168 INSECT SENSIBILITY. 



small flies. Connected with this obstinate vitality of insects, 

 comes naturally the question of their sensitivity, which from 

 this very vitality we may certainly infer to be less acute than 

 with other animals. Happily for them, and certainly much 

 to our own comfort, when we think upon the subject, we have 

 far more reason to doubt than to believe the oft-repeated 

 dictum, that 



" The poor beetle, which we tread upon, 

 In corporal sufferance feels as great a pang 

 As when a giant dies." 



The above facts alone are nearly enough to prove the con- 

 trary ; for did a poor beetle trod upon, or impaled, endure, in 

 proportion to its size, the same amount of suffering as a giant, 

 it is more than likely that life would be driven from its seat 

 long before the expiration of weeks of torture. 



So with our other instances : a giant from whom one leg or 

 one arm, or both together, had just been forcibly subtracted, 

 would certainly feel no inclination, even if he had the power, 

 to perform steeple-chases over walls and hedges (not in a 

 moment's agony, but for successive days of apparent enjoy- 

 ment), as the father-longlegs is accustomed to go vaulting over 

 great stones and high grass, under similar circumstances of 

 deprivation. Neither, we presume, would a giant's decapitated 

 head, though furnished with the palate of a gourmand, feel 

 much in a humour, if it felt at all, to indulge in the pleasures 

 of a venison-pasty, as does, seemingly, the detached cranium 



