4584 Insects. 



brain — this mass of matter enclosing and supported upon a framework 

 of bones, while insects, Crustaceans and Arachnida may be defined as 

 a collection of nerves not centreing in one point, but with different 

 centres, which, conjointly with other organs and a small amount of 

 organized matter and juices analogous to the flesh and blood of warm- 

 blooded animals, are enclosed in a case more or less solid, in some a 

 mere cuticle, but in others horny, as in beetles, or as crabs and Mol- 

 lusca, whose shells are as hard or harder than any bone : in other 

 words, the one have the bones inside and the other the bones outside. 

 Now, man's chief seat of feeling is in the softer parts, and those prin- 

 cipally outside, that is, on the external surface of the body ; he has 

 little or no feeling in the substance of the brain or medullary matter, 

 as the marrow, which flows from the brain, nor has he in the substance 

 of his bones or hard outer cuticle, or in the mass of his flesh or in his 

 blood. Why, then, should it be supposed that those animals which 

 consist chiefly of these parts, namely, nervous matter, organized 

 matter analogous to flesh, juices to blood, and hard cuticle to bone, 

 and have none of that peculiar organization which we see in ourselves 

 necessarily concomitant with acute feeling — why should it be supposed 

 that they feel more pain than is experienced in analogous parts of 

 warm-blooded animals ? 



Again, it is certain that the lower the temperature of our bodies the 

 less sensibility is there in them ; and, it being certain that the tem- 

 perature of the animals under consideration is by nature greatly below 

 that of ourselves, it appears to me fair to conclude from it that their 

 comparative sensibility is, in consequence, much less than ours : also, 

 from the fact, that what used to be the most painful operations in 

 surgery can now, by Mesmerism or magnetism and other means, be 

 rendered entirely painless, we see not only that life, simply, and sen- 

 sation are not necessarily connected, but that neither are a nervously 

 organized life and sensation ; and proves, moreover, that, under cer- 

 tain conditions of existence, animals can be actually without corporeal 

 feeling. Whence 1 do not think it will be considered presumptuous 

 to throw out, as a speculation, the idea that insects may be devoid of 

 acute corporeal feeling, from the operation of magnetism, or some 

 other such agent, acting on them under purely natural laws. 



It is, a 'priori, an argument in favour of a very different degree of 

 corporeal feeling among the different orders of animals, that others 

 of the external senses are very variously experienced ; smell and taste, 

 for instance, and even the sense of hearing. Who doubts that the 

 sensations of an animal who greedily devours putrid meat or drinks 



