SENSATIONS OF INSECTS. Ill 



flutter more and more until I destroyed it. I conclude, there- 

 fore, that the violent struggles, which excite so much pity in us 

 before we know their cause, are merely the effect of alarm, 

 and display that strong instinct so necessary to insects for their 

 preservation, by which they endeavour to avoid any thing 

 strange, and to escape from restraint. If this conclusion be 

 not thought inevitable, let me refer to Messrs. Kirby and 

 Spence's Introduction to Entomology, for the mention of a fact, 

 which though I cannot vouch for myself, I must believe on 

 such good authority. These gentlemen tell us, that the head 

 of a wasp has been known to eat honey after it had been 

 severed from the body ; and that the union of the sexes has 

 taken place between bodies that have been deprived of their 

 heads. If this be true, it settles the question at once. It 

 demonstrates, that, under the worst possible circumstances, 

 either no pain exists, or it is most easily superseded. On any 

 hypothesis, therefore, the charge of cruelty in the destruction 

 of insects seems to be refuted. Either there is no analogy 

 whatever between them and us on account of the distinction I 

 before mentioned with respect to their divisibility, or if we 

 gratuitously suppose such analogy to exist, and are guided in 

 our judgment solely by outward symptoms, we are compelled 

 to confess, that insects can have no feeling of pain at all 

 resembling our own. 



It has been well observed, that, from the benevolence of the 

 Deity, we might, a jJfiori, have drawn the same conclusion. 

 We find insects liable to such an infinite number of accidents, 

 and perishing by such slow degrees in what we should call 

 torture, that we are driven to conclude that it is a mistake to 

 call it torture. I have seen a beetle, a ScarahcBus I think, in 

 the possession of a person in London, which he found entirely 

 eaten up, all but the upper hard shell, by the mites which 

 invariably infest such beetles. It lived six days after he met 

 with it. I once found a moth, Callimorpha miniata, impaled 

 alive on a thorn, which had pierced its body : it was quiet, and 

 when I lifted it off" the tliorn it flew away.*" Every one who is 

 in the habit of observing what lies in his way, must occasionally 

 have met with beetles in the foot-path, half crushed, and glued 



<= How could it have got into such a situation if it had felt pain as the thorn 

 was entering its body ? Could we ever expect to find a wild beast in a similar 

 situation ? 



