THE APPARENT CRUELTY OF NATURE. 2a¥ 
lower forms of animal life the sensation of pain, as we 
commonly understand the word, is absolutely unknown. 
When a crab will calmly continue its meal upon a smaller 
crab, while being itself leisurely devoured by a larger and 
stronger ; when a lobster will voluntarily and spontaneously 
divest itself of its great claws if a heavy gun be fired over 
the water in which it is lying; when a dragon-fly will 
devour fly after fly, immediately after its abdomen has been 
torn from the rest of its body, and a wasp sip syrup with 
evident zest while labouring—I will not say suffering—under 
a similar mutilation: it is quite clear that pain, at any rate 
among the crustaceans and the insects, must practically be 
almost or altogether unknown. I have watched, too, the 
oviposition of an ichneumon-fly in the body of a caterpillar ; 
and nothing in the conduct of the victim showed that it was 
in any degree conscious of pain, although the sharp lancet of 
the fly was introduced into its body some fifty or sixty times. 
All entomologists, too, are familiar with the fact that a 
“stung” caterpillar continues to feed most heartily, and 
apparently to enjoy existence, although several hundred 
grubs are ceaselessly preying upon the non-vital parts of its 
body, 
I iseeutonticn, also, that, when collecting Lepidoptera as a 
boy, some of my best specimens were captured upon a 
fence on which, owing to its peculiar structure, the pill-box 
could not be used in the orthodox manner. The only way, 
indeed, in which many a moth could be extracted uninjured 
from the recesses of this fence, was by passing a pin through 
its thorax as it sat at rest, and so transferring it to the killing- 
bottle. This I was often obliged to do; and I did it at first 
with much reluctance. But I frequently observed—so 
frequently, indeed, that at last the fact altogether ceased to 
cause surprise—that the moth seldom moved when the pin 
was passed through its thorax, although that operation, 
proportionately speaking, was about equivalent to the 
thrusting of a lamp-post through the body of a human 
being. When the insect was litted from the fence it 
struggled violently; probably because it found itself 
supported in mid-air without a foothold. If, however, I 
replaced it upon the fence, it usually settled quickly down 
into its former state of quiescence. And the inference was 
almost irresistible, that, although the pin had passed through 
a portion of its body containing two at least of the principal 
ganglia, and more closely and thoroughly traversed by branch 
