94 COLLOQUIA ENTOMOLOGICA. 



Ent. Why, yes, or rather no — but which do you think? I 

 have Trichius nobihs though, really. Aspice ! ecce ! I took it 

 on the elder-flowers, just out here. 



Erro. Soitis! What, what, what! — Cistelaceramboides too! 



Ent. I am inclined to believe that insects are perfectly 

 insensible ; that is, when any one maintains a contrary opinion — 

 keep your wings still ; — but if you think they have no feeling, 

 like a hard-hearted savage as you are, come, — I'll kill you, a 

 little, old fellow, if you keep on kicking that Geometra — if you 

 think they have — [a pause) — they are, as I was saying, really 

 indigenous ; — I'll furnish you with facts, and prove by argu- 

 ments hitherto unadvanced— I'll be whipped if he has'nt kick'd 

 its head off! 



Erro. That's very clear ; you should have been a pleader. 



Ent. What ? 



Erro. If I were to set my wits to work, I think I could 

 prove that insects have feeling. 



Ent. I don't — try — {shutting his box and thrusting his 

 hands into his hreeches-pockets). 



Erro. First, by analogy, all our ideas tend to confirm the 

 probability of the existence of sensation in every creature ; 

 because, in ourselves, and in all those of whose peculiarities 

 we can readily satisfy ourselves, we detect its presence without 

 the slightest difficulty; and, it is only when the objects become 

 minute, of a different structure, and cease, in consequence, to 

 be within the precise range of the experiments by which we 

 had tested, as it were, the sensation of higher animals, that we 

 can entertain a doubt on the subject. Apparently, then, from 

 analogical reasoning, truth is on my side : I claim the ad- 

 vantage. I say insects feel, because I feel. If you doubt, 

 disprove : no insect, I suppose, ever told you that it could not 

 feel when you were piercing it ? 



Ent. No. 



Erro. Then the positive disproof is wanting. Now we '11 

 suppose, still pursuing analogy, a similar operation performed 

 on the human body : a man shall be laying quietly asleep ; 

 then comes a monster, some anthropologist with an anthropo- 

 logical pin, fifty feet long and two feet round — the parallel's a 

 just one — ^and, with immense energy, forces the horrid weapon 

 into him just on the right side of the vertebral column: ribs, 

 lungs, liver, &c. give way, and are forced out of their places, 



