94 BIPEDS AND UUADEUPEDS. 



what might be supposed. I judge on this principle : 

 if we were to thrust a pike through the body and 

 out at the head of man, horse, dog, or mouse, 

 instant death would occur ; it is not so with the 

 worm, for pass the hook through him and gently 

 draw it out over the shank, he would live, and I 

 suspect his dying on the hook arises more from 

 being kept under water than from the injury of the 

 steel. It is a pretty, a poetic, and humane idea, that 

 the smallest atom " feels a pang as great as when a 

 giant dies." I am not prepared to say but that if a 

 mountain crushed a man to instant death, and the 

 foot of man did the same by a mouse or humming- 

 bird, but that the pang felt by either might be 

 similar ; why death, or rather the being put to 

 death, is usually more serious to the large than the 

 small animal, I conceive to be chiefly arising from 

 our not apportioning the strength of the death- 

 dealing blow to the strength of the vital faculty in 

 the large one ; we use a bullet to destroy an elephant 

 so we do to kill a dog, whereas, to produce equal 

 stunning effect and equally sudden cessation of 



