110 BIRD ON THE 



into parts having separate independent consciousness, esta- 

 blishes a 'Hne of demarcation between them and the higher 

 orders of animals, almost as broad as that which already con- 

 fessedly exists between them and vegetables. I hope to be 

 forgiven for having entered into details so simple ; yet the 

 results of which are so striking. I do not imagine that tlie 

 facts are new; it is only the importance which I attach to 

 them, and the inference I have drawn from them, that can 

 pretend to any thing like novelty. 



I must now hasten to the other point, which I trust I shall 

 be able shortly to establish ; namely, that even if there were 

 no such line of separation between insects and the higher 

 animals as to confound our reasonings with respect to them, 

 and if we still think ourselves at liberty to judge of their feel- 

 ings by outward symptoms, we have no cause, if we be not 

 led away by first appearances, to conclude that they suffer 

 pain. If in any case an insect feel pain, nothing, we should 

 imagine, could call forth the feeling more than the act of 

 passing a pin through its thorax, a part which we know to be 

 peculiarly sensitive. It is, in fact, this very act of violence, 

 equivalent to spearing a wild boar or a salmon, which is most 

 revolting to observers ; and if their compassion can be shewn to 

 be misplaced in this case, they will hardly, I believe, appeal to 

 any other. Now I have repeatedly pierced a moth*" through 

 the thorax, when it was in a quiescent state, taking care only 

 to do it with a steady hand, and no abrupt motion ; and the 

 moth has taken no notice of it whatever. I have even lifted it 

 up by the pin which transfixed it, and have carried it from 

 room to room in the same state of motionless quiescence, and 

 have shewn it in this state to those whose incredulity it was my 

 object to remove. If we be to judge by outward symptoms 

 in this case, where was the pain ? The fluttering is the symp- 

 tom, the only symptom, by which people in general are con- 

 vinced that an insect is suffering ; but here there was no 

 fluttering. And then to shew, that even when it flutters we 

 are not hastily to infer pain, I have suddenly and abruptly 

 touched a leg or some other part of its body, but not so as to 

 wound it, and alarmed the moth, after which it has began to 

 flutter, and finding the restraint of the pin, has never ceased to 



^ Not one of those moths which, like some, if not all, of the Lithosiae, coun- 

 terfeit sleep or death when suddenly alarmed. 



