OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 65 



. . . The poor beetle that we tread upon 

 In corporeal sufferance finds a pang as great 

 As when a giant dies, 



must be regarded as nearer the truth.^ Not to mention the pecuhar or- 

 ganization of insects, which strongly favors the idea I am inculcating, but 

 which will be considered more properly in another place, their sang-froid 

 upon the loss of their limbs, even those that we account most necessary 

 to life, irrefragably proves that the pain they suffer cannot be very acute. 

 Had a giant lost an arm or a leg, or were a sword or spear run through 

 his body, he would feel no great inclination for running about, dancing, or 

 eating; yet a crane-fly {Tipuld) will leave half its legs in the hands of 

 an unlucky boy who has endeavored to catch it, and will fly here and 

 there with as much agility and unconcern as if nothing had happened to 

 it; and an insect impaled upon a pin will often devour its prey with as 

 much avidity as when at liberty. Were a giant eviscerated, his body 

 divided in the middle, or his head cut off, it would be all over with him ; 

 he would move no more ; he would be dead to the calls of hunirer, or the 

 emotions of fear, anger, or love. Not so our insects. I have seen the 

 common cock-chafer walk about with apparent indifference after some bird 

 had nearly emptied its body of its viscera : an humble-bee will eat honey 

 with greediness though deprived of its abdomen ; and I myself lately saw 

 an ant, which had been brought out of the nest by its comrades, walk 

 when deprived of ils head. The head of a wasp will attempt to bite 

 after it is separated from the rest of the body ; and the abdomen under 

 similar circumstances, if the finger be moved to it, will attempt to stin^. 

 And, what is more extraordinary, the headless trunk of a male Mantis has 

 been known to unite itself to the other sex^; and a dragon-fly to eat its 

 own tail, as we learn from J. F. Stephens, Esq., author of the valuable 

 "Illustrations of British Entomology," while entomologizing near Whit- 

 tleseamere, having directed the tail of one of these insects which he had 

 caught to its mouth, to make an experiment whether the known voracity 

 ^f the tribe would lead it to bite itself, saw to his astonishment that it 

 actually bit off and ate the four terminal segments of its body, and then 

 by accident escaping flew away as briskly as ever '."^ These facts, out of 

 hundreds that might be adduced, are surely sufficient to prove that insects 

 do not experience the same acute sensations of pain with the higher orders 

 of animals, which Providence has endowed with more ample means of 

 avoiding them. And since they were to be exposed so universally to 

 attack and injury, this is a most merciful provision in their favor ; for, were 

 it otherwise, considering the wounds, and dismemberments, and lingering 

 deaths that insects often suffer, what a vast increase would there be of the 

 general sum of pain and misery ! You will now, I think, allow that the 

 most humane person need not hesitate a moment whether he shall devote 

 himself to the study of Entomology on account of any cruelty attached 

 to the pursuit. 



* Shakspere's intention, however, in this passage, was evidently not, as is often supposed, 

 to excite compassion for the insect, but to prove that 



The sense of Death is most in apprehension, 

 the actual pang being trifling. — Measure for Measure, Act iii. Scene 1, 

 « Dr. Smith's Tour, i. 162. Journ. de Phr/s. xxv. 336. 

 ^ Stephens in Eni, Mag. i. 518. 



6* 



