many disasters ; so that the few individuals 

 of each hind which enrich the valued museum of the entomologist, many 

 of which are dearer to him than gold or gems, are snatched from the 

 ravenous maw of some bird or fish or rapacious insect would have been 

 driven by the winds into the waters and drowned, or trodden underfoot by 

 man or beast ; for it is not easy, in some parts of the year, to set foot to 

 the ground without crushing these minute animals ; and thus also, instead 

 of being buried in oblivion, they have a kind of immortality conferred upon 

 them. Can it be believed that the beneficent Creator, whose tender 

 mercies are over all his works, would expose these helpless beings to such 

 innumerable enemies and injuries, were they endued with the same sense 

 of pain and irritability of nerve with the higher orders of animals ? 



But this inference is reduced to certainty, when we attend to the facts 

 which insects every day present to us, proving that the very converse of 

 our great poet's conclusion, as usually interpreted, 



. . . The poor beetle that we tread upon 

 In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 

 As when a giant dies, 



must be regarded as nearer the truth. 1 Not to mention the peculiar orga- 

 nisation of insects, which strongly favours the idea I am inculcating, but 

 which will be considered more properly in another place, their sang-froid 

 upon the loss of their limbs, even those that we account most necessary to 

 life, irrefragably proves that the pain they suffer cannot be very acute. 

 Had a giant lost an arm or a leg, or were a sword or spear run through his 

 body, he would feel no great inclination for running about, dancing or 

 eating ; yet a crane-fly (Tipula) will leave half its legs in the hands of an 



1 Shakspeare's intention, however, in this passage, was evidently not, as is often 

 supposed, to excite compassion for the insect, but to prove that 



The sense of Death is most in apprehension, 

 the actual pang being trifling. Measure for Measure, Act iii. Sc. 1. 



