Insects. 4583 



easily reproducer!, the hair, nails and teeth (to a certain age), in which 

 there is no feeling whatever, neither is there in the bones, and this 

 shows that pain and the living material of nervous organizations are 

 not necessarily connected ; nor does the fact of pain in these parts, 

 in a disordered or diseased constitution, affect this conclusion. Now, 

 some insects, as the daddy-longlegs (Tipula pectiniformis), probably 

 most species of spiders and some moths — I have witnessed this power 

 in the angleshades (Phlogophora meticulosa) — part with their legs 

 voluntarily on provocation or excitement, accompanied with but very 

 little force : crabs, lobsters, and probably other species of that order, 

 have the same power, and so independent appear to be these parts 

 that their possessors, or rather losers, not only seem not the least con- 

 cerned at the loss, but, as is the case with our hair and nails, these por- 

 tions of their bodies are — in the case of crabs and lobsters, to my own 

 knowledge — reproduced in due time : the slow-worm (Anguis fragilis) 

 also, and lizard (Lacerta agilis), by muscular exertion, can throw off 

 portions of their tails, w T hich I have every reason to believe are repro- 

 duced.* There is, then, an analogy, in this respect, between such parts 

 of the lower animals and the independent parts of man, and it seems 

 reasonable thence to infer that the respective sensations in these corre- 

 sponding parts are similar. There appears to be a sort of graduated 

 scale in the comparative value of these independent parts in the dif- 

 ferent orders of animals, though, in all, they are the parts least essential 

 to actual existence : thus, in the highest orders, the hair and nails ; 

 in the next, or cold-blooded, as reptiles, portions of the tail ; in Crus- 

 tacea, Arachnida and insects, more important parts, as legs and wings ; 

 lower again, as in worms, any portion may be cut off, and the head 

 will be in full existence ; and, lowest in animal order (the Polypi), are 

 still less sensible to maltreatment; whence we pass, by insensible 

 degrees, to the vegetable kingdom, in which scarce any amount of de- 

 privation of parts, at the right seasons, appears to affect the vital 

 energy. But as the above analogy, if granted, would only point to a 

 probable immunity from pain in the limbs, &c, and their peculiar sets 

 of nerves, and not in the body, where the principal nerves and matter 

 are collected, I will notice another thing, which would apply equally 

 to the whole of the insect; man and other warm-blooded animals may 

 be viewed, in a general way, as composed of a mass of organized 

 matter interspersed with nerves, all of which centre in one place — the 



* In Mr. Gosse's work on Jamaica he has found this is the case with a specits of 

 lizard he met with there. 



