Insects. 1435 



fending themselves against the too frequently unjust accusations of cruelty. There is 

 a certain class who would object this accusation to us, not, because we are occasionally 

 guilty of lengthening more than is needful our different processes of destruction, — but 

 simply because we are entomologists. With such people as these, however, we utterly 

 decline all argument. If they cannot comprehend that he who labours in so 

 high a cause as that of Natural History, and makes it the study of his life to investi- 

 gate the works of Creation, and, through his admiration thus obtained, to catch a 

 glimpse of even higher things than these,-— if they will not admit that he is free from 

 the law of cruelty, what, from such people can we possibly expect ? Why were all 

 things in Nature made so beautiful, if it was not intended for us to investigate and 

 profit by them ? And how can we " investigate," except by first collecting them ? 

 With men like these, therefore, we decline discussion. But there is another class 

 who may oppose us on far better and more reasonable grounds. It is, simply, because 

 some of us do not use the readiest and shortest means of putting our insects to death ; 

 for, I believe, no one will deny that many poor creatures, with unpractised entomolo- 

 gists, are often left hours, and even days, in a state of what may be torture, although, 

 at the same time, I am well aware that there exist many people who would assert that 

 it is not. This objection, consequently, is solely and entirely dependent on the ques- 

 tion, " Do insects feel or do they not ? " And it is this which we would now propose 

 to discuss. The first query that arises in our mind, is this, — what are the means by 

 which this point can be ascertained ? It is useless to drag out long pages of proba- 

 bilities and improbabilities, hypotheses and theories, all founded upon half-a-dozen iso- 

 lated and miserable facts, which in all probability may have been actuated by a hun- 

 dred external circumstances and local causes, which we cannot now ever expect to 

 discover. For instance, what is the use of asserting that insects cannot feel, merely 

 because Mr. John Smith (or anybody else) once went up to a moth while it was asleep 

 upon a tree and stuck a pin through it without awaking it ? Or what is the use of the 

 assertion if he did this twice, three times, four times, or even a dozen times in his life? 

 If he cannot prove that he can always do the same, his argument is utterly worthless : 

 for, assuming (as he would) that insects do not feel, simply because, in the few instan- 

 ces before mentioned, they did not awake, how is he to pass over the millions of other 

 examples of which those three or four were the exceptions P It is plain that he cannot 

 pass over them ; and that, therefore, if he cannot undertake always to go up to a tree 

 and pierce a sleeping moth without disturbing its repose, his deductions from a few 

 isolated instances like these are of no use whatever. Moreover, it is worth observing, 

 that in every instance in which a moth in this predicament has been pierced, it is 

 merely stated that it does not discover its unpleasant condition at first, — and yet, in 

 spite of this, the conclusion, " that insects have no feeling at all," has been more than 

 once arrived at ! In the extremely few successful instances which I have myself ever 

 heard of, the insects awoke up in less than two minutes after they were pierced ; so 

 •that, after all the labour of drawing superfluous deductions from such dubious circum- 

 stances, not one jot can be arrived at further than that the sensation of feeling is ex- 

 tremely slow, — and slower probably (as we might have naturally anticipated) when the 

 insect is asleep to what it would have been had it been awake. Thus much, circum- 

 stances such as these might undoubtedly be said to prove, — but no more. How we are 

 to assume from them " that insects do not feel," is to me a mystery, since all that they 

 can possibly assure us, is, that, when in a sleeping state, they feel but slowly. Other 

 circumstances, such as their tardy circulation, may indeed tell us that they ahvays feel 



