ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 153 
has. Insects live and move after they have been 
deprived of their limbs, after the head, thorax, and 
abdomen have been separated from each other. They 
feel no shock after some of the most barbarous muti- 
lations, but eat and walk about as usual. And the 
directing power which the brain cannot then supply 
to the headless trunk is furnished by the secondary 
nervous centres to the adjacent parts. The penalties 
which we pay for the enjoyable possession of a finely 
wrought nervous system, which thrills through the 
whole frame, are unknown to insects. 
There are some popular errors in physiology which 
we would gladly allow to remain uncontradicted, 
and none more willingly than that which ascribes to 
insects a capability of feeling pain equal to our own. 
But it needs very little observation to show that the 
popular acceptation of Shakspere’s lines—I do not 
by any means commit myself to say Shakspere’s 
own meaning—is quite erroneous :— 
The sense of death is most in apprehension ; 
And the poor beetle, that we tread upon, 
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 
As when a giant dies.* 
The chief use of pain, regarded from a physical 
point of view, is as a protection against injuries.t 
The capacity for pain is lavished on parts exposed 
to injury, it is withheld from parts which are other- 
wise protected from the dangers whose near approach 
* ‘Measure for Measure,’ Act III, Scene 1. Knight’s ‘Shakspere,’ 
Vol. II, p, 424, note 6, ad locum, gives the entomologist’s view of this 
question, maintaining the correctness of Shakspere’s own meaning 
against the commonly received interpretation of these lines. 
+ See on this subject ‘ Bell on the Hand,’ 5th ed. p. 196. 
