108 BIRD ON THE 



peculiarity of constitution we suppose to belong to the liigher 

 orders of animals as well as to ourselves, and if a leg be cut 

 off from one of such animals, we never think of concerning 

 ourselves about the leg or pitying it, we only pity the animal 

 that has lost it. The very reverse of this is the case with 

 a plant : there we take slips or cuttings, and form so many new 

 plants, and whatever we predicate of one of these, we may of 

 another, and we feel no compunction in performing the ope- 

 ration, because we conceive that no analogy exists between us 

 and them. It is not demonstrable that they do not feel like 

 ourselves, but we are content when we see this extraordinary 

 divisibility to suppose that they do not, till it is demonstrated 

 that they do. Now in this respect, worms approach very near 

 to plants. It is said, that, if cut properly, a worm may be 

 multiplied into many new worms. When we look at a worm, 

 we are apt to look at it as one creature, but we are in reality 

 looking at an aggregate of several creatures, which for the 

 present are united, but may, if we please, be disjoined. 

 What a mighty distinction does this create between us and 

 them ! How can we reason from ourselves to them ? And i,f 

 not from ourselves, how reason at all ? Now this want of 

 unity of being which thus makes worms approximate more to 

 vegetables than to ourselves, is found in an inferior degree 

 in insects. As this is the principal point which I wish to 

 establish, I may be permitted to detail the circumstances 

 which first led me to observe it. 



When I was young in Entomology I wished anxiously to 

 find the quickest mode of killing an insect. Having captured 

 a pretty beetle, Malachius JEneus, it struck me, that, cutting 

 it in two at the junction of the thorax and abdomen, the part 

 which gives rise to the name Insect, Insectum, Evrojuov, I 

 should kill it in a moment. I took a pair of scissars, and 

 divided it ; the parts fell on a piece of white paper which lay 

 before me. Far from being dead in an instant, 1 was grieved 

 and surprised to see the head, with the two fore-legs attached 

 to it, begin to run about the paper. It occasionally stumbled, 

 but rose again, and exhibited, if I may so speak, perfect self- 

 possession. It made for the edge of the paper, but arriving 

 there, and looking over, it seemed to think it too precipitous, 

 and so coasted along in quest of an easier descent, which ne- 

 vertheless it did not seem able to find. This coasting and 



